Planning a wedding can be overwhelming business. There are so many details to plan, decisions to make and it feels like it all needs to be done at the same time. Weddings are so customizable these days, which is great because you can do what you really want, but sometimes seems to make them more complicated because there are SO many things to decide. Should you do a regular guest book or thumbprint art with signatures, unity candle or sand ceremony, traditional cake or a table of different pie (your favourite!), fresh flowers or DIY fabric flower bouquets, and so on. Especially with all the wedding blogs and Pinterest and Facebook it feels like there is all this pressure to have the PERFECT wedding. Well I’m here to help! First of all, it will all be okay – everything will come together, you will have a beautiful day, no one will remember the one or two things that go wrong (or if they do it will at least make a funny story!) and at the end of the day you are marrying the person you are head over heels with! I have a few tips that will hopefully help with planning your wedding flowers a little easier so you might even have a little fun with it! This post is a little long, but bear with me!
1. Before you even start thinking about flowers, you should really pick out your wedding colours and also decide the style you are going for.
It is so important to know the style you are going for so you can make sure the details you plan are cohesive with your theme, starting with the colours you pick out. Champagne/ivory/gold is great for a classic, sophisticated and elegant look. Mint/blush/ivory is perfect for a cutesy vintage wedding with little personal accents. Turquoise/coral/gold is super fun for a bold, modern look. Flowers are really so flexible – you can design them in so many ways so they should compliment the overall look and feel of your wedding.
Colour tip #1- don’t be scared of colour! Lots of people seem to stick with two neutrals and one colour (grey/white/yellow, brown/ivory/green etc), but don’t be afraid to pick a few colours! Having several different colours can actually be easier than trying to make sure everything you get is the same shade of one colour.
Colour tip #2- If you are still in initial stages picking out colours check out Design Seeds. They have a ton of super cute and unique colour palettes to look through!
Colour tip #3- The colour of the bouquets doesn’t have to be the same colour as the bridesmaids dresses. There are some colours that flowers don’t naturally come in, or have limited options, using complimentary colour(s) can sometImes be WAY prettier than just trying to match the flowers to the colour of your girls’ dresses.
2. Start looking!
You should start looking for wedding inspiration BEFORE you meet with florists. While they are professionals and capable of suggesting ideas/styles etc to you during a consultation, there are literally endless options for flowers! Different design styles (cascades, handtieds, contemporary), so many unique products we can design with (dried pots, ornamental grasses, decorative wire), a bazillion flower options, you name it! By having a few inspiration photos it can really help give your florist an idea of the style you like and what you naturally like to use as a starting point. Also, the consultation can be really fun so if you haven’t done research beforehand sometimes brides can get inspired during the consultation and go home and want to start looking at flowers. All of a sudden find something completely different from what was discussed and it results in starting the whole process over again which is counterproductive and ends up taking more time for you as well as your florist who probably isn’t charging you anything for this time.
Where to look though!? I personally don’t really recommend buying magazines because they can really add up price wise and are often full of rings, wedding dresses, and advertisements without offering a lot for ideas. Some are better than others, but I haven’t found them to be overly inspirational. The web has a ton of options AND it is free. There are several really fantastic wedding blogs that offer overall wedding inspiration – some of my favourites are Green Wedding Shoes, Style Me Pretty, Wedding Chicks, Once Wed, Wedding Obsession (Canadian!) . Blogs are great to show how they carried their colour and style throughout their wedding and get ideas for fun details. BUT! They can be super time consuming, searching for specific colours or styles isn’t always fruitful, so you can spend a lot of time looking at pretty things without really getting anywhere. Last, but not least good ol’ google and Pinterest. These are my favs because you can be more specific in your searches to come up with what you are looking for. Also, one of my fav things about Pinterest is if you find a picture you LOVE it the connections you can find. When you find a picture you love it also shows what else has been pinned by people who pinned the original item (so often related inspirational pins) OR you can check out the board of the pin you really like to se if they had other related ideas you might like. That being said, it can be really easy to get sucked in and keep randomly clicking on stuff and all of a sudden you have been on Pinterest for like 3 hours. True story, it has happened to me. ?
3. Be smart about searching!
It can be easy to get overwhelmed when searching through Google and Pinterest by all the pictures, but there are a few things you can do to save on time.
#1- If there is a wedding blog or florist you really love, check them out on Pinterest. Lots of the time they have their boards organized neatly so you can look specifically at bouquets, or by colour. If you want to check us out on Pinterest you can find my boards HERE or Find Travis HERE. It takes just a minute or two to scroll through a board to see if any of the bouquets/centrepieces/boutonnieres catch your eye before you move only saves searching through a gazillion photos of dessert tables and backdrops to see a few bouquets. Done.
#2- This one is really huge, but simple. Search using keywords. It can be really easy to aimlessly click on pictures and end up all over the map, but by using smart keywords it can really help. Instead of just searching blue wedding, narrow it down. Use more specific shades, use descriptive words from your style (rustic, modern) and what specifically do you want to see. Instead of searching blue wedding you could search fuchsia bridesmaid bouquets and find the perfect bouquet that would compliment your navy blue bridesmaid dresses. Be specific! This will honestly go a long way.
4. Keep your voice!
This tip isn’t just for flowers. When it comes to wedding planning, lots of the time you are getting help. Your mom, sister(s) and/or bridesmaids are often there to help. This is great! Some of them are already married so they might have some tips and tricks to make the process a little easier. However, sometimes these helpers can be really opinionated and vocal about how they think you should do things. You wedding day is for you and your spouse, you guys know what you would like and you should stick to your guns. Otherwise you might find you have planned your wedding to make someone else happy. By sticking up for yourself it should help cut out some of the random details that don’t match with your overall theme.
5. Remember inspiration is just that – inspiration.
While it is good to find some inspiration photos, don’t get lost going overboard trying to find THE perfect bouquet that makes you want to cry. Even if you find a photo of something you like the recreated design by your florist will never be EXACTLY like the picture. Every florist has a little bit of a different design style (same as an artist!) so they will always have their own spin that will be a touch different. it is also possible that the bouquet you like isn’t possible to recreate for you – perhaps that particular flower we can’t get in, or maybe it isn’t in season for your day (peonies are bad for this!), OR if your inspiration picture was created with artificial flowers there might not be a fresh flower that comes like that (ex. blue lilies). This is okay! Or maybe you find a bouquet that you just LOVE, but it isn’t in the colours you want or you don’t like one of the flowers in it. This is also okay! This is where it is important to have a florist who you trust! You should like their portfolio and enjoy working with them and trust that they are going to do a good job for you. The inspiration photos are just inspiration. At the end of the day we are going to take in your inspirations and talk with you about what you want and create wedding flowers that are completely custom for you to suit your needs.
So remember, it will all be okay – everything will come together, you will have a beautiful day, so have fun with it!
On a related note, Travis and I are going to be at With This Ring Bridal Gala on February 2nd, which is a great place to see some of the really talented local wedding vendors and get some inspiration. Grab a girlfriend and come out for the day, we will have some super pretty flowers, there are fashion shows AND you can win prizes! The tickets are now available – you can get them online here, at the Bay or at Bridal Couture Designz for just $10, or $15 if you wait to buy your ticket at the doors. Hope to see you there!
Katrina
