Weddings

I love doing flowers to decorate wedding venues - it is a chance to work out of the box, to move away from medium sized flowers and work with massive branches or tiny jewel like blooms. To get to know the bride and groom a bit, to bring scent and sentiment to the day, and hopefully to exceed their expectations.
I know that when wedding budgets are being squeezed flowers are often the thing to be jetisoned - replaced by something easier to fix up days in advance, easier to budget for.
Yesterday I was at a local hotel advising a friend about what she could do to soften the function rooms for a charity ball she is organising. The rooms were set up for a wedding, blue and white bunting along the top table, little Au Naturale type wooden boats on the tables, helium foil heart balloons in white and blue. Someone had obviously thought hard about the theme and had deliberately decided not to have flowers. Perhaps the quotes came in too high, perhaps someone in the wedding party is allergic to flowers, whatever the reason, it was a pity because the only thing that can soften and humanise the very corporate function rooms of most hotels is a bit of nature. The room, with all its careful theming looked dead.
It was a contrast to the last time I had been in the room. That was in May and I was there to put the finishing touches to flowers for a late Spring wedding. The bride and groom - a lovely happy unpretentious couple - wanted their flowers to look as though they had been picked from a wood or meadow. The arrangements were very simple - bluebells, sorrell, pignut in glass vases on the tables - with a more elaborate arrangement of blossom and dutch still life type tulips in the bar area. The look was natural - the budget probably about the same as the wooden boats but it brought the room to life, gently scented the whole space and delighted the couple, their friends and family.
For them, bluebells will always bring memories of their wedding day - and that is why flowers are so apt at weddings.
I am off to London for a week tomorrow so blogs may slow down!