Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
Toll Free: 800-234-6575
|
|
 |
|
|
Samantha Campbell (left) helps Hillary White carry an altarpiece White created for a Mardi Gras theme wedding. The flowers were part of a wedding show hosted Friday by Magna Vista High School’s horticulture department. |
| More Photos |
Monday, November 19, 2007
By PAUL COLLINS - Bulletin Staff Writer
The auditorium stage at Magna Vista High School was filled with splendid flowers of various colors, types and textures Friday for the horticulture department’s Wedding Show.
The event began with more than 40 invited guests — including school system officials, teachers, parents of students and others — eating a lunch at themed tables. Each had elegant floral centerpieces, coordinated table linens and sometimes satin-draped chairbacks, table favors for guests and more.
Students conducted the program against a backdrop of Greek Ionic columns. The presentation included narration — with plenty of facts, history and other details — and students showing the audience the various floral decorations they created to carry out the tables’ themes.
The idea behind the show was to enable students to share their designs and work together as a team.
Narrators said personalized weddings are a trend today. So Magna Vista students divided the show around six approaches to structure a wedding: Valentine’s Day, museum venue, Mardi Gras, Harry Potter, destination weddings (for example, rain forest), and Virginia Tech.
For the Valentine’s Day theme, the dining table had a red table cloth and pink satin underneath a floral centerpiece of red and pink roses and pink sinesis and galax leaves. Pink satin covered the chairbacks, and table favors were red roses and chocolate kisses. Narrators told the history of Valentine’s Day.
Students then brought out numerous Valentine-theme floral decorations they created, including a stand with a string of red hearts accented with miniature carnations and silver ribbons; an altarpiece of intertwined red and pink carnation hearts on a background of myrtle, hypericum berries and pink sinesis; a bridal party wristlet (instead of a corsage) and boutonniere with keepsake silver jewelry, a teddy bear flower basket, and various other floral arrangements.
During the presentation for museum venue, a narrator said that more than half of all U.S. wedding ceremonies are held somewhere other than churches, and museums rank high on the list. “With the opening of the new natural history museum in Martinsville, it is an idea (whose) time has come,” the narrator said.
One of the floral designs that got a number of comments from those in the audience was an autumnal altarpiece — a floral art piece that serves as a ceremonial backdrop. In this piece, a shadow box framed a “mandala” which, the narrator said, “is a traditional circular design featuring repeated patterns and are often regarded as symbols of the universe.” The piece had magnolia leaves sprayed silver, white cushion mums and a white spider mum.
Some of the Mardi Gras floral arrangements featured festival masks.
For the Harry Potter theme, the students took liberties with the last book in the series by J.K. Rowling.
“...We would have liked to see the wedding of Harry and Jenny and Ron and (Hermione). So today we’re going to imagine what that double wedding could have looked like,” a narrator said.
Some of the students wore wizard robes as they showed their floral creations. Some floral arrangements included a Gryffindor banner, a Gryffindor Tower, a “goblet of fire” with blue iris and delphinium flowers, a book of spells/charm bracelet, a broom bouquet, a book of tales/wand centerpiece, a wizard chess centerpiece and a Sorting Hat centerpiece.
The destination wedding/rain forest theme stemmed from the fact that 10 percent of couples have “destination weddings” — essentially when a couple is married in an exotic or special location, often with an average of nearly 50 relatives and friends attending. Magna Vista students chose a rain forest — the world’s rain forests are rapidly disappearing — as the venue for its destination wedding.
Floral arrangements included such things as a large sculpted wooden vase by an artisan sponsored by the Rainforest Alliance, exotic flowers and a waterfall centerpiece with tropical foliage.
The final theme was the Virginia Tech wedding, and some Magna Vista students wore wigs and clothes in Tech maroon and orange. Those colors also dominated many of the floral arrangements. Also, Virginia Tech footballs and other Tech memorabilia were featured.
A narrator explained the reason for the theme: “The average age of the U.S. bride and groom (has) been steadily increasing. Today’s groom is 26.8 years old and our bride is 25.1 years old. Driving this trend is the desire of couples to finish their education and establish their careers before making a lifelong commitment. Many of these couples met their significant other in college, and their wedding often doubles as a reunion for their college social set.”
Magna Vista has a nationally acclaimed horticulture program, according to the school’s Web site. Several students interviewed said that teacher Deborah Barker makes the classes interesting, informative, hands-on and fun, and some of them said they may eventually pursue full-time or part-time work in horticulture or use the skills learned as part of their full-time work.
Samantha Campbell, a senior, said the program gives her an outlet to escape some of the pressures of high school. She said she hopes to major in horticulture at Virginia Tech and open a floral shop one day.
Jackson Robertson, a 10th-grader, said, “I love it.... It’s not like it’s a class. It’s like she’s (Barker is) one of us.”
Chris Lambert, a senior, said Barker “keeps you interested.” Sometimes she acts out educational concepts, and she makes the class fun, said Lambert, who does horticultural projects at the front of Magna Vista.
He said he hopes to go into real estate one day and to do the landscaping part of the job himself, which is where he thinks what he learned in Magna Vista’s horticulture program will help. |
| |
|
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
