10 Things to Consider When Thinking About Your Bridal Bouquet
1. Theme
Your bridal bouquet is the centrepiece of your wedding. So with that in mind a good starting point to consider is your theme and how you want it represented in your bouquet. For example including feathers in your bouquet lends its self to more boho or country styling.
2. Shape
It’s likely that your theme will help you decide what sort of shape and style you would like your bouquet to be. For example boho theming often results in a wild trailing bouquet as opposed to the more structured cascading style. My most popular style is hand tied; classically beautiful and timeless.
3. Colours
This is an important one! What colours will collectively help create the overall visual that you are trying to achieve. My best advice when considering colour is to be flexible with different tones and shades. This is for two reasons; firstly, the exact shade of flowers are never guaranteed, I have some favourites that I use over and over and they are different every time. And secondly, by keeping the shades varied, it will give your bouquet more sophistication, depth and dimension and will allow the colours to ‘pop’.
4. Textures
Textures are so important when considering how you want your bouquet to look. I love various textures from blousy flowers like peonies to soft feathery astilbe.
5. Flowers
Textures leads us wonderfully into perhaps the most important thing to think about when imagining your bouquet. What flowers do you love? And would they be appropriate for your bouquet and the overall look? We would discuss this at your consultation and I’m always happy to make suggestions that I think will suit.
6. Personal Touches
These can be anything from a particular flower to a memory charm. There was one particular wedding where though not appropriate to the theme, the bride had a sentimental attachment to bright yellow daffodils, so she asked me to hide one in her flowers and I did!
7. Stems or No Stems
Believe it or not, this changes the look of your bouquet and it’s nothing to do with the flowers themselves but rather their stems. I love seeing naked stems and the natural look achieved by leaving them partially unwrapped but some brides prefer to have their bouquet stems wrapped down to the base. It’s a personal choice but certainly one to think about.
8. Wrap it Up
This is your bouquets’ finishing touch and the choices are endless, the most popular of course being ribbon or lace, sometimes with a trailing bow. But you can also have rope type twine, embellished fabric or a combination; I actually had a piece of my Grandmother’s crochet fabric wrapped around my bouquet.
9. On the Big Day
After all of the effort and love that we have collectively put into creating your beautiful bouquet, I want you to enjoy it for as long as possible so, my tips for after you have said your vows and had your photos taken are to cut the stems by an inch and get your bouquet into fresh water as soon as possible perhaps even delegate this job to one of your bridesmaids or wedding planner.
10. After the Big Day
Something that is becoming ever more popular is bouquet preservation so that you can enjoy your flowers for years on end. There are many ways of preserving your bouquet flowers such as freeze drying and framing or resin preservation and I can even recommend some suppliers. But make sure you look into this well in advance by 6 months or so because the best suppliers get booked up quickly!
