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Asbury Park resident Spence Cook will be seen on an upcoming wedding special filmed for The Learning Channel [TLC.]

Cook [at right], who owns bloom boxx florist in Avon-by-the-Sea, provided flowers for a one-hour special, “Secret Wedding.”

For the show, a bride-to-be thinks she is being filmed for her ability to put together a wedding for under $10,000, but behind the scenes, TV personality Cat Deely [above] covertly plans the wedding of the bride’s dreams with the help of friends and family members.

A casting director for the network saw Cook’s work online and came to meet him in his  Avon-by-the-Sea studio, he said.

Cook provided about $20,000 worth of flowers for a “rustic-chic” wedding held at Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead, NY, he said.

The bride thought she was getting wildflowers, but got an assortment of hydrangeas, lisianthus, eucalyptus, asters, millet, thistle, and hanging amaranthus that were displayed in rustic metal buckets on antique props like barrels, milk cans and stools [shown above] to fit the “rustic chic” vibe of the wedding, said Cook.

Besides the flowers for the aisle, Cook also provided bouquets, table centerpieces, and other interior and exterior flower decorations, he said.

Transportation and storage of the flowers proved to be a bit of a task for Cook, who said he and his team “loaded up two vans to the gills” to get the flowers to the location from his Avon studio.

“It took 13 trips with a luggage roller getting all of the stuff into the hotel room,” he said. Cook got up early two mornings in a row to work on the arrangements and “just cranked the AC in the hotel room” to keep the flowers fresh.

“There were buckets of flowers all over the room,” he said.

Originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, Cook has been an Asbury Park resident for the past four years. His bloom boxx floral studio started out in his Asbury home but he has since moved it to a space in Avon. His family has been in the flower business since the 1920’s, which is where he learned the trade, he said.

As for now, the show is just a special, but Cook said he was told the network may be considering using the special as a pilot for a possible series. If it is does get picked up by the network, producers will continue to look for local vendors in the areas that they film, so Cook’s work with the potential series is done, he said.

“It’s a sweet-spirited show, it wasn’t ‘Bridezillas’,” said Cook. “It felt good to reward a couple that was trying to be good and frugal about their wedding.”

The show airs Friday, Dec. 27 at 10 p.m. on TLC.

[Screengrab at top taken from TLC website. Photo at right courtesy of Spence Cook.]

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