Floral columns
Decorating for a wedding is both exciting and nerve racking! It’s great to be able to help a couple bring the vision of their special day to life! You hope that the results will be even better than they imagined. The stress arrives when you realize you only have one chance to get it right! I recently had the opportunity to do just that for a wedding in Sugar Grove, IL.

The grooms gave me a great deal of latitude when it came to designing the “look” for their event. Favorite colors and flowers were tossed around. The number of boutonnieres, corsages and bouquets was determined. An overall theme of ‘casual but elegant’ seemed to fit the ceremony, location and couple.

I decided to ground the arrangements with “wedding” white by including white gerbera daisies, white dendrobium orchids and white roses. For the needed punch colors, I chose yellow roses, dark purple statice. For texture, I added purple limonium. The grooms chose pastels as an overall theme for the wedding party’s attire so I wanted to add a light teal element to compliment the purple and yellow. Try finding real flowers in light teal! But I found a solution!

Since it was an outdoor event, I was responsible for decorating the dance & bar tents, wedding gazebo, pub tables, fence gates and a few other accents. I was also in charge of the wedding party’s flowers.

Gazebo florals
To create a solemn space for the ceremony, I wove faux “real-touch” stems into grapevine balls that were zip-tied into place in the corners of the gazebo and dance tents. Dried grapevine garland was added as needed to anchor the floral clusters. The clusters contained white gerberas, yellow and white roses, white and teal sprays of orchids along with green willow branches. After installation, hand-tied burlap and purple ribbons finished the look.
tent corners

Creating a focal point for the ceremony was key. Columns were placed on either side of the space. On top, we crafted large, live arrangements of white gerberas, dendrobiums, purple statice, limonium with yellow and white roses. Each arrangement was perched on tall square vase containing clear and teal gems and a spiraled banana leaf.
top down view

Hand tied bouquets
The maids of honor carried hand tied bouquets of live white roses, gerbera daisies and dendrobiums accented with purple limonium. The mens’ boutonnieres featured live white roses with the grooms having an additional spray of dendrobium.
GroomBout

Tabletop “bud” arrangements were made for the pub tables using short square vases wrapped with banana leaf. Each contained a single white gerbera daisy, dendrobium orchid spray and a sprig of limonium.
Tabletop bud vases

The end result seemed to exceed everyone’s expectations and added to the joy and celebration of their special day. And while it rained cats and dogs during the ceremony, abundant love and beautiful flowers proved nothing could dampen their wedded bliss.