Flowers can account for up to 10 percent of the wedding budget.
They are a pretty and powerful component that express your own personality.
Your bouquet
- Personalize your bouquet. Wrap the stems with lace or faux fur or add feathers, crystals or pearls. For a personal touch, add a piece of your mother’s jewellery. Emphasize back-to-nature with wildflowers such as daisies, poppies, sunflowers, lilies and baby’s breath. For a vintage look, use garden roses, peonies, stephanotis and Brasilia berries.
- If your gown is simple, have a simple bouquet. You might have a monochromatic bouquet with varying shades of a single colour.
- Larger, cascading formal bouquets are ideal with ballgowns. Smaller bouquets, such as the nosegay, coordinate with less formal dresses.
Your centrepieces
- For an unusual centrepiece, combine fruit and flowers. Fill a glass bowl with lemons or limes and tuck in a few flowers and some greenery.
- Use cherry blossoms, orchids and bamboo stalks in glass vases anchored with stones for an Asian fusion floral arrangement,
- Consider using clusters of small vases with different blooms in each.
- Keep your centrepieces low so guests don’t have to compete with them to have a conversation.
Elaine Pitsikalis, owner of N’Dezine in Toronto, says, “The choice of flowers depends on the season, the personality of the bride and the formality of the wedding.”
Originally published in Today’s Bride magazine, Spring/Summer 2013.