So the last in the flowery blog posts about my wedding flowers. There will be more blog posts over on my other blog "Hannah's Craft Cottage" about all the handmade elements of the wedding. (believe me there's alot)
Having planned to create quite striking designs for the church flowers I wanted the reception flowers to have a much more casual and cottage feel to them, one reason being its a style I love and another being it fitted in well with the style and feel of the venue, a historic thatched manor house with marquee and beautiful informal garden.
I decided the table centers would be a collection of jars and bottles in the popular cluster style.
To tie these containers in with other elements of the wedding decor I decorated some of them with os maps and sheet music, these are things to represent aspects of the bride and grooms life. I really like how these turned out and think they looked brill even without the flowers in. Other decorations included lace ribbon and black and white bakers twine which was also used in other elements of the wedding theme.
To help add alittle height and interest to the table centers I added a couple of books these were a selection of hard backs previously from my husbands book collection ( They were earmarked for the charity shop before I found a use for them) We liked the idea of using books as we are both big readers and Alex has both written and edited books. On the books where the table name made out of a double sided Ikea frame, our wedding colour green card and matching font, the tables were named after hills and mountains which have meaning for us. A small jar was placed on the books as well and three containers of varying sizes placed around it. This I felt made the table centers big enough for the tables (mostly five foot rather than the usual six) and was well balanced.
The flowers used for these displays included stocks, and sweet peas for fragrance, roses to tie in with the other flowers and lots of cottage garden style flowers including veronica, matricaria (dasiy like flowers) peonys, iris, pink snapdragons (like the shop, logo) Eryngium (thistle like),blue bells (as they were growing outside church and in the garden) green bell, eucalyptus and more. I was worried when it all arrived I'd over ordered but there was just enough to fill every container.
The flowers were a mixture of colours still predominately creams and greens to try in with the others but I thought with the blooming garden just outside and the country look we were going for alittle extra colour would be nice.
On the top table there was three of these duo bottle containers, I liked the shape of these for the long top table and the lacy element of the metal fret work is pretty. this one was in front of myself and the groom with a peony and my favorite green carnation. the other two were slightly themed towards the colours the Mums were wearing.
The caterer was using their very lovely mismatched vintage china to serve the afternoon tea in, this was another reason I wanted to add a dash of colour to the table flowers to tie in with this I was very pleased with the overall look.
How the tables looked with the flowers on. Not intrusive but just enough and fitting in well with the other decorations in the marquee.
As well as the bottle and the jars for the tables we had some large glass coffee jars which were filled with matching flowers and dotted about the venue to help make it all feel like part of the wedding. Being an old quirky building it had lots of places for these. Here are some in the bar, situated in the old kitchen
Here's one on the massive fireplace in the entrance hall
One on box next to the shelves where we displayed old wedding photos for our family and friends. They also found homes in the tearoom which was being used as a quite room and in the loos. I felt for a florists wedding it was good to have flowers everywhere.
One other little flowery element in the reception which wasn't really planned was my bridesmaids flowers. I mentioned to the girls about the shelf on the front of the stage maybe being a good place to pop their flowers out of the way during the afternoon tea but they surprised me with the lovely idea of placing them either side of our light box sign making this lovely display.
So there you go that's what happens when a florist gets married, I really loved creating my wedding flowers and hope my guests enjoyed looking at them.
