Wedding Wednesday: Flowers, Actually

It's May 1st - a perfect day to talk about flowers!  Yes, I know I've been a total tease for the past few months about our new florist.  I'm sorry.  Never fear, though, because I'm going to explain all here!  "But wait," I hear you exclaim, "why do you need a new florist for your wedding?  I thought you had found one."  Well, we did.  Or we thought we had.  Unfortunately, a few weeks after we first met with them in September, Becky and Suzanne fell off the grid; they told me that they were going on holiday for a week and would get back to me about some queries when they returned.  I emailed them a day before the day they'd indicated, and then... never heard anything.*  At first, Jon was blasé about it.  As the days passed and I got increasingly annoyed, he suggested I chase them.  But, though this might be obnoxious American entitlement speaking, I didn't want to.  Honestly, I might have put more effort into working with them if we'd really connected on a personal level but we didn't, so my attitude was that I was trying to give them my business and they weren't receptive so I would take my wedding and my budget elsewhere.

I emailed Laura, our event manager at Bruisyard Hall, to see if she had any suggestions.  She pointed me towards Clare Robinson of Love Blooms, with whom she'd worked closely on other events at our venue, and - well, let's just say that fate must have had a hand in this, because I'm thrilled at how it's all turned out.  She and I had a Skype meeting in late November and then, when I was over for Christmas, she joined Jon and me for a coffee to discuss further specifics.  My mother and I met up with her at A Most Curious Wedding Fair in London the other weekend to see some of her work and finalize details, and Mom was just as charmed and impressed as I was - I knew Clare was the perfect person for us to work with after that first conversation, and meeting her in person just cemented it.  Clare totally understood my vision and skillfully wove Jon's requests into the larger picture, and she added some suggestions that just took the whole thing to another level.  We didn't change the big ideas from what I had originally talked about with Becky and Suzanne, but Clare brought clarity and creativity to what I had imagined and I'm so thrilled that she's our florist.

Here's what we'll be using: David Austin roses, roses in coral (not pictured), Sweet Avalanche roses, Lisianthus, Sweet Peas, Matriarca daisies (not pictured), dahlias, snapdragons, and green bells (not pictured).  The color scheme is still white with dusty pinks and corals (again, not pictured here; sorry!) and greens, and from what Clare has shown me it's going to be so fresh and light.  Even Jon has admitted that it's not too romantic or feminine, so I think that's a sign that Clare and I make a good team!

We're keeping things pretty simple, as I mentioned back in the fall; the primary decor in the ceremony room will be pails of flowers on the chairs lining the aisles, which will then be moved to the reception room to be used as centerpieces.  (Clare made us an example that we got to take home with us - it's stunning!)  We'll have more aisle chairs than dinner tables, so the extras will be scattered around the room on the dessert buffet, the cheese table, and elsewhere.  (We're hoping we'll have enough left over to put a couple in the bathrooms, too!)  The registrar's table will be graced with a trough of flowers, matching those in the pails, and that will go on the top table during dinner.  We'll also have a canopy over the registrar's table, serving as a central focal point in place of an altar, and Clare has some gorgeous ideas for large posies on the front two corners of that, which will then also be repurposed during dinner.  Other than that, we've asked for a loose bouquet for me (mostly pinks and greens as a nice contrast against my white dress) and slightly smaller bouquets for the bridesmaids (mostly whites and greens to stand out against their gray gowns), classic rose boutonnières for Jon and his two best men, and lovely buttonholes of lisianthus for our readers and ushers as well as the fathers and my grandfather.  I'm excited to see how Clare and Michelle team up for the fresh flowers on our cake, too!  And, last but not least, Clare had some magical suggestions involving fairy lights and giant mason jars - but I'll leave something as a surprise for my guests in August and for you, dear readers, when I blog about the wedding afterwards!

Below are a few photos I took of Clare's work at the wedding fair in London - how beautifully will her style complement the bright open spaces and soaring beams of the barn?

*The end of this part of the story is that I actually got an email from Becky and Suzanne two weeks ago, saying they'd gotten a request for August 24 and did Jon and I still want them to hold the date for us?  I replied, saying that I'd found another florist since I hadn't heard from them after their holiday, and they responded with a lovely apology and best wishes all around.