I don’t do flowers for many weddings. This is a choice I made early in my floral journey based on my quite selfish desire to enjoy floral design as a pursuit for my creativity not a job. There are many talented florists and floral designers out there who love to do flowers for weddings.
That said, I do some weddings where the couple have specific bespoke needs and are known to me. This particular wedding was for a former employee of mine. She had a very clear understanding of what she wanted, was keen to source the flowers themselves and keep the costs to a budget we agreed was realistic.
At the time of the wedding (late 2018), the trend was for tightly bunched single flower type, ball shape bouquets. This was not a style that would suit the bride, the bridesmaids or the venue for the wedding – a clubhouse balcony at a popular local beach.
The bride was set on having proteas in a “wild” bunch. How often do we find that a “simple” task takes much more thought and time that we expected?
For this design I gave the bride an idea of how many blooms/stems of the proteas I would use but left it up to her when at the wholesale market to make the final decision. She was excited to get up at 3am to go to the markets but afterwards told me how overwhelmed she was by the myriad of choices she needed to make on the day.
Here are the bouquets ready to be transported to the wedding. I have used the same number of blooms for each of the bridesmaids bouquets with larger blooms and only a few more in the bride’s bouquet. The greenery is native eucalyptus taken from trees in family gardens of both the bride and groom.
Proteas are very hardy and can be dried well so these bouquets have the potential to be a lasting reminder of the day.
They are, however, very heavy. These bouquets needed individual buckets to support them in transport and I sent a warning to the bridal party about their weight so they would be aware. After the day, the bride laughingly told me it was like “carrying a small child”!
