When we first met Jane, she was being "led" around a wedding fair by her friends who were trying to persuade her to buy a "proper" wedding dress and to get into the whole "wedding" vibe. Jane was clear that she and Rod didn't want a very formal wedding and really just wanted a small ceremony with a party afterwards. She'd also been dissuaded by other florists from using tulips (we'll never understand why!). Luckily some things change...
...Jane chose a stunning gown with a beautiful fitted bodice and dropped waist.
...Jane met with us and we reassured her tulips were wonderful and anything at all was possible with flowers.!
...Jane and Rod also ended up with more people than anticipated at the ceremony as so many people wanted to share their special moment.
We were also thrilled to see that one of our old friends Steve Smith was Jane and Rod's photographer. He's taken time out from his photography recently, but it's good to see him getting back into the swing of things. We'll hopefully show some of his photos again soon...in the meantime, you'll have to put up with ours.
To go with Jane's elegant gown, we decided to keep the flowers pretty simple with a hand-tied bouquet and used the stunning Honeymoon tulip with additional eryngium thistles to match the colour scheme and bring in a Scottish element for Rod. We also added lots of natural willow, sprigs of grass and spriggy crystals throughout. We wrapped the stems simply with ivory organza.
For Jane's bridesmaids, we provided smaller hand-tied bouquets of tulips, eryngium thistle and grasses. We added a navy blue bow to the top of the bouquet stems to match their dresses.
Rod wore a double honeymoon tulip buttonhole with sprigs of willow and grass and some eryngium thistle. The remainder of the grooms' party wore single tulip buttonholes with grass sprigs and loops. We also provided corsages for the ladies and tied them into their specific outfits with loops of ribbon.
Rod and Jane kept the ceremony at the Old Palace, Bromley really simple and hence we focussed the flowers on Westerham Golf Club. We had decided upon tall, simple lily vases placed on central mirror plates for the tables. To add a different perspective, we added tulips and eryngium thistles to test-tubes fastened onto the sides of the vases with navy blue ribbon, and then added hand-tied full, natural and pretty arrangements of peach blossom, willow, birch, Honeymoon and french tulips and eryngium. Once again we tied the arrangements with navy ribbon to match the bridesmaids' dresses. For the top table, we added flowers to the favour boxes under the navy blue ribbon.
To finish the overall theme, we designed a lower cube arrangement using all the same flowers along with some exotic leaves. We placed this on the table inside the doors with the guest book.
We know that Jane and Rod had a wonderful day and have since enjoyed a fabulous well deserved honeymoon. We were so pleased to have met Jane at the original wedding fair, and pleased that we could persuade her that florists can be flexible and work with tulips! We enjoyed every moment of working with her and meeting her family. We wish Jane and Rod a wonderful future together.
