I love sharing weddings. This wild and colourful Brixton wedding is a good one. For most of the planning, the bride and groom were Australia based so I worked with the brides mum. She had great energy, making the process extremely enjoyable.
The budget wasn’t huge (I say this with no disrespect). I’ve noticed this year couples are really keeping an eye on where they are spending for a wedding celebration. This wedding really focuses on a few key details like the rustic wild flower urns and mix and match bouquets to maximize the budget.
The urns were a key feature. I managed to source two Wedgewood shell urns for the wedding. I found one on eBay and by pure magic found a second in my local charity shop the same week. Jackpot! We live by the sea so the shells were a little nod to the area where the bride grew up.
The urns were filled with a mix of colourful and wild looking flowers. Just to reiterate, nothing I grow is wild. Everything is planned and grown to last and withstand events like weddings. When I arrange everything, I choose different styles. For this I let things look liked they had naturally tangled, which was harder to achieve than you might think. Initially, I added eycalyptus leaves but found them too dominant and light sucking. Half way through I restarted to keep them feeling light.
Flower wise, I used stocks as the anchor flowers. Stocks are such a great support flower, super pretty but not showy. Their spicy clove scent adds so much to any arrangement. Also included; sweet pea pods, strawflowers, achillea (I’ve planted loads this summer as a result of this wedding), marguerite and feverfew daisies , cornflowers and poppy seed heads. It was a great mix of textures and tones, a detail I picked up when the bride came to visit the garden.
For the bridal and bridesmaid bouquets, the bride wanted them to look freshly picked. I always make the bridal bouquet bigger than the bridesmaids. I did add some eucalyptus in to bridal bouquet, another little nod the couples roots. The groom is Australian.
You can see the final bouquets here on the photographer, Richard Galloway’s website. Don’t they look so good against the colourful dresses? I always have a little cry seeing wedding photos, I grew those flowers!!!
The couple opted for long bench style seating for the wedding breakfast. I encouraged them to used the bouquets as part of the table set up. Using smaller posy style bouquet on tables is a great way to maximise a floral budget. All my bouquets are delivered in vases so it made sense to use them.
When I set the flowers on the tables, I worked the bud vases around the bouquets, making sure everything layered together alongside the urns. The bud vases were a collected in the months leading up to the wedding. The brides mum, had been carefully collecting bud vases from charity shops. I have lots to say about working with bud vases. For this wedding the skill was balancing the proportions of the vases to the amount of flowers. I had to be really selective about what stems and what heights were used.
I like everything to sing together when set on the table. I created a mix of three different heights; tall and whispy, medium and full and low and interesting. When set together it created relaxed and gentle movement along the tables. Beautiful!
I’ve really enjoyed looking back at this wedding today. If you are looking for informal wedding flowers in Essex or London please get in touch. Small wedding budget? No worries, lets see what we can do. I’m based in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex and specialise in creating weddings using locally or British grown flowers. I love growing flowers for cosy, heart felt celebrations for relaxed couples. Contact me. You can see a selection of past weddings here.
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