Open Preston Bailey’s home page and you meet a man sharing the back seat of a limousine with a dog. Nothing wrong there, except that the furry thing won’t bark. It is made up of dogwood flowers.

“Wait till you see the elephant that I made for Joan Rivers’s India party,” Preston Bailey’s booming voice laughs across the Atlantic — via the phone, of course — when quizzed about his fetish for shaping the four-legged from petals.

The “floral couturier” from New York who brings parties to bloom for America’s rich and famous — Catherine Zeta Jones to Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey to Donna Karan — is all set to make an India connection. He has agreed to lend his expertise to Indian flower chain Ferns N Petals and is flying down to Delhi. “I hear Indian weddings have a lot to do with flowers. I can’t wait to see what India offers to me creatively.”

A glimpse of Donald Trump's wedding venue in Florida

The Panama-born Preston Bailey’s fairytale floral journey had started by accident. “I was in desperate need of a job. A friend suggested that I do weekly flowers for one of his Park Avenue clients. That was 1980 and I knew nothing of flowers. Today, I feel blessed.”

It requires a blessed imagination indeed to fashion the spectacles that appear on his online album — dreams wrought in orchids and petals. All that comes for a price. “Ninety per cent of my clients are billionaires,” Bailey admits.

Looking back at his celebrity dos, the 59-year-old Bailey starts with Oprah Winfrey’s 50th birthday. “She loves beauty but is open to surprises. Her house has the most beautiful garden, with roses and peonies. John Travolta was there at the party, Tina Turner sang… it was a love festival.”

Then there is the Donald Trump wedding. “It was held at the exquisite Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that Mr Trump owns. He had built a new ballroom for the night. Melania, his wife, wanted it all white and traditional. But Mr Trump’s tastes are over the top. So my challenge was to give a look that would be old-world elegance with a streak of the dramatic.”

Australian actress Erica Baxter’s wedding took him to the French Riviera. “It happened at Hotel Du Cap-Eden-Roc on the Cote d’Azur. I saw the groom for the first time at the ceremony,” he laughs cheekily. The groom was James Packer, the second richest Australian and son of Kerry Packer, a name familiar to cricket buffs.

The flower elephant, designed by Bailey for Joan Rivers's India Party

Bailey also did the rehearsal dinner of the Michael Douglas-Catherine Zeta-Jones wedding. The venue was New York’s iconic Russian Tea Room. “Catherine wanted a Russian theme rich in burgundies, reds and golds. She loves roses, peonies and hydrangea.”

Bailey says he is not intimidated by his fashion designer clients. “John Galliano has outrageous and flamboyant tastes while Donna Karan, whose daughter’s wedding I did, is spiritual. I understand their language,” Bailey says.

His biggest challenge is the royal families. “They have seen the best of everything. The challenge is to be able to surprise them.” He drew the most satisfaction from an Abu Dhabi wedding, attended by 45,000 members of royalty. “One learns so much about cultures by doing weddings. In the Middle-East, they invite only women. They don’t have nightclubs; this is one place where they don’t have to cover their faces.”

Bailey says the key to his success lies in listening to clients. But he has strong favourites too. “I love orchids. Even after 30 years, I see new ones. And giant roses, so soft and feminine.” A big no-no are tropical flowers like Birds of Paradise and Anthurium. “They are too hard-edged and stiff.”

If India has got Bailey so excited, the reason is his mentor Joan Rivers, the TV personality. “In 2002 she came back from India so turned on that she immediately threw a luncheon with an India theme. That flower elephant you see is what I made for her.”