Beautiful Bouquets

One of the most intimate details of a wedding design is the bridal bouquet.  I really think of it as a fashion accessory for the bride, and since brides tend take their dresses pretty seriously, I take the task of creating the perfect accompaniment to their fashion statement to heart as well.  I think about the color, size, shape and seasonality as well as how we will accessorize the handle so that it is the ultimate finishing touch.

I have had many, many favorites over the years, but I wanted to share some recent beauties that have made me {and the bride!} a happy girl!

This huge, elegant cascade included standard and garden roses, calla lilies, phaelonopsis orchids and hanging amaranths. It was a major statement piece for this bride, but she will agree that a bouquet like this is quite heavy! If you want to carry a large bouquet, you better tone those arms before your big day!

*photo by Roey Yohai Photography

This was a delicate and petite bouquet made only of calla lilies and french tulips.  The bride's gown was quite slim, so the bouquet echoed the silhouette.  We tied the handle with powder blue ribbon to coordinate with the ceremony decor accents. 

*photo by Roey Yohai Photography

Peonies are amongst the most requested wedding flowers, but their availability can be quite limited. Since this bride's one and only bouquet request for her November wedding was peonies, we crossed our fingers and toes, praying for availability at the very early point of the winter peony season.  Good thing we got lucky because this round, lush bouquet is made solely of pale pink peonies. 

*photo by Allan Zepeda Photography

This gorgeous bride had a penchant for succulents, so the design of her bouquet began with those unusual blooms.  We added a variety of peach flowers including garden roses, calla lilies and dahlias for seasonality and tied the bouquet with fabric from the bride's gown as well as a sentimental locket showcasing a photo of her beloved grandfather. 

*photo by Brian Dorsey Studios

For this spring wedding, we featured white anemones along with peach garden roses and added white lisianthus to create an airy, whimsical feel.  The handle of this bouquet was covered with fabric from the bride's mother's wedding headpiece and was tied with a piece of blue velvet ribbon for her "something blue."

*photo by Christian Oth Studio

Even with all of these bouquets in a similar color palette, it is easy to see the amazing variety of styles and personalities you can create with just a small bunch of blooms.  

:-) Lindsay

NewlyWish at The Wedding Salon

Let me start by saying that I know I have been off the blogosphere for an embarrassingly long time and I'm sorry. The summer wedding whirlwind got the best of me, but I have desperately missed writing in this forum and I have SO many great events and designs to share. So, at long last... I'm baaaack!

I am going to make a feeble attempt at getting caught up, so let's turn back the clock to the first days of Spring when I was so kindly invited, once again, to design a tabletop for my friends at NewlyWish to show off their amazing registry wares to the thousands of NYC brides who make their way through The Wedding Salon bridal event. Since NewlyWish goddess Amanda Allen and I have gotten in a bit of a design groove (see previous projects here and here), I wasn't given too much direction for this project. All I had to go on was that she wanted to feature these adorable new Ink Dish plates and she wanted to introduce brides to the idea that NewlyWish is not just for registries but also for all occasion gift giving.

The Wedding Salon events are always sold out, for brides and for vendors. So, it is the type of venue in which vendors need to stand out or they'll be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of traffic and chaos that goes on around them. Knowing this, I wanted to introduce as much sparkle and intrigue as I possibly could in just a 6'x6' area. I brought in one of my trusty mirrored tabletops and topped a mulberry linen with it to amplify the glimmer that we would create with candlelight. I also used one of the custom built acrylic towers that I debuted at Cindy and Brent's wedding to give the NewlyWish table the height it needed to stand out in the crowd.



I took a very literal approach to the gift-giving concept that Amanda wanted to introduce since the environment of a bridal show doesn't always allow for much conversation. Instead of using a traditional charger plate, I filled a paper gift box with a pave of white carnations (yup, carnations sometimes do the trick!) and used it as the base for the layered Ink Dish china on display. The coordinating box tops were adorned with lush fabric bows in perfectly matched pink.







The centerpiece was a collection of small cylinder vases filled with the first peonies of the season along with light pink roses and calla lilies. To modernize the uber-feminine pieces just a bit, I added dramatic loops of black wire dotted with pink orchids which connected the five vases in the middle of the table. I also wrapped each of the vases in soft Japanese paper that I purchased in error for another client... See, no one can tell me I'm not a little bit green!


All photos by Allan Zepeda

As always, I had a great time putting this table together and flexing my design muscles a bit. I'm looking forward to the next NewlyWish tabletop project already!

I promise I'll be back sooner rather than later. Thanks for being patient with me!