As wedding season starts to get going in earnest we thought we would take a few minutes in the spur of the moment to get together a bridal bouquet that we would perhaps like to design for a client. Too often we are are faced with numerous pictures of bouquets from various sources such as pinterest and instagram that relate to a certain style, colour or particular types of flowers. This is fine and a safe way of going about things as there is no uncertainty. However, it is far more interesting when a client lets us be more creative and imaginative and design something that is totally unique. You have to earn that trust with the client. With pictures there is a level of reassurance as the client knows what they will be presented with on their wedding day. All we are saying is that it would be fun and exciting to have that unknown element beforehand and this is only achievable at very short notice due to the last minute nature of flowers, sometimes we are even uncertain as to the resources we will have available to us.
So we are in the month of May and this can only mean peonies. The season is fairly short for the most interesting varieties so you have to make the most of them. Here we have the luscious ‘Chiffon Parfait’. with its big flowers and pale pink and white tones. We also used a lot of the peony leaves as greenery to accompany the flowers. Too often the stems and leaves of flowers are discarded, but used creatively, these elements can add real interest to a design and help tell a nice story that all the cut flower has been used. The main bulk of greenery we chose is muhlenbeckia, with its delicate green leaves and tangled mass of dark stems. This is an example of letting us use what resources we have available at the last minute as you could never plan to find some with the stems as long as we did on this day. The last element we used, in a true Potting Shed Style, was some dead cotoneaster stems we had at our disposal. In any normal circumstances these would have been thrown away a long time ago, but it is these little elements that add that quirky and unique element to the design. Lastly we were scratching around for some appropriate ribbon to tie the bouquet with but we could not find anything suitable in the little time that we had. The answer…..tissue paper! Rolled up and tied in lengths it was perfect.
We were really pleased with how this turned out, it is a big bouquet and would take some holding on your wedding day, but it would be one of a kind.
Keith and Elly got involved with styling and photography
