Love Romance flowers in Pasadena

Where the flowers should actually land is the decision most people get backwards. Home works better than a restaurant, and a hotel room works better than both. A restaurant is a business in the middle of service: Parkway Grill and Arroyo Chop House on South Arroyo Parkway, The Raymond 1886 in the 1886 cottage on South Fair Oaks, Bistro 45 on South Mentor, Union on East Union, Magnolia House on South Lake — each sets its own rule about holding a delivery for a guest, and that rule can change with the manager on shift. We are not going to tell you a restaurant will cooperate, because we cannot promise anyone else's front-of-house. Call them, ask, and if they say yes, order to that address with the reservation name and time on it. If the night includes a room, the hotel is easier: The Langham Huntington on South Oak Knoll, standing since 1907 with its painted Picture Bridge and Japanese garden, Hotel Constance in the 1926 building at 928 E Colorado, the Westin at 191 N Los Robles, the Hilton at 168 S Los Robles, the Sheraton on East Cordova, Hyatt Place on East Green and the Courtyard on North Fair Oaks all take front-desk deliveries as a matter of course. Give the room number if you have it, the reservation name if you do not, and an arrival time after check-in — nothing goes upstairs before the guest exists in the system, and an arrangement parked in a warm lobby for four hours is not the surprise you paid for.

The proposal version has one hard constraint worth stating plainly: the places people propose in Pasadena cannot take a flower delivery. The Colorado Street Bridge, the 1913 Beaux-Arts span over the Arroyo Seco, is a public bridge. The loop around the Rose Bowl and Brookside is a three-mile public path. The Huntington in San Marino, with its Japanese and Chinese gardens, and Descanso Gardens over in La Cañada are ticketed institutions with their own rules about deliveries and staged objects, as is the Storrier-Stearns Japanese Garden on Arlington Drive. None of them is going to hold a bouquet at a gate for two hours while you walk somewhere with a ring. The Lower Arroyo below the bridge and the alley courtyards off Colorado in Old Pasadena are the next two spots people pick, and both are public ground with exactly the same problem. If the evening starts at Vroman's on East Colorado — open since 1894 and the oldest independent bookstore in Southern California — or at a show at the Pasadena Playhouse on South El Molino, the designated state theater of California, the flowers should already be in the car or the apartment before you get there. What works instead: have them waiting at the apartment for the return, or in the hotel room, or — the simplest trick — delivered to a friend's place nearby earlier that afternoon so you can collect them on the way. If the proposal is at dinner, the restaurant call above applies. And keep the arrangement small enough to carry with one hand. A tall pedestal design on the Colorado Street Bridge at sunset photographs beautifully and then has to get into a car, and the person holding it is also holding a ring box.