Easter 2017

We found our inspiration this year from the Spring 2013 edition of The Flower Arranger;

However, in our church, blues and purples 'disappear' into the brickwork, so we plumped for white iris instead. (There was a moment of panic when it was discovered that the flowers sent to the wholesaler were BLUE iris, but we managed to get them changed in time...)

The magazine assured it would only take 15 minutes to arrange each pot once the materials were assembled... but we found that timing to be a little - how shall I put it? - underestimated! Most of our time was taken up in trying to persuade the catkin stems to curve slightly (they came ramrod-straight) and trying to make the midelino sticks meet them in a reflection of the curve. 

No matter what we did (sticking the sticks into the oasis horizontally, varying the lengths of the sticks, trying to bend them gently), they insisted on remaining straight or pushing the catkins away. We ended up using oasis tape to pull the midelino sticks down a little, but a lot of our 'arched window' arrangements took on a decided slant... At least our ten potted arrangements leaned the same way!

We had Easter lilies on the altar - a basketful on one side, with a smaller arrangement on the other. I do like Easter lilies - and they are surprisingly easy to arrange en masse, because they fill the space without the arranger having to try too hard!

It wouldn't be Easter without the Easter garden: here is the before, from Good Friday, and the after, when the garden springs into life...

We also had a few knitted and crocheted flowers, which added a touch of Spring to the back window:

We chose yellow and palms for the porch - there were also yellow carnations around the credence candle - and the stones displayed were made by children of the local school, who had taken part in Experience Easter, run by members of our congregation. Each stone has written on it a hope or dream for the future...

And from our Good Friday All-Age service, we included our crossful of love. The children had been asked to bring decorated hearts, because the cross turns from a terrible thing on the Friday to an object symbolising great love on Easter morning. 

 A Happy and Blessed Easter to you all!

When a plan has to be changed...

We decorated for another wedding a few weeks ago - the delay in posting is due entirely to me being on holiday and the automatic scheduling not working for some reason! 

In all my years of doing weddings, I think this was the first one that we'd had problems with and had to change our plans...

Problem 1. Cabbage roses are VERY expensive: £4 a stem. As we needed around 170 (!) we'd have blown the entire flower budget just on this one flower type. So we had to change the order - reduce the number of roses and order double lizianthus instead in the required colours. 

Problem 2. The wholesaler could not get hold of white anemones, even from Holland, but he kindly replaced them with a black-eyed white mini gerbera to create a similar effect. We ended up leaving these out of the bouquet for the bride as they weren't a suitable alternative for her, but they were still able to be used in church.

Problem 3. Tight peonies. I discovered only recently that peonies do not like to be cut, and need rather a lot of persuasion to open up. After posting on a flower arranger group on facebook, I discovered that if you wash the flower buds in warm water and either knock them or force the outer petals open, then cut the bottoms and let them drink warm water, they will open up. Pleased to say...they did!

Problem 4. The style of bouquet was a loose, unstructured one. I've done handties quite successfully in the past, but they have more of a level outer edge to them. With this unstructured style, I found it difficult to get the right amount of 'sticky-out' bits to add movement when the roses and peonies had a distinct tendency to mass together all at the same level. The bridesmaids' smaller bouquets, with a larger variety of flowers, seemed to go together much easier, and in hindsight, perhaps we should have used a bit more variety in the bride's bouquet too. It's such a fine balance though, doing what the bride has requested while making it look right to the florist's eye! 

(I ought to add that we don't usually offer to do bouquets for weddings at church, but the bride's family are both long standing members of the congregation and friends, who asked us to do them.) 

Anyway, we got round the problems, and I am hoping (as I always do!) that the bride will be delighted with what we've done. Here's what we started with:

Not all the flowers! There were five or six more buckets full...

Some flowers went straight to the bride's mum, to fill jam jars for the reception at the farm. Others were sorted into 'church', 'crate' and 'bouquet' buckets...

It took three of us (myself, Rita and Ginny) around three to four hours to do everything, but we ended up with;

One little bridesmaid's flower ball. A first for me! I have to say that gypsophila fills in beautifully around the pink lizianthus. Not the most perfectly spherical of objects, this first attempt, but very pretty...

A sinkful of bouquets!

Here's one of the five adult bridesmaids' bouquets - a pink rose and pink astilbe, white lizianthus and eucalyptus.

The bride's bouquet has two shades of pink rose, pink peonies, a little bit of pink lizianthus and eucalyptus. 

The next pic shows everything boxed up and ready to be delivered. Look closely and you'll see two buttonholes too; I made the first with a gerbera before we had the message to keep them out of the bride's bouquet, so the second is lizianthus and astilbe, but I wasn't sure whether the groom would go for so much pink. It will be interesting to see which one he chooses... (Incidentally, I tried one of the roses initially, but they looked too massive for a buttonhole.)

In church, there were two arrangements either side of the altar cross;

You'll notice in these arrangements that we also used white waxflower. It's a good filler - a bit like gypsophila, but without the smell of cat wee! In fact, white waxflower has the most delicious lemony scent and was a pleasure to work with.

The windows were left un-flowered as the bride wanted to have candles instead. All the bunting and candle holders have been made by the bride and her mum.

We put a large arrangement in the porch...

...another on the font...

...and then, we did the crates. This was another first for us. We've had a milk churn and a wheelbarrow outside the church door for previous weddings, but this is the first time we've had a stack of crates. I think the effect is quite stunning - like a waterfall of flowers. 

In fact, I like this idea so much, I wonder whether I could do this instead of separate containers for the flower festival...I'll have to think a bit more about that, then see if I can borrow these crates!

Anyway, everything turned out well in spite of the issues we'd had, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the bride likes what we've done.