SUMMER ELEGANCE
The opportunity to create flowers for Kayla and Gabe’s late August wedding at Merrimon Wynne, alongside Amanda Honeycutt of Amanda Blair by Design, was really exciting for us. Kayla and Gabe prioritized beautiful installations in their overall wedding budget, and really cared about the flowers as an integral part of the overall look. They were excited about dreaming up possibilities alongside us and Amanda throughout the process, and we enjoyed that dream-client combination of being excited and involved while also giving us lots of creative freedom. On the day of the wedding, we brought a stellar team with us to create a free form floral arch, a double-decker floral chandelier, an ethereal gardenscape on the staircase, a burst of flowers on the main mantel, and lots of other smaller moments where flowers set a romantic and thoughtful tone.
The Flowers
The color scheme incorporated white, blush, and champagne, with lots of beautiful variations on these neutral tones through textural, locally grown, late summer materials. Hydrangea, roses, lisianthus, celosia, china aster, roses, eucalyptus, eleagnus, and ruscus brought the dream to life. We particularly enjoyed the pairing of Roseanne Brown Lisianthus along with local Flamingo Feather Celosia for Kayla’s minimalist and textural maids’ bouquets. This pairing also worked perfectly for boutonnieres. We enjoy using the green limelight-style hydrangea for installations like the staircase and the floral arch, because its cloud-like shapes and sturdy structure lend architectural lines along with softly textural coverage.
Foam Free Installations
Another exciting component of Kayla and Gabe’s wedding was the opportunity to create several installations without the use of floral foam. It is our goal to go foam-free in 2020, so the floral arch and chandelier gave us a chance to test methods we had been brainstorming for months. We are happy to report these experiments were a success! The double-decker floral chandelier relied on substantial layers of greenery to create the foundational shape, along with lots of water-picked flowers. In the past we have used oasis cages for chandeliers and created tighter bursts of flowers; we liked the more organic look of the flowers dispersed throughout the shape (it helped here that not all flowers required water-picks; most roses and carnations really don’t need them).
The floral arch was constructed on a base of umbrella stands with PVC wrapped in chicken wire. We also wired a few tall metal vases to the base, because a few water sources could help support flowers lower in the composition without tedious picks. We used sheet moss to mask the metal base of the stands, and then filled out the chicken wired structures with lots of smilax, ruscus, eleagnus and eucalyptus. We followed the greenery with water-picked stems of hydrangea and roses, and bare stems of lisianthus and carnations. This arch was by far our most ambitious foam-free undertaking at that point, and it was a really encouraging experience. We are finding that, without the use of foam, we have more freedom with stem placement; therefore the floral compositions often feel more natural and airy. Combine that improved aesthetic outcome with the ability to nix non-biodegradable and toxic floral foam from our practice, and there’s really no reason not to be foam free.
Stellar Vendors
We are always happy when we are collaborating with planner Amanda Blair by Design and photographer Jordan Maunder – the outcome when working with these ladies is always cohesively beautiful, seamlessly run, and expertly documented. The furniture rentals from Cottage Luxe brought the look together through warm, classic and hospitable lounge spaces. We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again – it never gets old to work at Merrimon Wynne – there are so many ways to bring beauty into this timeless house, especially when working alongside such stellar vendors and for such a lovely couple. Enjoy scrolling!
