Monday 20 October 2014

Genevieve and Tim's wedding in St Peters, Limpsfield followed by Squerryes Court


We first met Genevieve with her Mum at Chiddingstone Castle's Wedding Open Day and knew straight away that this was going to be a beautiful and elegant wedding.  Genevieve wanted a classic, unfussy yet glamorous look to her special day and chose the ever stylish cream, green and ivory as her colour scheme.  Although Genevieve didn't want anything too big or flashy, we chose the blowsy and gorgeous hydrangeas as part of the floral theme and teamed them with roses, gypsophilia, lisianthus, bouvardia, freesias and foliage including herbs.


Genevieve wore a beautiful gown with a understated yet glamorous detailing, like the fabulous fabric rose corsage on the hip (as you can see from the photos I've "stolen" from Facebook).  We decided her bouquet needed to be soft and textured yet neat and we used hydrangeas as the base flower with Vendella and White Naomi roses along with gypsophilia, rosemary and ruscus. 



For Genevieve's adult bridesmaids, we decided on simple hand-tied bouquets of White Naomi ross interspersed with gypsophilia and rosemary sprigs.  We then used the gypsophilia on its own for the Junior Bridesmaid and scaled it down further for her Flower Girl.  So elegant  yet pretty. 




The boys followed suit with their flowers with Tim wearing a rose with gypsophilia and rosemary and the adult groomsmen wearing spray roses, gypsophilia and rosemary.  We then scaled down the buttonholes to a single spray rose and gypsophilia for the junior Usher and finally provided just tiny gypsophilia and rosemary buttonholes for the young Page Boys.






At St Peters Church we kept to the idea of simple and elegant for pew ends and used single roses attached with ivory ribbon.  We alse added a large pedestal arrangement to the pillar facing guests as they enter the church.  To welcome them to St Peters, we dressed the lych gate with three individual arrangements on each of the stanchions (as the gateway is rather an assymetric triple gateway).






At Squerryes Court, Genevieve and Tim had dressed the marquee the day before with some lovely welcoming sofas, cushions, fleece blankets and even personalised bowls of M&M's!  They also had the best slogan sign re alcohol (see below!)










It was a lovely sized marquee and we agreed with Genevieve that it would be nice to provide a mix of candelabra arrangements and rosebowls to ensure it didn't look too uniform.  We therefore used five tall candelabras with ivy trails and a compact arrangement at the top full of flowers to match the rest of the wedding.  We then used six rosebowls on other tables with flowers to match, and smart candles to bring a touch of glow to the evening. 








For the unusually shaped top table, we used a front of table arrangement to fill the unseated section and then added small candelabras at either end in the middle, and added vases along the mid section ready for the girls' bouquets.  We finished their napkins with hydrangeas as a small finishing touch.







All the individual touches, the g&t references (which made me so thirsty when setting up!) and the general style of the marquee all added up to a beautiful wedding.  We know from Genevieve's Mum that she didn't stop smiling from the second she got up until the end of the day (as you can see from my snatched photos from facebook) and I am so pleased they had the day they both wanted.  We've even used a before and after clip from the wedding for our new video as it looked so elegant, so thanks to Genevieve for providing inspiration for others!


Monday 13 October 2014

Sam and Lee's vibrant and contemporary Cooling Castle Barn wedding



On a dull and rainy day like today, I thought we could all do with an injection of colour, so what better than Sam and Lee's gorgeous and vibrant Cooling Castle Barn wedding. 

Right from the start Sam and Lee they wanted multi-coloured and bright flowers for their wedding and were so very easy to work.  Having shown them lots of options of exotic and contemporary flowers, they left it up to me to choose whatever I thought worked, as long as I didn't use Celosia which Sam really disliked (well they do look a bit like furry brains!).  They also decided to incorporate buttons (a particulr fave of mine), so I was always going to be biased!  I chose Alpinias, various orchids, anthuriums, proteas, greentrick, anigozanthus, germinis and exotic foliage such as palms, aspidistra leaves and grasses.  What a fab combination.


Sam fell in love with a more contemporary European style shower bouquet and once again left it largely to me to design on the day.  We used the full range of colours and flowers, and I attached trails of buttons to the handle...what a statement bouquet!



Sam's bridesmaids wore purple, so we kept the purple to the centre and used a selection of flowers in other colours in the hand-tied bouquets.  We wrapped each in a different colour ribbon and overlaid both with narrower purple ribbon with additional hanging trails of buttons.  For the junior bridesmaid, we provided a smaller version of the elder bridesmaids' bouquets and wrapped the stems in purple with a different coloured ribbon over the top.  The Flower Girls carried little germini "wands" with sparkles and buttons added with additional trailing buttons.





The boys buttonholes were combinations of different coloured germinis and greentrick with light foliage whilst the younger boys just had the germinis and foliage. Corsages were provided for the Mums and included smaller Dendrobrium orchids and we also provided colourful front-facing thank you bouquets for them.












For the ceremony, we dressed the bottom of the staircase with a contemporary trailing arrangement to herald Sam's arrival and then added a full and fabulous arrangement to the celebrant table for the signing of the register.



For the reception, we used tall martini vases each filled with a different coloured sisal and with a central arrangement using all the colours and flowers used elsewhere.  We placed each on a large mirror and added multi-coloured tealights in votives around the base along with random selections of buttons sprinkled on the mirror to finish the look.

















For the top table, we used a long, low, full and fabulous arrangement of all the flowers in the centre of the long table, and then added clusters of multi-coloured tealights in glass votives and sprinkles of buttons along the length of the table.  We also added purple vanda orchids to the napkin ties as a final finishing touch.











To finish the look, we added fairy lights to the four corner beams, and also to the Plough behind the top table.  It was a true "wow" factor wedding and the colours looked gorgeous against the wood.  Sam and Lee are such a lovely couple, and soooooo easy to please.  I know they had a fantastic day and when their photographer has finished working through the over 2000 shots he took!!!, I'll try to add one of the bridal party themselves.  In the meantime, I hope this glorious colour has brightened up a dreary day!