Emma and Jamie's wedding at Cooling Castle Barn

The most nerve wracking time for us is designing flowers for friends and family... you might think it would be easier as we would have more access, but I can assure you it's not.  This was true for Emma and Jamie's wedding as Emma is the sister of Claire, one of our florists. Not only did we pile on extra pressure for ourselves, we were minus the skills of Claire who had bridesmaid duties to perform.  However, Emma and Jamie are two of the most lovely and laidback people ever...so easy to work with.  Despite Emma not really knowing an awful lot about flowers, she trusted our judgement (with back-up from Claire) and pretty much left us to it.  We knew that the look needed to be soft, pretty, glamorous and classic and knew their colour scheme was purple / aubergine, dusky pink, green and ivory.  We therefore chose roses, bouvardia, chincherinchee, sweet pea, lisianthus, hydrangea, freesia and veronica along with scented foliages including flowering mint, rosemary and eucalyptus.

For Emma's bouquet, we went for a textured mix of the chosen blooms, ensuring we graduated them down through the bouquet to avoid it being too "flat".  We simply tied the stems with ivory organza ribbon and finished the whole look with a pretty brooch.  She looked truly gorgeous and radiant as you can see in the photos kindly provided by Doug and Sheila at www.style-photography.co.uk

For Emma's two elder bridesmaids we provided a hand-tied textured bouquet using a range of the blooms used in Emma's bouquet, but using more ivory than colour to contrast against their dresses.  For Abigail and Erin, Emma's lovely daughters, we provided small spriggy posies for them to carry, although I'm not sure Erin was particularly keen on carrying hers!  Don't they all look fab...and talk a matching family smile!  Also, what a garden to be photographed in....stunning work by Emma's Mum and Dad!

For Jamie, we designed a special buttonhole in a silver boutonniere using an Amnesia rose along with chincherinchee, veronica, eucalyptus and rosemary.  The rest of the boys wore textured spriggy buttonholes of chincherinchee, veronica, rosemary and eucalyptus.  We followed this theme through for the Mums and Nans and personalised them to match individual outfits.  Thank-you bouquets were also provided for the Mums to match the theme (not photographed).

To welcome guests into the smaller barn, we added a birdcage "post box"to the coffee table, which was moved over to the gift table later in the day. 

We then added a low arrangement to the front of the celebrant table for the signing of the register.

For the main barn, Emma and Jamie wanted an immediate impact and had seen candelabras we had provided before at Cooling Castle Barn, and decided this was the look they wanted.  We therefore dressed the tables with a tall elegant silver candelabra with a full pretty softly trailing arrangement of roses, hydrangeas, spray roses, freesias, bouvardia, lisianthus, veronica, alchemilla mollis, mint, rosemary and eucalyptus.  As Cooling Castle Barn don't allow candles for somewhat obvious reasons, we used battery operated dinner candles to ensure extra flicker!


BEFORE.....

AND... AFTER!

For the top table, we decided on a slightly different table dressing.  Rather than a single trailing arrangement in the centre, or smaller candelabras at either end, we provided three more compact cylindrical arrangements which we evenly spaced out at the front of the table, and then "joined" the three sections with hydrangea florets and Smart Candles.  We finished the place settings with single purple veronicas.  We think it looked really nice.

We then finally added flowers to the cake and cake table to match the rest of the wedding.

Having been worried sick about getting everything right for Emma (and for Claire as our best informed critic!), we needn't have worried as Emma loved the bouquets and especially the scent.  And evidently we reduced both Emma and her Mum to tears as they entered the barn for the first time.  Emma said it took her breath away which is just what we had hoped for. 

Having seen all the photos from Style Photography, it clearly was a day filled with fun, love and laughter.  I don't think there is a single photo of Emma and Jamie together where they're not laughing...what a perfect wedding.  Enjoy!