Before: Kathy's wedding

This is our very first native wedding!! Exciting!

Confession time - I have worked with natives for years in the florist shops, and whilst I know the varieties pretty well (eg: protea, banksia, waratah etc) I get completely lost on the gazillion different species each one of them has (eg: Banksia Baxterii, Banksia Menziesii, Banksia Praemorsa, Banksia Prionotes, Banksia Occidentalis etc).

So when Kathy came to me to discuss her wedding flowers, I knew it was going to be a learning curve.But Kathy kept it very simple for me. She didn't mind what was in her bouquets but she had 3 requests: that we use natives that are specifically Australian in origin, that if we were going to use colours we would stick to white and oranges, and that the bouquets have a 'just picked from the yard and whacked together' unstructured look to them. The only thing she really wanted included were paper daisies, but unfortunately they are out of season. Kathy was happy to leave it to me and didn't even mind if the bouquet was just full of different textured foliages.

So I began doing my research. I hear alot about brides who want an 'Australian' bouquet and so they pick natives. For any brides out there who are thinking the same thing, please be aware that some of our most popular natives are not Australian in origin. The popular things like your proteas and leucodendrons whilst they are grown in Australia, they actually originated in South African (gasp)!

We ended up with alot of beautiful natives to pick from. Here is what we got:

From the back (clockwise): we have some teatree, kangaroo paw, eucalyptus (silver dollar), sparsa, wooly bush, emu grass, eucalyptus crenulata, pittostrum, eucalyptus tetra nuts, ficifolia nuts, and some white paper daisies (yay I managed to get a little bit)!

I can't wait to see how these bouquets are going to look with so many different textures in them. I'll come back and post some pictures after the weekend.

Before: Alicia's wedding

Alicia is having a beautiful beach wedding this weekend - and wouldn't you know it? It has been cold and raining all week. Hopefully it will improve in time for the big day.

This cold snap has provided me with one huge problem - this wedding includes lilies. Lilies arrive as a closed bud so you have to order them in advance to give them enough time to open. With the heat and humidity we have had for the last few months, it only takes a couple of days for them to open into a flower. However when it is cold, it can take a week or more.

When I ordered the lilies, it was hot and humid so I didn't think there would be a problem. And I only need 3 white lilies for the bride bouquet and 16 orange lilies for the bridesmaids so that should be easy right? Well I have been watching and tending to my lilies all week and whilst the orange ones are great, the white ones just aren't budging! And did I mention that I only need 3?! It's probably time to put a backup plan in place.

Here are Alicia's flowers: (you can see how tightly closed the white ones look)

Alicia's flowers are white oriental lilies, orange tiger lilies, some cordyline leaves and camellia leaves. She is also having some white artificial frangipani's too.

I'll be back after the weekend to let you know how I went. Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me that these white lilies open!

After: Simone's wedding

This is the last of our 3 weddings from the weekend. And there are quite a few pics to get through!

Simone wanted colourful and bright wedding flowers and that is exactly what she got. Unfortunately my camera didn't pick up the vibrancy in the colours very well, but hopefully Simone's photographer was able to.

Here are her flowers.....

Bride Bouquet: the shape of this was more of a posy but with some drapes hanging from it. The flowers used were hot pink roses, orange roses, yellow roses, blue hyacinths, blue delphinium, yellow freesias, hot pink vanda orchids, purple lisianthus and lilliana grass

Hair flowers: Simone wanted some flowers to scatter through her hair so we made some yellow roses and a few hot pink vanda orchids, and there was also a tiny little orchid hair clip for her beautiful baby girl

Buttonholes: the groom had a buttonhole of an orange rose with a touch of the lilliana grass, and Simone's dad had a yellow rose

Corsages: the Mum's had dress corsages of roses - ivory roses for the Mother of the Bride and peach roses for the Mother of the Groom

Reception Arrangement: And lastly, we made an arrangement to sit on the bridal table which included a mix of all of the flowers used in the bridal bouquet

Simone - I hope you had the most amazing day. Conratulations to you and your new husband!

Well that is all I have to show you from our weekend full of weddings. We have another two coming up this weekend, one of which is a bit different from the bouquets we have done before so I can't wait to show you. Talk to you in a few days!

After: Corrine's wedding

I finally got to meet Corrine. She was so sweet and I loved how excited everyone was when I delivered the flowers.

These are how Corrine's flowers turned out....

Bride Bouquet: posy of pink and white/yellow artificial frangipani's

Bridesmaids Bouquets: posy of white/yellow artificial frangipani's

Buttonholes: the groom had a pink frangipani whilst his groomsmen had a white/yellow one

Corsages: the Mum's had dress corsages of pink frangipani's

I hope you liked teh flowers from Corrine's wedding. And I also hope that we are proving that the artificial frangipani's look fantastic!

To Corrine, it was so lovely to meet you. I hope you all had a fantastic day!

After: Danni's wedding

Well it was a big weekend and I have 3 weddings to show you!

The first wedding we had was Danni's. The poor thing had to deal with the stress of the uncooperative weather. They were supposed to have an outdoor ceremony, but the weather was doing an all seasons in one day routine and a decision couldn't be made on whether to hold it inside or out until the last minute. I hope it all went OK.

Here are the flowers......

Bride Bouquet: posy of pink roses

Bridesmaids Bouquet: posy of ivory roses

Buttonholes: the groom had a pink rose buttonhole and his groomsmen had an ivory rose

Hair Flowers: Danni wanted an open rose to pin in her hair for the reception (after she had taken out her veil)

Ceremony Arrangement: I wish I could have taken a photo of the ceremony all set up, but when I delivered the flowers it was still uncertain if the weather would allow an outdoor ceremony or if they would have to move it indoors. Two large urn arrangements were made to sit at the end of the aisle on either side of the bride and groom. There was also some petals to scatter over the aisle. Here is one of the rose arrangements (the two of them were the same)

I hope you liked Danni's flowers! I'll be back  to show you some pics from our 2 other weddings soon.

My big congratulations go out to the newlyweds! I hope your day was magical!

Before: Simone's wedding

Isn't this a treat? Another wedding!

I met Simone a few months ago to discuss her wedding flowers. This isn't a very big wedding with only a bridal bouquet, some hair flowers, buttonholes, corasges and a bridal table arrangement. Simone is after a bright and colourful bouquet with a mix of flowers that looks like it has just been picked out of the garden. We want to keep it a little bit messy and this picture is the inspiration we are using:

We have chosen different flowers to use in the bouquet so it will look different, however the style and shape of the bouquet will remain the same.

Here are the flowers we are using for this wedding:

Starting on the left is some purple lisianthus, blue hyacinths, then some roses in orange, pink, ivory. peach and yellow, then there is some blue delphinium, some hot pink vanda orchids and some yellow freesias.

So many flowers and colours to work with!

Well you know the drill - I'll be back after the weekend to show you how it all turned out! :-)

Before: Corrine's wedding

Another wedding for the weekend.

Corrine and I have not met... yet! But I will see her tomorrow when I deliver her flowers. We have organised her wedding flowers pretty easily through emails.

Corrine is having artificial frangipani's. At this time of year real frangipani's are a bit iffy. If it has been a very strong season and the weather conditions are still good then they should still be around. However, this year I found the frangipani season to be extremely weak. I think the constant changes of temperature hindered the season (you know what I mean... how it was hot for a few days, then a bad day or two, then hot again, then cold again.... and the cycle continued like that throughout the Summer).

Anyway, this is what we are starting with:

Artificial frangipani's in white and some in pink.

This is what the flowers look like when they arrive in their packets

And on the right of this picture is what they look like when you remove the plastic packaging, and then on the left is what the franigipan's look like once you open the flower up.

I'll be back after the weekend to show you how Corrine's bouquets looked.

Before: Danni's wedding

I met Danni a few weeks before Christmas to discuss her wedding flowers. She was so sweet, and of course we clicked straight away - it had nothing to do with the fact that we both have the same first name ;-)

Danni is keeping it simple by having beautiful rose posies. The bride will have pink and the bridesmaids will have ivory. The pink rose is called Sweet Avalanche and it is my favourite rose from my fantastic rose supplier.

Here are Danni's flowers:

Ivory roses and pink roses

We are also going to make a couple of arrangements for teh ceremony using both the ivory and pink roses. It will (hopefully) look something like this:

I'll be back on Monday with some photos of Danni's wedding flowers.

After: Jacqueline's wedding

And now for Jacqueline's beautiful wedding flowers!

Jacqueline had some posies of roses. Simple, but elegant! Here are some photos.....

Bride bouquet: posy of ivory roses

Bridemaids bouquet: smaller posy of ivory roses

The buttonholes were of ivory roses and the dress corsages were of ivory spray roses:

The flower girls carried mini posies of ivory roses (I don't know how I missed getting a photo of those), and they wore a halo of ivory spray roses on their heads. They don't look so great like this but if you actually see the little flower girl's wearing them, they look so adorable.

That is all the flowers from the day. Congratulations Jacqueline! I was so excited for you and hope your day was perfect. I can't wait to hear all about it!

After: Francine's wedding

The weekend was just perfect for the two weddings we had on.

Francine's wedding was held at the Japanese Gardens at East Gosford, so the wedding had a Japanese theme. Instead of a usual bridal bouquet of flowers, Francine had a fan arrangement. It looked great and really suited her. Here are some pics of the flowers from the day.....

Bride Arrangement: fan (provided by the bride) of dodda vine with singapore orchids threaded throughout and some phalaenopsis orchids

There were no bridemaids, but Francine had some VIP's who received buttonholes and corsages. These are the buttonholes for the groom and the male VIP's: singapore orchids and vine on camellia leaves

and the female VIP's had pearl wrist corsages of singapore orchids:

Thank you so much Francine for trusting me with your wedding flowers. You knew that I had never done an arrangement like this before but you had faith that I understood what you were after and I hope I made you proud. Congratulations! You made a beautiful bride.