Winter wedding

This morning I have been working on a prototype bouquet for a December wedding. The bride wants something small, and light with berries and greenery.
A lot of brides mention weight when they come to see me about wedding flowers - they don't want to be lugging about heavy flowers and they don't want to cause concussion when they throw their bouquet.
This is perhaps the down side to tied bunches - they look beautiful and natural, they can be put into a vase to become a table decoration, but the heft of the stems can make them heavy.
One solution is to wire everything - this means that there is the fullness of the flower heads but without the weight of the stems. In the hands of a skilled florist like Shane Connelly this can look very natural but it can also look stiff and no matter what it is phemomenally expensive to do, partly because of the time spent wiring the flower heads, partly because it has to be done at the last minute as the flowers will not have any water supply and will wilt relatively quickly.
My approach to this today has been to make a spiral out of aluminium wire - starting fairly wide and narrowing down to coil around a plastic vial - this is then hidden with wired on ivy and a large VV Rouleaux shot taffetta ribbon. A small tied bunch of scented narcissi, rosemary, eucalyptus and some wired berries is then put into the vial and sealed. The bouquet looks full and airy without any weight.
I am very pleased with the result - as is usual the photos don't do the arrangement justice, partly because I never have time to faff on with arranging everything beautifully and partly because it is inside and taken with glary flash. I have practised throwing it and it is amazingly aerodynamic.