(What it takes to have Fabulous Wedding Flowers!
- Part Three)
Do you want to decorate your reception venue with fabulous flower designs to create a great atmosphere and wow your wedding guests? Most brides and grooms I meet certainly do, but they don’t always know quite where to start..........
I’m a florist specialising in providing floral designs for weddings and special occasions, and in earlier BLOGS I have given some tips on choosing flowers for the wedding party, as well as flower displays to decorate the church or other ceremony venue.
This time I will take a look at reception flowers........
All designs featured in my blogs have been created by Helen Jane Floristry
THE RECEPTION VENUE
There are lots of ways you might consider adding flowers to your reception room to create atmosphere and enhance your wedding theme. Here are a few of them:
Table centres
First a note about your table designs – make sure they are either low enough for guests to see over the top of them, or tall enough that the flowers sit above the eye line of seated guests. There is nothing worse for your guests than having to look around large table centres to speak to other guests and the chances are that your expensive flowers will end up getting moved out of the way.........or worse!
A lovely low table centre made up in flowers to match the bride’s cream and old gold colour scheme
Another table centre from the same wedding, made to decorate the centre of the long dining table
Tables decorated with low compact designs in the couple’s blue colour theme – this style of design is also easy to give away as a gift at the end of the wedding as they are made without containers
Eclectic mixes of vases and other pretty containers filled with a few flowers create a real vintage feel for your guest tables, and easy for your friends and family to join in with collecting and filling them
Gold fish bowls filled with calla lilies or tulips and grasses look very stylish and are a relatively inexpensive way to dress your tables – or a few choice blooms can be floated inside the bowls
Or tall candelabra arrangements create great impact in a high space, but sit high enough above the tables so that guests do not have a restricted view
Top tables
Don’t forget that the bride and groom will continue to be photographed during the wedding breakfast and speeches, so it is good to have a flower design across the front of the top table. Or you might want to dress the table with a foliage or material swag (perhaps matching the chair sashes) and place tall flower displays near the top table instead.
The lovely traditional top table arrangement in this photo matches the smaller blue and cream compact table arrangements
The more compact style of this top table arrangement uses the same dusky colours as the other table centres to create a lovely vintage feel
Flower displays
Don’t keep your larger flower displays and pedestal arrangements just for the church or ceremony venue, where they will be on show for a relatively short time. To give value your flowers need to be on show for as much of the day as possible. There is no reason that larger arrangements cannot be made in such a way that they can be moved between venues – ask your florist how this can be done........
The flower tree in the foreground (one of a pair) started off framing the entrance to the church aisle...... was then moved to the gardens of the bride’s home to form a floral feature during the drinks reception..........and finally took up its place at the side of the top table
This style of arrangement can be used in place of a traditional pedestal design during the marriage ceremony, or placed at ground level in front of the altar – it can then be moved to a prominent place at your reception venue, either standing on the same plinth, or placed on a side table. There are always offers of help from wedding guests, so just allocate the task of moving the arrangements to someone you can trust!
These two tall contemporary arrangements started off framing the church doorway, which meant they featured in lots of the photos – they were then moved to create a stunning entrance to the reception marquee
Cakes and other yummy things!
Anything can benefit from a few flowers......
Reception rooms come in all shapes and sizes and interior decor, and this may influence your choice of flower designs as well as other decorations. I will show what I mean by looking at a couple of typical venues:
Marquee reception
The good thing about holding your reception in a marquee is that they normally have white/ ivory linings and so the choice of colour for your theme will be entirely down to you. However, the height of a marquee and the plainness of the interior mean that you need to think about how to make an impact with your flower designs. There are lots of different styles that will suit this sort of setting though........
In this very tall marquee the bride has chosen to place tall candelabra arrangements on half of the guest tables to give impact, and the vintage colours have been mirrored in collections of lower table arrangements as well as the table dressings and chair sashes
By way of contrast, this couple decided on contemporary style arrangements using burnt orange calla lilies with stylish foliage to decorate their tables – equally striking and again the height of the arrangements gave the plain interior of the marquee the wow factor it needed
Hotel reception room
If your reception is being held in a hotel venue you will want to think about how your colours will work with the interior decor of the room. Luckily many hotels these days opt for a fairly neutral colour scheme which will make things easier, but do look out for strongly patterned wall papers and carpets, which can make your flowers lose their impact, and take into consideration the colours of walls and table coverings so that you don’t end up with a colour clash. It is usually better to go for contrasting colours if you want your flowers to stand out and paler colours can look good against strongly coloured backgrounds.
Simple white flowers look stunning in this historic dining room and stand out despite the relatively dark interior – they also do not clash with the ornate wall coverings
Simple white walls make for an easier choice, but it can be good to work with the features of the room, such as this living foliage arch
Lots of food for thought – happy planning...........
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