Happy Monday friends! We had a fabulous weekend of designing for some beautiful weddings as well as for the Engaged Bridal Gala. We had a lot of fun getting ready for the gala and we were all so happy with how it came together, and loved getting to show off our new branding too! Thank you to Orin at Special Event Rentals for providing us the stunning chairs and place settings that complimented our flowers so beautifully. Another super huge thank you to Lindsay Nickel Photography  for taking time out of her day to take some photos for us. For any of you who missed getting to come out we will be sharing her photos soon so you can see all the goodies! You can also find us at With This Ring Bridal Gala on September 27th  from 10-4:30 at the Westerner.

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Our booth at Engaged Bridal Gala, captured by Lindsay Nickel Photography

Today’s monday mini tip is how to properly hold a bouquet. It may seem simple, but I can’t count how many times I have seen brides (real, models or actresses) carrying their bouquets wrong. This is important not only for the bride to know, but also her bridesmaids! If you have a wedding planner they may be able to help give you some pointers, otherwise you will want to know what to look for. To start off, you are really going to make sure that you are standing up tall, chin up, shoulders back, no staring at the floor. It doesn’t hurt to do a little practice walking in your dress and shoes so that you feel comfortable on the day of. Now, how to carry your flowers!

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One of our brides, Amber, beautifully holding her hand tied bouquet at a great level (showing off the bling on her dress!) and angled slightly so that all the flowers can be seen.

HAND TIED BOUQUETS

These are currently the most popular bouquet, a standard bouquet that is fairly round in fashion with the stems of the flowers having a decorative wrap. These are simple to hold, it should feel relaxed with the bouquet sitting at or just below waist level (around your belly button). Slightly angle your bouquet so that the grouping of flowers (the prettiest part!) can be seen better  by both your guests and the photographer.

CASCADING BOUQUETS

This bouquets are making a comeback! These bouquets can range in style from tight little tear drops to big, dramatic designs with greenery and blooms water falling down the front. These are typically designed into a foam bouquet holder with an angled handle to help make holding it a little easier. They are a little more challenging to hold as they can be fairly large in size and depending on product is used can also be on the heavy side. Again you will want to keep the bouquet around waist level and you may want to practice holding in front of a mirror to ensure that the cascading part of your bouquet is centered and being held at an angle that shows off the bouquet best.

SPECIALTY BOUQUETS

We are seeing a lot more fun bouquets that aren’t full on cascades, but have lots of overflowing greenery goodies with gorgeous shape and body. Or if it is a unique bouquet like an over the arm bouquet, flowers designed onto an item like a purse or fan, etc. These bouquets are different than hand tied or cascades and you will want to talk to your floral designer either during your consultation or at the time of pick up/delivery so they can explain and/or show you how to best carry it down the aisle.

The most common mistakes we see are bouquets being held MUCH to high (hint: your flowers should never be anywhere near your boobs) or cascading bouquets being carried at strange angles so that the flowers poke out awkwardly instead of gently flowing down. Taking a few moments to practice with your bridesmaids before the ceremony pays off! It is important to carry your bouquet properly so that you look relaxed, your beautiful bodice aren’t being hidden behind flowers, and so that your flowers look as beautiful as they should! There is no point paying for a stunning dress and gorgeous flowers if they aren’t being showcased!

I hope you find this Monday mini tip helpful and perhaps we will see you at the bridal gala in a couple weeks, so you can test drive some bouquets!

Katrina

 

 

 

 

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Our male model, Todd Hector,  from the recent shoot with Lindsay Nickel Photography

Boutonnière is french for buttonhole, fancy! Some people can be a little intimidated when it comes to pinning them on. Left side or right side? Where on the lapel should I pin it on? What do I do with this thing? I have great news, it really isn’t complicated and we can help you feel more confident.

First of all, boutonnieres and corsages will have either pins or magnets. What are the differences? The magnets are super easy to put on and they aren’t hard on the fabric of the suit/dress of the wearer. Sounds great, right? They do have some downfalls, the magnet can act as a pivot point so that the boutonniere or corsage can end up twisting around or upside down and can need frequent adjustment to keep them in place. Adding the magnet sticky thing (technical term) to the wearable flowers can also add a decent amount of bulk to the “stem”, and, believe it or not, they can be a little dangerous. The magnets are SO strong that they can mess with pace makers, something to keep in mind for grandparents. Using pins can be slightly more tricky to get on, and can be a touch hard on some fabrics, but they are safe for everyone to use, don’t add any bulk, and keep things securely where they should be.

Both boutonnieres and corsages should be worn on the left side, over your heart. Originally they were actually tucked right into the buttonhole on the lapel, hence their name. Not all lapels will have the buttonhole so now they are just pinned onto the lapel. For proper placement you will want to have the boutonniere/corsage sit approximately 4 inches below the the top the shoulder. You will hold the boutonniere in place while you turn over the lapel to pin it into place. You may want to give the lapel a little shake or try gently jabbing the boutonniere jut to make sure it is secure. With our boutonnieres and corsages we include two pins just in case one gets lost or if you want to make sure it is extra secure, but in most cases only one pin should be needed. In the event that the man isn’t wearing a jacket, you will still want to try to keep in the general area, left side, 4 inches below shoulder. If they are wearing suspenders you can pin onto the suspenders and if they are just wearing a dress shirt and tie you can even forgo having boutonnieres to keep with a more relaxed look. You can google images to see what it looks like with and without and decide what you like best.

For women you can chose to have pin on corsages or wrist corsage. When ordering your wedding flowers and trying to decide whether to order wrist or pin on corsages for the moms, grandmas etc you will want to take into consideration what they will be wearing and what their personal style is. Pin on corsages are a bit more traditional and I find that that is what typically is ordered for the grandmas. For moms, they may have their preferences or if they are wearing a strapless dress or a dress with thin straps it would make it easier to wear a wrist corsage. If they are wearing a pin on, it is the same as the men, left side approximately 4 inches below the shoulder. There is a little more flexibility with placement as you do have to work with their outfit or may have to work around jewellery.

Hopefully this post helps answer any questions you had about how to properly pin on your wearable flowers. Happy Monday, friends!

colour chartWe all know that colour isn’t as simple as just pink, or orange, or blue. My childhood home was a dusty rose colour, and my husband calls it salmon all the time, and they just aren’t the same thing! I get it! Here is the bad news, while you can show us a picture with the exact shade of roses you want, or bring in ribbon/fabric swatches we cannot guarantee an exact shade for your flowers. Majority of the time we can Create the look you want, or at least get very close, but not EVERY time. I know, it can be really annoying for us (the florists) too.  Here are a few reasons why:

  1.  Flowers aren’t available in every colour. This may be a no brainer to some, but not to everyone. It takes awhile to learn which flowers are available in what colour. Or maybe it is available in the colour you want, but not the exact shade. Yes, while you can get dyed flowers, or we can enhance certain colours with spray etc… there is only so much we can do.
  2. Flowers aren’t always the same colour as the picture you found on pinterest. I love pinterest just as much as the next lady and think it is great for finding ideas, but it needs to be kept in mind that sometimes the pictures isn’t how things look in reality. Depending on the lighting in the photo or how they have modified the image… you can’t always get flowers that LOOK like the picture. They might not exist, it might just be the magic of the photo.
  3. There are a TON of different varieties of flowers out there, but our supplier may not have access to ALL of them. We can probably get something similar, but can’t always get the very exact one we want.
  4. Even if you can get the right variety, they aren’t always the same! Sahara is one of my favourite rose varieties. It smells WONDERFUL, it is a gorgeous mix of soft pink tones and beige-y tones that look perfect for that romantic look, and they open up beautifully. But, sometimes they are super pink and not very beige-y, and other times they are barely pink at all.
  5. Flower/colour availability shifts all the time. Sometimes there are tons of rich, deep purple dahlias, sometimes there are barely any and it is all magenta dahlias. Maybe the demand was just too high for something that week, or maybe the farm it usually comes from had a bad storm that damaged their crop… who knows.  We can request what we are wanting, but sometimes we just end up getting what we get because that is the luck of that week.

So, sometimes when the flowers come and they aren’t exactly what you had in mind colour wise, I swear it isn’t because we didn’t try – we only have so much control over the situation! We do try our very best to provide you with what you want. While we cannot control exactly what colour your flowers are, there are a few options to try.

  • instead of trying to get all the flowers to all be the exact shade of lavender that your bridesmaids dresses are, use a range of colour. By using a spectrum of purples, they look beautiful together, and then if the flowers aren’t the EXACT shade, it doesn’t look like you tried to match and failed, but that it all the shades complimented each other.
  • my favourite solution – introduce a new colour(s)! I think sometimes it is easy to get trapped in having two neutrals and one colour for wedding colours (ex. white, black, red or ivory, grey, coral) because it does keep things simple! Or if brides have included a few colours in their scheme, they feel like they have to try to have an equal balance of everything. Throw those rules out the window. If you want you could just introduce a punch of colour JUST in the flowers without having to try to include it in the linens, stationary, blah blah blah. You can’t get turqouise flowers (naturally) so instead of fighting it, you could just throw in a punch of fuchsia for the flowers and keep everything else in your colour scheme. You can do whatever you want!
  • If your colour is something like royal blue or emerald where we don’t have many flower options, you could stick with white flowers and just add non floral accents in your colour with things like the bouquets stem wrap, add feathers to the bouquet, ribbon collar, brooches, glittered succulents… tons of fun options!
  • Use mixed colours in your bouquet. Again, this way if things aren’t the exact shade the mixed colours will compliment instead of looking like a miss. There aren’t a TON of coral flowers, but by using a mixture of pinks, oranges with SOME coral flowers it looks wonderful!
  • another one of my fav options – let your florist pick the flowers! It is kind of our thing and we will most likely know way more flowers than you so if you know and trust your florist if you let them know the look and feel you are going for and the spectrum of colours we could totally make you something gorgeous and unique!

At the end of the day just exercise some flexibility. While we can’t guarantee colour, there is more than one way to do things and we CAN guarantee that we will do our very best to make you happy with your flowers on your very special day!

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