Another wedding

Remember the wedding we did where plans had to be changed? This weekend, it was another wedding for the same family...and we did their flowers too.

Pleased to say that things ran more smoothly this time, and we were working with some lovely flowers again; sea holly, pale pink roses, double white lizianthus, Million Stars gypsophila and small leaf eucalyptus. All the bouquets and buttonholes were tied with garden string and decorated with a string bow.

The bride wanted a loose handtied bouquet, with lots of long ends. I'm sure there's a technical term for that effect in the floristry world, but blowed if I know what it is! Here's the bridal bouquet...please excuse the toe of my shoe in the pic. Thought I'd kept it out of the way!

Five bridesmaids bouquets...

Groom's buttonhole...

Ushers' buttonholes...

And everything boxed up, ready to deliver...

The bride didn't want too many flowers in church, and to go with the handtied look, asked that we used vases for the flowers instead of formal arrangements. There were only three - two in the altar window and one in the porch.

Strange, but 'arranging' flowers in a vase takes just as much time as using oasis! The vases were wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with string, though the collar of tissue hides the string somewhat!

Just got to wait and see if they fitted the bill now...

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.

Wedding season begins

Like most churches, we have quite a few weddings. As a flower team, we offer to decorate the church for a small fee (the bride and groom pay for the flowers) which is then ploughed back into 'flower funds' to cover the cost of dishes, oasis and sometimes flowers for normal Sunday services.

Of course we don't HAVE to do it - sometimes it's the florist providing the bouquets and buttonholes who does the decorating instead, but we enjoy having the opportunity to serve wedding couples by making the church look beautiful for their big day.

Last weekend, it was Naomi and Isaac's wedding; they wanted pale pink astilbe, cream roses (I think they were Avalanche) and coral lizianthus. We put them together with soft ruscus for height and a bolder leaf from my mum's garden for depth at the base. The lizianthus were a variety we'd not used before - the larger flowers were a deep pink, then the just-opening flowers were a pale coral colour, and the buds, cream. 

We had four matching triangular arrangements in the windows, an asymmetric triangle in the porch, and two arrangements either side of the altar cross that should've been asymmetric triangles (but turned out a little flat on the top!) 

In the altar window, framing the cross

Four windows

Porch

The real test is when the bride sees the flowers; that's when we know whether we've done what they wanted. Both Naomi and Isaac came up to have a look before we'd finished and were delighted, so we were pleased too! We try to encourage the bride at least (we find not many grooms take an interest in all things flowery!) to come up and see the flowers before the actual wedding, because on the big day itself, their minds are more focused on the fella standing at the front...and the day often passes in such a blur, the flowers can be missed.

So, one wedding down and it's all quiet now until the next in July...

Harvest 2015

Harvest isn't quite the same now, as it was when I was a child...

I remember Mum covering three shoe-boxes (one each for me, my brother and sister) in crepe paper and filling them with a few tins and lots of home-grown veggies to take up to the front of church during the first hymn. The church would be filled with fresh produce, jams and cakes which were given to folk afterwards (I always wondered who used to get the enormous marrow that was always - ALWAYS - there, and what on earth they did with it...)

Nowadays, 'harvest' has changed - for the last few years we've tended to focus on supporting our local food bank, and ask specifically for non-perishable items to be donated. And in the spirit of continuing to share our good fortune with others, we make up lots of small posies which are taken out to people who might have been bereaved, or are ill, or have experienced some other difficulty. Church decoration therefore relies less on flowers and more on displays of tins and packets.

This year has been a little different; we had a wedding on the Saturday before, and although the bride was happy to get married in a church decorated for Harvest, we (the flower team) thought she should have some 'wedding flowers' as well. So to tie in with her theme, pink flowers were arranged in the porch, on the altar and on the gates, but the windows and altar window in the body of the church had 'harvest' arrangements...

At the altar window - first time we've ever had veggies on there!
(Spot the brussel sprouts...)

Porch - a little bit of harvest and a lot more wedding...

Donated food , flowers and flags...

The flags are made by a women's project in the slums
of Calcutta from old sari material - something we heard about
at the All-Age Harvest Service