Natasha and Nick's wedding at English Martyrs Church, Strood followed by Cooling Castle Barn

Following the hot colour of this year (blue), Natasha and Nick wanted a very natural, warm and wintery Midwinter's Night feeling to their wedding, using lots of subtle lighting.  Natasha had chosen a dark navy dress for her bridesmaids, and wanted the blue and white to come through in the flowers, without being too bright blue.  She also wanted the natural, more rustic feeling to her wedding.  They had sourced lantern trees for the tablecentres and hence we started from these in terms of designing all the flowers to be used.  We decided on lilies, honeymoon tulips, roses, eryngium, willow, pussy willow, eucalyptus and highly scented paperwhites, all with lots of unruly ivy.  We also added agapanthus to the arrangements for additional blue colouring.

Natasha's dress was a gorgeous gown with a very full, yet not too detailed skirt, hence we decided on a full but natural and slightly messy shower bouquet of lilies, tulips, roses, eryngium and broom along with ivy, pussy willow and willow.  Although we don't yet have a photo, the bouquet looked stunning against Natasha's dress, allowing her to show off her fabulous figure and tiny waist and to showcase the detailing on the top of the dress.

For her bridesmaids, we designed hand-tied bouquets of honeymoon tulips and eryngium thistle with ivy.  We wrapped the stems in ivory ribbon but added a navy blue bow at the top to bring in the main colour.  For the flower girl, we designed a slightly smaller version of the elder bridesmaids' bouquets.

Nick wore a rose, eryngium and ivy buttonhole whilst the remainder of the boys wore honeymoon tulip and eryngium buttonholes to tie in with the bridesmaids.  Mums had corsages of spray roses and eryngium.  We also provided hand-tied bouquets for the Mums as thank-yous.

For the striking church, we designed a front of altar arrangement and two pedestals to frame Natasha and Nick  taking their vows.  We also added floral balls to the front pews and bows with roses to the other pew ends making a beautiful aisle for Natasha to enter.  We thought it all looked very lovely, and having the blue carpet and chairs was an added bonus for the colour scheme.

For the reception at Cooling Castle, we used the lantern trees Natasha and Nick had provided for the tablecentres.  Half of the tables had lanterns with blue flamed tealights inside and half had white flamed tealights. For the lanterns with blue lights, we decorated them with all white arrangements and for the white flamed lanterns, we designed blue arrangements.  We designed the bottom half of the arrangements in hidden dishes to allow them to be taken away by guests and added a further arrangement to the top of the trees to allow an all around view for guests.

For the circular top table, we designed a very loose and natural front of table arrangement and then added a lantern tree with blue and white floral arrangements.  We then added roses to the chair bows and sprinkled paperwhite heads amongst the table crystals.

For each of the vertical beams, we twisted an ivy garland around entwined with fairy lights.  We left various sprigs of ivy loosely attached to give a slightly more natural look.

All in all, it was a lovely wedding and looked very different and quite natural.  Natasha looked truly stunning and I know they all had a wonderful day.  We loved the lantern trees and the choice of flowers and hope that you all like them too.

New Distinctly Floral Website

Photo courtesy of www.lollypopphoto.com

For those of you who follow the blog and are thinking that we are slacking these days....not many entries, not many photos etc....all the time is going into the new website.

We've decided that our old site has had it's day and needs to be retired for something a little more "us". So we've been busy designing a new website that we think is looking great and allows us to show more portfolios, photos and even incorporate a new Wedding of the Month feature, which we will update to showcase different styles, colours and venues.  But don't worry, we will also continue to blog.

We hope you'll like our new style...much more exciting than the old, with the only downside being that the mobile and ipad version will be very static as the new site has lots of flash images and moving galleries which Apple don't support.  Hope that doesn't put off those of you who are iphone and ipad users.

Anyway, in the meantime, we've included a few images that are already included on the website and hope you like the full version when it appears.  Watch this space....

Clara and Paul's wedding at Cooling Castle Barn

Clara and Paul's wedding was quite a different one for us as it didn't involve many different flowers!  Clara and Paul wanted a sophisticated, glamorous look and had already decided upon ostrich feather tablecentres before we met.  The colour scheme was a dramatic and striking black and ivory with hints of red to match Clara's gorgeous dress.

All the flowers we used were large headed ivory roses along with black bear grass and different types of feathers.  For Clara's bouquet, we designed a domed, hand-tied bouquet of roses with sprigs of black bear grass, black narrow feathers and diamante sprigs.  We wrapped the stems in ivory and finished it with a black bow at the top to contrast against her lovely red gown.

For the seven bridesmaids, we designed smaller hand-tied bouquets of large headed ivory roses along with sprigs of black bear grass and narrow feathers.  We wrapped the stems in ivory ribbon and finished each with a deep red bow at the top to bring in Clara's dress colour.

For the four flower girls, we provided ivory rose "wands" surrounded in black fluffy feathers and spriggy diamantes and crystals.  We wrapped the stems in ivory ribbon and added black ribbon over the top.

For the buttonholes, we followed the theme for the girls and provided ivory rose buttonholes with black bear grass and narrow feathers.  We added a black diamante sprig to Paul's buttonhole to make it a little different.

For the ceremony, we provided a long and low arrangement of feathers, roses, black tie leaves, black bear grass and leucadendron safari sunset to add a touch of red.  This arrangement was going to be moved the centre of the top table over the black organza swagging after the ceremony.

For the reception, we used tall trumpet vases for each of the guest tables filled with black gel crystals with added red glitter.  We then added fairy lights down the stem of each and designed a top of black and white ostrich feathers for a truly glamorous look.  We offered to help Clara and Paul with the rest of the venue dressing and ended up doing the chair covers and bows for them and as we had spare chair sashes, we decided to add runners to each of the tables on which we placed mirror plates under each of the tablecentres.  We also added large ivory roses to the top table sashes.

Finally, we provided thank-you bouquets for the Mums in reds, russets and golds.

True to form we had to have a peek at the cake as well, despite once again having nothing whatsoever to do with us and it looked lovely....very stylish indeed.

Whilst we're not professionals when it comes to chair covers and sashes, we think the final look at Cooling was wonderful, and judging by Clara's wet eyes when she saw it for the first time, I think she loved it too (we're reliably informed they were happy tears!).  We know Paul did so our job was done.  We know they will have had the most wonderful day and can't wait to see the professional photos soon.  Clara and Paul deserve the most perfect wedding day, and we were so glad to have helped in some way for them.