Houston's love wizard: Town & Country names Richard Flowers to its chichiwedding advisory board

In more than two decades of helping brides create their dream wedding environments, Houstonian Richard Flowers has worked his magic on everything from small fetes in private homes to million-dollar destination weddings.

But it's the six- and seven-figure mega events — the ones in Cabo, Telluride and Nantucket — that have earned The Events Company honcho premiere honors as one of an elite group of wedding advisors to Town & Country magazine.

He joins the coterie of famed party/wedding planners that includes Colin Cowie and Mark Ingram of New York and LA's Mindy Weiss. Their expertise along with that of Flowers is featured in T&C's new wedding website that launched on Valentine's Day.

Whether it's arranging for a second line band to lead a wedding party down Bourbon Street in New Orleans or working the logistics and the decor for a wedding on a river bank in Gunnison, Colo., Flowers has created just about every wedding situation imaginable. He could write a book (and he just might) on weddings.

"They've all been so spectacular in different ways," he said when asked to name his most amazing one.

There was the wedding, for example, that required a 24,000-square-foot tent erected in downtown's Sam Houston Park where Nataile Cole was the entertainment. Mind you, this is not just setting up a tent. This is decorating to the hilt with crystal chandeliers, plush carpeting and a patterned dance floor, silk draping, Baccarat-like candelabrum and jungles of flowers. Air-conditioning and heating, depending on the season, a given.

In another fanciful wedding tent set up on Jones Plaza in front of Wortham Center, Flowers oversaw the decor that included 70 wedding cakes mounted on the tent wall, one for each table of wedding guests.

Partygoers won't soon forget his major blow-out with 600 guests that began at 8 p.m. with a formal ceremony, included a seated dinner and dancing and lasted until the wee hours, well after the mariachis showed up along with the midnight Mexican breakfast.

As he considered the various weddings he has planned, Flowers said, "Outdoor weddings are the most challenging."

Probably one of the most problematic took place several years ago in a picturesque pasture on a farm near Brenham. The farm saw more than 12 inches of rain the day of the wedding and a tornado was sighted only 1/4 mile from the party pasture not long before the 700 wedding guests were due to arrive. In the end, heart attacks on behalf of Flowers and his team notwithstanding, it was the bride's lucky day.

The skies parted and a University of Texas burnt orange sunset, complete with rainbow, greeted the UT grad as she walked down the outdoor aisle.

Of the major trends in weddings today, Flowers says the biggest change he has seen in his 24 years of party planning is that the groom is becoming involved in the planning. Previously, the groom was the last person you would expect to see at a planning meeting. But today, according to Flowers, they want to be involved in everything from the menu to the decor.