Jess and Nick's wedding at Cooling Castle Barn

Another of our weddings this last weekend was Jessica and Nick's wedding at Cooling Castle Barn. Initially Jess hadn't really thought about having flowers on the tables and was hoping to do something with candles. However given some of the restrictions at Cooling regarding candles (understandable given the amount of wood), Jess had a re-think and we gave her some ideas to fit her overall style.

Jess is pretty relaxed and contemporary and wanted this reflected in her wedding, whilst keeping it stylish and pretty. Her palette was pale pink, blush, champagne and we introduced the black tie leaves (rolled, folded and shaped in various ways) to keep it fresh and a little bit different. We also arranged the chair covers and bows for the wedding and decided to keep it ivory rather than adding more pink, which kept the overall look romantic and pretty.

For the bouquets, we decided that the best shape to match the empire line, soft dresses was an overarm style that would look striking, yet show off the dresses to their best effect. We used pale pink calla lilies and roses along with champagne coloured roses along with variegated china grasses and the striking black tie leaves for Jess' bouquet and kept the bridesmaids' bouquets to the champagne Vendella rose with the black tie leaves. For the flower girls, we kept it really simple and provided single Vendella "wands" surrounded with the china grass. The overall effect was very striking, simple and just that little bit different. We hope you love it as much as we did.

Claire and Gareth's wedding at The Russell Hotel

Claire and Gareth's wedding was on Saturday and we were so pleased to finally get rid of the boxes of very tempting Haribo that had been sat in the shop for several weeks! Claire and Gareth's best man was their son Lewis, who wrote his own fabulous speech and had a penchant for Haribo, hence the table centres vases. They were decanted into smaller dishes for the evening and there weren't many left the following day!

It was lovely to bring a touch of blue into the wedding and yet keep the flowers simple and elegant. We use large headed Maroussia roses with a slight scent and a touch of extra sparkle for Claire's bouquet. We think the bouquet was particularly elegant and suited Claire down to the ground.

Fabiola and Daniel's wedding at Eastwell Manor Hotel

We certainly had a day for beautiful exotic brides yesterday with another of our weddings being that of Fabiola and Daniel. As a former Brazilian beauty queen, there was never going to be any doubt about how stunning Fabiola would look and even before make-up and her stunning dress, Fabiola was looking show-stoppingly gorgeous. When Daniel sang to her later in the day (a huge surprise and one which sounded great in rehearsals), I'm sure there wouldn't have been a dry eye in the house.

From our first meeting, Fabiola had a clear idea of the style of wedding she wanted, and it was perfectly suited to Eastwell Manor. Her choice of vibrant yellow and exotic orchids brought a touch of Brazil and a whole heap of sunshine to Kent, and we knew it would look fabulous. However, with the English weather being predictably unpredictable, Daniel and Fabiola had opted to cover the Maids Garden with a marquee to ensure their guests were always going to be comfortable no matter the weather. With this in mind, dressing the bridge was a key concern for Fabiola as it would be the first sight for her guests and the first sight of her....the only concern left after the weather was for the bridesmaids managing the slatted bridge in high heels....something which was rectified immediately by Eastwell Manor with a very stylish ivory carpet.

Fabiola's bouquet was designed for colour and glamour, but to enhance and show off her dress, and hence we kept it streamlined and slim, and I hope you agree that it worked beautifully and would have enhanced all her photos.

As for the Rose Garden room, we went for height, elegance and an immediate impact. We again used the idea of a single stem within the vase for something to look at when seated and added vibrant rose petals to the tables for that final splash of yellow. The combination of orchids, lilies and roses worked very well in the tablecentre tops, and the dramatic palms gave us width whilst letting light through. As the sun shone through the windows, we think the vibrant yellow worked particularly well.

Kathia and James' wedding at Salomons

One of our weddings yesterday was for the very beautiful Kathia and lovely James. From the first time we met the couple, we knew that they were perfectly suited and that their wedding would be a wonderful day. Kathia is stunningly pretty (although very unaware of it) and is so gentle and calming to be around....planning her wedding flowers was great fun and whilst Kathia had a clear idea of the look she wanted, she was very easy to please.

Kathia and James were planning a very pretty rose centred wedding in shades of pale pink with a touch of burgundy to tie in with her bridesmaids' dresses. She wanted her bouquet to be textured and not too uniform in shape, and whilst we heavily featured roses, we introduced a burgundy calla lily to bring in the accent colour. For the bridesmaids, we used just pale pink and ivory roses and introduced different sized heads to give the additional texture.

For the most important part of the day (the ceremony), we designed simple candlesticks to frame Kathia and James taking their vows and used the tops of two of the table centres on perspex bases for the celebrant table, giving a different look and yet allowing the flowers to be used in a number of different ways.

For the tables, Kathia and James chose circular tables for everyone including themselves, and we decided to distinguish the top table by adding in a few extra flowers into the arrangement, and adding spray rose heads onto the mirror and through the napkins. The Sweet Avalanche rose floating halfway up the vase gave guests something to look at when they had been seated for the wedding breakfast whilst letting them talk freely across the tables.

More recent weddings

Over the past week, we have managed quite a large number of weddings, and thought we would include some photos to show you the range of styles and colours we have produced at venues such as Salomons, Tudor Park and The Village Hotel. Maybe there is a style that fits with your existing plans or will provide some ideas for the future.

Donna and Phil's wedding at Combe Bank School

One of our weddings last week was at one of our favourite venues....Combe Bank School near Westerham. It is a lovely large venue with multiple rooms for use and only one wedding booked for a day. The chapel is particularly lovely and as you can see from the photos, is light and airy. Donna and Phil's theme was burgundy and ivory and they wanted something elegant, simple yet striking and we think the combination of orchids and roses gave them the look they were after.
Rather than a traditional fireplace arrangement for the Adam Room, we decided to go for a slightly more contemporary style of arrangement, using a range of different clear glass vases, each with only one variety of flower in a single vase. We think it worked really well and proved more of a talking point than a more traditional arrangement.

For the wedding breakfast, we also decided not to have a trailing tablecentre, but to provide smaller versions of the main tablecentres to frame the bride and groom, and then have additional full size arrangements at each end of the top table. The overall look and height of the room worked particularly well in the dining room at Combe Bank as the ceiling is high.
For the bouquets, we used the scented Maroussia rose and just added touches of the burgundy hypericum to give the additional colour along with the orchids for the bridal bouquet. The finished look was consistent and striking without being over fussy and we think worked particularly well with the venue dressing at Combe Bank.

We will be doing a lot more work with Combe Bank in the future, so check back for more photos.

Distinctly Floral Is Moving

As our regular customers are aware, we have decided to close the shop in King Street in Maidstone and move to our purpose built workshop and studio in Hadlow. We will close the Maidstone shop on 5th September 2009, although we will still be working intermittently in the King Street shop on many of our weddings for a short time afterwards. Our new number will be 01732 850723 although it may be diverted back to Maidstone in the early days.

The business will continue to run as it is at present with our existing florists and orders can still be made over the phone, or via our online shop and we will also be happy to welcome customers to our studio at pre-arranged times. At our new purpose built studio, we will have a separate consultation room as at present, where we will conduct wedding, event and sympathy consultations and will also hold open evenings as per previous years.

By moving out of a High Street position, we will be significantly reducing our costs and hence can remain extremely competitive for our customers. We are also so very busy with wedding and event work, we believe our new working environment will help us manage even more weddings in the future....watch this space for more news on growth in this area.

Anastasia and Richard's Vintage Tea Party Wedding at Hilltop Hotel

Last week brought a completely different wedding for us...so much so that we closed the shop on a Saturday to allow us to manage it. It really grabbed our attention and we were so pleased to be involved. Anastasia and Richard wanted a true vintage tea party feel to their wedding and had decided to go for the "nothing matches but everything goes" feel for the wedding and brought in Nicola and team from the http://www.thevintageteaparty.co.uk/ to provide the most exquisite tea-cups, saucers, plates, glassware, cake plates and fabulous vintage fabric bunting. Designing the floral theme and deciding on which flowers to use was quite simple as Anastasia loves blowsy English, soft and romantic flowers and was happy to leave all the decisions to us. As a florist it is so refreshing to be able to use our full creativity and have the scope to create whatever we feel works on the day.

The flowers we chose included very faded hydrangeas, the fabulous and not often available Carousel Illusion rose, other roses including Belle, Amnesia, Hypnose, Sweet Avalanche etc along with freesias, sweet peas, peonies, chelone, ammi majus, lisianthus and rosemary, mint, eucalyptus and other foliages. You can only start to imagine how beautiful the rooms smelt when we had finished.

The Hilltop Hotel (http://www.hilltophotel.co.uk/) was a new one for us, and is lovely....it's very intimate, quirky, and is an unusual mix of contemporary and more traditional styling and has a wonderful gazebo and garden where Anastasia and Richard exchanged vows. Darren and the team at the hotel couldn't have been more welcoming and accommodating and worked their socks off getting everything ready in a short space of time. We had a great time working with them, and filling nooks and crannies full of flowers.

We are biased but we LOVE Anastasia's bouquet and she did text to say she loved it as much as her new husband.....we have to hope that she was joking for Richard's sake!! The bouquet was extremely large, but fulfilled the big, blowsy, textured and romantic brief and had loads of added scent. It was a difficult one for us to let go of, but we're so pleased Anastasia loved it.
We've attached a lot of our photos for you to get an idea of how we enhanced this gorgeous theme with our flowers, but I'm sure there will be more to post in the future from Laura and Jody at http://www.lollypopphotography.co.uk/ . I've seen some of the photos they've taken on the back of the camera, and I just know they're going to be great (as ever!). The first photos Anastasia has forwarded from friends' facebooks look fab and prove what a glamorous wedding it was. Anastasia is truly glamorous and a natural English rose anyway, so with all her preparations for the wedding, she looked stunning. We hope that you like the overall wedding, and like the overall vintage, romantic theme. We certainly do, and may even be planning our own event around this theme!!!