Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Planning your bridal bouquet




Visualizing your perfect bridal bouquet can sometimes be a process. Because the bouquet acts as an accessory to your dress, it’s important for your floral designer to not only see your dress, but to fully understand the style, colors, and scale of the flowers you want to be holding. Ideally, we would love to see an image of you in your dress during a fitting as well as any hair accessories, shoes or jewelry you may be wearing.

Having a visual of these details can play into what type of fabric goes around the bouquet handle and influence the pop of color added to the bouquet. You also may want to consider incorporating a family memento to attach to the bouquet handle, such as your grandmother’s brooch, your father’s heirloom pocket watch or the handkerchief your mother carried on her wedding day. These unique touches not only make your bouquet all your own, but honor the family member who passed them down to you. In addition, they might count as your “something borrowed” or perhaps “something blue.”

One very clear way of communicating the type of bridal bouquet you are looking for is to collect images of flowers that you love. I find that when a bride sends me three to five images of bouquets, there are themes that give me an idea of exactly what she is looking for. If you put several bouquet images on the same page, you will notice the similarities. Maybe they all have a lot of texture, or they are only use two to three types of flowers, or the flowers are all fluffy blooms. These images will help your floral designer understand what your personal combination of flowers may be.

Once we have sorted out which flowers you want in your bouquet, we begin to think about which flowers or colors you want to see the most of. Some brides want all bright colors and some want all soft whites and creams, with touches or pops of color. I have often found the design and colors will change from a little to a lot leading up to the big day. This is perfectly normal and not a problem. It’s common that when a bride is planning her flowers six months or a year in advance, things change! Maybe your bridesmaids dresses started out as a bright pink and now have become a dusty pink. Maybe your shoes were champagne and now they are bright red. These details will change some of the colors in your flower design. Not to worry; just keep your florist aware of these important changes so we can always stay on the same page!

See tips from our other professionals at our Brooklyn Betrothed site!