Grace and Jon's elegant wedding at Chilston Park Hotel

 

We met Grace through a recommendation from her fiance's sister Kate, who we have worked with many times in the past.  She was planning a lovely elegant wedding with a Parisian colour scheme of champagne and black.  Her whole wedding party were going to look amazing...more like a magazine shoot than a real wedding!  Grace herself is tall, slim and beautiful and the rest of the bridal party followed suit...and nice as well!

Grace and Jon took a leap of faith in my ideas as they'd not seen floral giftboxes as tablcentres at any other weddings, and I know subsequently that at least one of the bridesmaids wasn't sure about what they'd look like until they saw them...thankfully we managed to change her mind!  With bridesmaids in champagne / mink (oddly called Topaz by the dress designer) with black sashes, and the Best Woman Kate in black with a champagne / mink sash, we kept the flowers pretty neutral using hydrangeas, roses (White Naomi, Vendella, Quicksand and Majolika Spray Rose), sweet peas and freesias and added crystals and sparkles where necessary.

Grace carried a hand-tied bouquet of white hydrangeas interspersed with roses, sweet peas and freesias with additional sparkles and delicate skeleton leaves at the edge.  Bridesmaids carried hydrangea bouquets with clear and black crystals and a few freesias and sweet peas.  Buttonholes were elegant roses and corsages were designed to work with the wedding on either wrist or lapel and to incorporate details to match the individual outfits.

Venue flowers were large black gift-boxes with champagne / mink ribbons around and finished with a diamante brooch.  Each was packed with flowers to match the wedding theme.  We placed them on the celebrant table (mini versions), top table (mini versions), guest tables and coffee tables.  We also added glass cubes filled with hydrangeas on the top table and the mantelpiece, each dressed with black and champagne ribbons.  We also added fluted votives and tealights to each table and finished the runners on the top table with hydrangea florets.  We also added roses to the top table place settings as a little extra detail.

Finishing touches included crystal globe candleholders on the mantelpiece and dressing Grace and Jon's bushel box for cards with a personalised "cards" sign to match their colours and theme, finished with diamante brooches.  We also added vintage crocheted runners to finish the look and dressed the cake with a topper and additional rose at the base.  In the large oaktree outside the orangery we hung lanterns with tealights on alternate black and champagne ribbon.  The finishing touches for a classy and elegant wedding.  We know the photos will have looked truly amazing and we also know they had a wonderful day.  Hope you like the photos and the slightly more unusual tablecentres.  We know we do!

The Wedding Experience at the Kent Showground, Detling

Amidst awful rain and subsequent mud at the Kent Showground (more Glastonbury than Wedding Fair), we exhibited at the Wedding Experience yesterday.  We decided that rather than show a contemporary and a vintage side, we'd base all our stand on a more rustic and natural style featuring wood and fruit.  We also decided that as we have so many lovely pink, lilac, purple and ivory weddings on the website, Facebook and blog, that we'd be inspired by the time of year and focus on orange, lemon, lime, russet etc.  We loved the final look and were pleased with the lovely comments we received.   So here's a summary of what we did.

Firstly to the bouquets...we used wood curls as the basis of our teardrop bouquet and a wood wreath collar with internal pinecones for our protea bouquet.  Wood was also curled around the bridal and bridesmaids' hand-tied bouquets we designed.  We then decided to show a more "just picked" graduated bridal hand-tied bouquet, once again with pinecones included.  We then used parrot tulips with an ivy and amaranthus collar for another hand-tied bouquet.  Finally we created a flower girl basket using autumnal leaves and filled it with flowers.

Given it is nearly halloween, we carved hearts from a pumpkin and added a top level arrangement as an alternative tablecentre.  We also showed an umbrella vase filled with kumquats and with a top level arrangement which is an ideal way of providing some height without using a tall vase.  Following on with the fruit, we filled a martini vase with lemon and orange slices and added a striking arrangement to the top...this would be a real talking point on a table.  We then used our candelabras in two different ways, one with a full top level floral arrangement and one with a base level arrangement and some squash added to the candle cups and physalis hanging from the arms (this was my fave).

Moving onto the more rustic, we designed a selection of jugs and containers on a wood block for a lower level table centre and a rustic fruit bowl style of arrangement.  We then brought along a "tree" filled with apples at the base and a selection of other smaller rustic arrangements which would be a fabulous table centre as it is so open at the top.  It would also be a lovely Wishing Tree and hence we attached some tags along with the leaves and orchids that we dangled from the branches.

Our stack of vintage suitcases for cards, our crates and various fruit and squashes hollowed out for tealights completed the stand.  Hope you like it!