wedding photos

The sun shone, the flower arch stayed in place and everyone looked like they were having a wonderful time.

I really enjoyed arranging the flowers for this wedding - the venues were great, the caterers (Nairns) provided very classy table settings and were helpful and professional, and the families were open to suggestions.

That said - I now know why I only do one wedding a month, I don't tink I have ever worked as hard in my life.
These are a few photos of the flowers. Not brilliant shots I'm afraid but the photos are always the last thing to be done and tend to be taken in a rush.

First is a pew end bunch with sweet peas, apple mint and hetty's pin cushion.

Second is the pillars in Balfron High School draped in ivy with flowers in coloured glass bottles strung amongst them.

Thirds is the top table with glass cubes of flowers and glass vials wired along the front (I was very pleased with the way this worked - simple and pretty in the sunshine)

Forth is cones of petal confetti - purple sweet pea and delphinium petals and pink roses. This looked gorgeous as all the children took a cone and threw them over the bride and groom as they came out the church. Much much prettier than tissue paper.

Now I am away to do the much, much less fun job of clearing everything away.

I now get a lot of queries about eco-weddings from all over the country and am considering adding a bit to the website about how to do simple things to cut down the carbon footprint of wedding flowers. What do you think?

As requested .

Sweet peas on the vine and waiting for the wedding.

Back

Well its back to work after a few days spent beach combing on Kingsbarns Beach near to St Andrews. We borrowed a cottage from a friend which was ten minutes walk from the beach - these poppies and ragwort growing out of the top of a wall were one of the things we passed on the way.

Now I am busy working on the flowers for a wedding at the weekend - making moss garlands to put over the arch into the church, taping grids on glass vases and painting barrels to plant up with daisies.

But first I think that I shall make myself a cup of coffee and go and delight in the sight of thousands of blooming sweet peas before they all get cut tomorrow.

Space and simplicity

I have just finished reading Margaret Forster's book Keeping the world away - a novel about the effect that Gwen John's painting of the corner of an attic bedroom has on the women who hang it on their walls.

It is, in part, a study of the yearning for simplicity and control symbolised by the spare, composed painting.

I enjoyed the book very much and was thinking of it today while I drove though the sublime landscape of deep cleft valleys and deep reflective lochs that is between here and Loch Fyne.

It is a beautiful, beautiful drive, I was on my own in the car and it is quite the most relaxing thing I have done this week. I was going up to The Tree Shop, run by the Ardkinglas tree nursery to pick up some beautiful white birch trees - Betula utilis "Jacquemontii snowqueen" which I am intending to use to make a small glade at this wedding in ten days time. The idea is that it will make the large space a bit more intimate and give a sense of enclosure for the guests who want to sit down after the meal away from the music.

At the moment the state of the house is getting to me. It is completely my own fault so I can't really complain - but I do. It isn't really a case of it not being clean - it is just that we have far too much stuff in a house with no storage and I try to run a business at the same time. Add into this mix we bought kitchen furniture before we have enlarged the kitchen and that we are all messy, messy creatures who can't seem to pick up anything off our seemingly magnetic floors.

The result is a feeling of camping in amidst piles of toppling stuff - it is driving me mad and I now want to move out into Gwen John's little attic with only a chair, a desk and a vase of primroses.

Sturdy but not so you would know.

I really dislike the waste that goes into event flowers - the discarded flowers, seen for only 20 minutes - so I am always keen to transport flowers from church to reception or to refashion church flowers as bouquets to be presented later in the day. It makes financial sense too, a flower budget can be stretched that bit further and a more flowery day had overall.

I am working on flowers for a wedding at the moment where the flowers on the church windowsills will transfer to become table centres at the reception. It will work well as it is a large generous wedding and this way the windowsills can be more lavishly decorated - with 5 cube vases full of flowers put together on each- than they would be if the flowers were simply for the service.

The trick is to make the arrangements sturdy enough to survive being packed up quickly as we race from church to reception while the photographs are taken. The extra trick is making them look light and airy and not at all sturdy.

So today I have been playing around with shapes and blooms - a large part of the styling of the wedding is that everything is in clear glass vases so I won't use oasis which would be the obvious solution. I think I shall use a tape grip and a mix of poppy seedheads, thistles and drumstick alliums surrounded by a fluff of parsley flowers as in the photo above.

1707 and all that . . .

Yesterday was my birthday and the chance to do some party flowers for one of my longest standing customers - one of the customers who has been taking a couple of bunches from me weekly since 2002 when I didn't even have somewhere proper to grow them.

It was her wedding anniversary and an excuse to hold a themed party. The theme was 1707 - this year sees the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union of Scotland and England and also of the birth of Linnaeus the Swedish scientist who came up with the system we still use today to categorise plants and animals - so it had layers of Swedish style (she is Swedish), historicism and flowers.

I was asked to provide small arrangements for the long trestle tables and the buffet.

I love working to a brief like this. One of the great advantages of having so many antique dealers in the family is that I have the chance to pick up vases etc. and squirrel them away for the right occasion. About 6 months ago I bought some french pewter goblets and plates, thinking that they would be wonderful for weddings - church candles grouped on the plates, flowers arranged in the goblets.

So when I got a 1707 theme I knew exactly what I wanted to do - loose meadow type flowers - all introduced pre 1707, many native to Scotland and Sweden. I also wanted to make it yellow, blue and white, alluding to the Scottish and Swedish flags. The table centres are pictured above - the goblets are taped in a fine grid of waterproof tape and then hellebores, alliums, pig nuts, columbines and buttercups are arranged as upright as possible. When I delivered them yesterday I was told they looked "just like a Swedish meadow".

I also made a rococo arrangement of grapes, sweet rocket and wisteria (wisteria was actually another 100 years in arriving but visually it worked so well I cheated) and a candlestick draped in grapes and golden hop.

The party had a lot of effort put into the detailing - I am sure it was a fantastic night.

Family weddings

Yesterday was a family day - we headed over to my parents in East Lothian for a day of catching up and bracing walks along Gullane beach.

We also fitted in a visit to see the church and hotel where my brother Stephen and his fiancee Helen will be getting married in August.

I shall be arranging the flowers so it was a relief that they are both lovely venues - full of light and air. I always dread wedding receptions in those dead corporate type venues where the flowers have to fight against the polystyrene tiles on the roof and the rails left over from audio visual presentations.

At the moment I am trying to build up a visual portfolio of month by month ideas for weddings and events - on actual wedding days there never seems to be enough time for taking anything other than record shots.

The photo shows Zoe modelling a bridesmaid headdress, a half band of individually wired hyacinth florets, each with a couple of amber glass beads in the centre. She looked very, very pretty in it practicing to be a bridesmaid!

Name cards

When I am organising wedding tables I often find myself talking brides out of having too many flowers on the table.

There has been a fashion recently for alternating high and low arrangements on tables - a mix of low down rings and towering 4 feet high vases. The idea is that people will be able to see the flowers over the guests' heads and that they won't get in the way.

I feel that the tall arrangements - often in skinny conical vases - make the room feel quite claustrophobic, like there is something hovering around, and as they are inherently top heavy they can topple over if the table is nudged (I have seen this happen and it makes a mess).

I prefer to have small scented arrangements and to mix these with attractive place settings and candles. The photo is of one of the zinc pots that I use as a place card holder - it is really a candle-holder but here it is as a place card holder filled with buttons. It can also be filled with beads, shells, small flowers, sweeties etc. etc.

I am going to try and persuade my sister-in-law-to-be to have them filled with loveheart sweets.

As candles I like to use glass tealights - they give a lovely glow and can be ordered from Luckycats in bespoke fragrances.

Buttonholes

Last night I took a break from Christmassy things to think about buttonholes for a wedding that I am doing next month.

9 times out of 10 I am asked to provide "thistle" buttonholes which are seem as being Scottish. The thistle is Scotland's national flower, the colour goes well with kilts and it is not too "flowery" for men. Florists also love it as it is available all year, is easy to wire and as it is a dryish bract it can be wired up quite far in advance.

The thistle that is used for buttonholes is an eryngium - a sea holly - native to the mediterranean and hotter places. The Scots Thistle is onopordum, a spiky monster over 8 feet tall and not at all suitable for buttonholes or bouquets.

I always try to persuade grooms to try something a little more unusual, something linked to the bride's bouquet.

I do not always succeed.

Here I was playing about with white heather - for the Scottish connection with cranberries and paperwhite narcissi, which are going to be in the Bride's bouquet. The cranberries are wired with a small vintage pearl on top and the shank would be bound in ribbon (here it is hurredly wrapped and pinned).