Most of my ideas for flowers came from
Rock My Wedding (unsurprisingly!) The first idea I had, however, was from the cover of Brides magazine showing green roses in a bouquet. Other than that, I didn't know what style I wanted or what to have for ceremony/table flowers. I went with my single idea to my local florist and after about an hour of discussion, we had a whole plan of many different flowers, big pedestals, big table arrangements, trailing flowers along the stage and bouquets. Needless to say, when I got the quote I decided I needed to scale back and rethink!!
Luckily,
RMW was there to help me decide what I really wanted - hundreds of flowers in big arrangements is not really me, I had just been getting carried away with the suggestions from the florist. I saw this lovely bouquet of white, green and dusky pink flowers and just really like the wispy bits and jumbled up but simple look to it. I'm not so keen on the perfectly ordered, perfectly round, tight posies of roses. Rather than include the dusky pink (although I do love that wee injection of extra colour), I wanted to keep the flower palette to greens and whites.
Another flower I love is the lisianthus. I particularly love the twisty green buds and green middles and thought these would provide the wispy-ness I was after, having plenty of the buds sticking out.
Update: I spotted this bouquet below when looking for pictures to show my florist to get the idea of the kind of look I'm after and found out the amazing green collar is green celosia which IS in season in July! I love that it looks like coral - it reminds me of diving! I have asked them to include some of this, either as shown in this picture or more as a main part of it. I love it!
For the bridesmaids, the initial idea from the florist had been to do smaller versions of my own. Then I saw this on RMW...
Totally LOVE this idea and immediately started looking for the 3 flowers I would use. I decided to use the lisianthus as they would have the green and white while still keeping the simplicity of using only one flower. I also love the idea of them all wearing the same ring on different fingers/hands like the flower ring above so have bought them all one of my favourite sparkly dress rings each.
For their flowers I thought these green and white parrot tulips would be perfect for one...
Unfortunately, tulips aren't in season in July - just a month or so too late :( Neither are these anemones which would have made the perfect 3rd bouquet.
I tried searching for other white and green flowers but couldn't come up with anything so decided just to keep them white/cream instead. I will still have lisianthus for my chief bridesmaid and probably peonies for one as I love the big ball shaped buds and fluffy petals, although I might stick with wilder looking loose bouquets of freesia and alstromerias.
Whichever flowers I do end up choosing I will incorporate a couple of each into my bouquet. The flower girl will carry a small posy of 3 green roses tied with ribbon. The buttonholes will be a green rose for Nik and white roses for the others, all with lisianthus buds and something extra which I'm keeping a secret for now :)
For the ceremony, we decided to keep one small pedestal for the stage to balance out Gwen's harp on the other side. Also I wanted to incorporate green bloom chrysanthemums which I love but didn't want in my bouquet as they would take away from the green roses. Instead of having an expensive row of flowers along the stage, I am going to make tissue paper pom garlands to hang across the front.
Meanwhile, I had also discovered a gorgeous idea from a wedding photographer's website - one of their weddings had to most stunning floral display on a table of dozens of straight cylinder vases of different sizes each containing a calla lily submerged in water and wired to a pebble to weigh it down. Each one then had a floating candle on top. I'm not usually a fan of floating candles but loved the way they were used here! It is really effective and simple and the wire round the pebbles was a lovely feature too, rather than them being weighed down into
glass pebbles or similar - which again I'm not a fan of. The pictures were by the very talented
Blue Sky Photography and the flowers by
Planet Flowers who have kindly given permission for me to reproduce the photos here.
I decided we could adapt this idea for our table decorations and have 3 on each table of varying heights. We could also use them during our ceremony to decorate the window sills, then move them over to the tables once they are set up afterwards. I also adapted it by buying green wire to wrap round the pebbles so it stands out (they had used gold but the silver I originally used to go with our colour scheme wasn't standing out enough). Our florist has agreed to wire them onto the lilies if I have pre-wired the pebbles, leaving an end free to wrap around the stems. A similar idea can be seen
here.
 |
| My hard work - 42 lime wired pebbles! |
|
|
It s hould look something more like this but less cluttered with only one flower in each.
Photo from eHow.com |
We have therefore now got a quote which is about half of the previous one from our same florist and the designs are much more simple and elegant and much more 'us'. Even taking into the fact that we have bought all of the vases (42!!) the table centres are still cheaper than before (the hired vases and big floral displays) as we just need 3 flowers per table. And we can try and sell the vases after - hopefully someone else will like the idea and want the same vases!
Post wedding edit:
I loved the submerged calla lillies but sadly our photographer didn't get a picture of them, luckily my friend Julie took one and sent it to me...
 |
| Julie's Picture of our table flowers! |
I also loved the garlands on the pillars with my huge sequin butterflies attached (again, no photos sorry) and the flowers hanging in the little bubble vases out the back of the venue looked stunning!
I was a bit disappointed with my bouquet as the roses were yellow rather than green (the florist admitted they looked a bit 'lemony' and blamed the fact they were paired with white flowers on the shade appearing more yellow as it is apparently a 'green tea' rose which is classed as a green rose. When I first asked about green roses, showing a picture I'd seen, I was told they were called emerald roses so perhaps they changed the type of rose. It was pretty but not at all what I had in mind and I didn't think it fit in well with the style of our day. The peonies in my and one of the bridesmaids' bouquets were also not what I planned as they were fully open and not as seen in the picture above with the ball shaped heads. My bouquet was also a traditional looking tight posy rather than the wispier look I wanted and the celosia was hardly visible when I held it as it was much shorter around the collar.
 |
As you can see, it didn't ruin my happy, smiley day but it's
a shame I didn't get the fresh green & white bouquet I wanted. |
 |
| Grace's yellow roses |
 |
| The best picture I have of the green part of my bouquet |
