“PLEASE FORGIVE THE ACTIVE CHAOS. Our son is getting married in our garden and we are creating a personal paradise for the occasion.” This from one of my clients who was using Feng Shui to make this romantic occasion even more auspicious.

Whether you are hosting the entire wedding, just the reception or even just planning a wedding, you can use the art of Feng Shui to help you enhance your environment and the occasion, not only for the special day but for life-long changes.

Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art of empowerment through environment, creating a positive energy flow by decluttering and enhancing your environment for your own personal harmony. The very act of preparing your home and garden for a wedding allows you to clean, purge and add beautiful enhancements.

Flowers are powerful Ch’i enhancers and most people hosting weddings create lush landscapes by adding flowering plants. My clients are adding hanging planters and lots of color to enhance their back yard, including new seating areas, cushions, umbrellas, etc. By doing this total house and garden refreshing, they are enhancing the Ch’i (vital energy) of the home — a win-win for both the homeowners and the bride and groom.

But with weddings you can do more than just beautifying the yard and sprucing up the home. Pay close attention to the Love and Marriage area of your home, ensuring that it is properly enhanced to exude love. Use the Feng Shui Bagua (Ba-gua) Map to help you locate the Love and Marriage area; represented as a grid of nine sectors, the Bagua comes from the Chinese philosophy “The I Ching,” and literally means “eight trigrams,” with the Center used for grounding and centering.

In whichever room this area resides, basic Feng Shui principles can help you nurture and strengthen relationships and bond the couple getting married.

Love and Marriage

The Love and Marriage area is located in the right back corner of your home and garden. The element for this area is Fire, and the colors are red, pink or white. Representations of this element can be used inside and outside of your home.

Enhancements for the Love and Marriage area inside your home:

• Photos, paintings, collages or figures depicting your significant other;

• Pairs of items (lovers, doves, hearts, candles, vases, figurines, etc.);

• Art with a romantic theme;

• Quotes, affirmations and sayings pertaining to love and marriage;

• Items that have a personal association to love and marriage (romantic vacations, honeymoon mementos).

Enhancements for the Love and Marriage area outside your home (if you’re hosting a wedding this area of your garden would be auspicious for the ceremony):

• Garden art representing pairs, such as two love birds, wedding bells, hearts or butterflies;

• Items, flowers, plants in the color of the rose spectrum (reds, blushes, pinks);

• Bistro table with two chairs or a loveseat for two.

For the wedding day, go through all of your pictures and get the best ones framed and hung in your home. This will create a really good atmosphere around the home and will also bring in positive Ch’i.

Even if the wedding isn’t in someone’s home, the bride and groom can still use Feng Shui to enhance their magical day.

First, from a Feng Shui perspective, the importance in choosing an appropriate day to get married cannot be overemphasized. To find your best date, consult the Feng Shui Almanac, which summarizes the entire year’s auspicious dates for all types of occasions such as getting married, starting a business, starting a job, etc.

Next, Feng Shui is often referred to as a method for creating harmony. Harmony in Feng Shui is created with colors, elements and shapes all supporting each other. On such an important day as the uniting of a couple, auspicious colors will help give your day a harmonious start.

Color combinations that create good luck:

• A yang color (i.e., red) with its yin version (i.e., pink) are always good, safe choices. Others include dark blue/light blue, purple/lavender, dark green/light green;

• Red and green (great for Christmas weddings);

• Yellow and red (the perfect Feng Shui pairing for harmony, good social standing and wealth);

• Metallic colors (white, silver, gray, gold) with yellow;

• Greens with blues are perfect together;

• Blues with metal colors (white, silver, gray, gold) are well-suited for each other.

What do the colors mean?

• Reds and gold/yellow/beige colors: harmony and prosperity, good luck and happiness;

• Black and white: male and female, harmony;

• Green and purples/lavender: growth, longevity and wealth;

• Metal colors: creativity/children;

• Yellow and white: heaven and Earth;

• Green and blue: growth;

• Red and green: Happy luck and success;

• Black and green: Wealth and growth and longevity;

• Especially auspicious colors: gold and purple (great wealth), silver and purple (great wealth), green and purple (great abundance), purple and white, purple and black (career and financial success).

Floral Feng Shui

Use the color combinations above to guide you in your flower choices, and try to make your wedding flowers as big and beautiful as you can afford. Freshly cut flowers symbolize good luck and make great gifts for guests to take away to share your new luck.

Whether you’re enhancing your home by hosting a wedding or enhancing your life by getting married, make sure that you smile as much as you can throughout this very important day. A simple smile can bring great amounts of good luck — and will even spread seriously fast across the room!

Affirmations and inner work

In Feng Shui, intent plays a significant role in enhancing the Love area of your home and garden. That’s why all enhancements need to be made with intentionality — written or stated affirmations are very important.

It is also important for them to be expressed as if they are already happening. Examples of affirmations for the Love and Marriage area: “My perfect love partner and I are connected in our minds, hearts and spirits, now and always”; “The joy of hosting this wedding will permeate our lives for years to come.”

Feng Shui at work

One of my friends chose to give the money that she would have paid a wedding event center to her brother for him to landscape his backyard and spruce up his home. She was married in his beautifully landscaped garden, which he and his family have benefited from for many years. The positive Ch’i benefited them both, as my friend has been happily married for over 16 years — and her brother’s family, having had their yard completely transformed, have hosted more parties (including their parents’ 80th birthdays) and have experienced an inner peace, good health and increased spirituality.

Feng Shui on a shoestring

Feng Shui enhancements do not have to cost a great deal. You don’t have to go to the expense of hosting a wedding to experience the positive energy of Feng Shui. Use the power of flowers to begin shifting the energy. Begin by removing any dead plants and replacing them with inexpensive flowering annuals or perennials (especially by your front entrance), and feel the energy shift.

Questions, questions, questions

I encourage you to email me with questions, to which I will respond in this column or by email.

Reader: “My wedding is three months away and so far nothing seems to be going right. My dress doesn’t fit. The invitations had a typo. One of my bridesmaids accidentally ordered the wrong color bridesmaid dress. My mother-in-law is driving me crazy. I can go on and on. I read your columns and I was wondering if Feng Shui can help? Is there something I can do to get this wedding back on track? I wanted this process to be fun, but so far it’s been a nightmare …”

Dear Reader: Feng Shui can definitely help. What you’re experiencing is a lack of synchronicity. Look to the Helpful People area of your home (the front right corner) to see what’s happening there. Begin by decluttering and ensuring no doors are blocked. Then enhance with the colors white, gray and anything metal and circular. For instance, place a beautiful white blooming plant in a metal vase there and hang two silver wedding bells.

This also is an ideal area for a vision board with pictures of happy weddings and written affirmations of your visions as though they have already manifested, such as, “All my bridesmaids’ dresses are perfect,” “My mother in law and I are great friends,” “My dress fits perfectly,” etc.

A Helpful People area that is missing from your floor plan also affects your synchronicity. You can anchor the area by doing one or a combination of the following cures: planting a large white flowering plant in a white or gray pot at the spot of the missing corner; planting a tree; or placing boulder or large white statue of a spiritual guide (angels, Buddha, etc.). If the area outside is not accessible, you can symbolically anchor from the inside by hanging a 30-mm round-faceted crystal and placing a mirror and/or a picture of a mountain or a beautiful wedding picture on the wall by the missing corner. If the missing area happens to be a parking lot, you can draw a small symbol of a heart or yin/yang sign in the exact location, closing off the corner.

Also look to the Love and Marriage area of your home as mentioned earlier in this article and enhance accordingly. I wish you the most beautiful wedding ever! Please let me know how it goes!

* * *

FOR QUESTIONS OR HOME CONSULTATIONS email me at mtmccull@aol.com and put “Feng Shui” on the subject line, or visit my website at http://www.fengshuibymaria.com, where you can read past columns, or find “Feng Shui by Maria” on Facebook, where I post pictures as examples to enhancements.

And check out my blog — just go to the website and click on “Blog” and you can view many pictures and I will respond to your questions quickly. I look forward to hearing from you.

Until then … Blessings!

Benicia resident Maria McCullough is the owner and founder of Feng Shui by Maria. She is a speaker and educator with more than 15 years’ experience specializing in residential, landscape and business consultations.