Well this is exciting, my first ever Blog! I have been thinking of ways to tell a story about our own wonderful wedding day which took place in December 2019 and what better way than through the topic of dried flowers and the journey I took to recycle and create our wonderful decorations for the day.
I must say I have always been fascinated in the way in which flowers dry and how certain flowers were almost born to be dried and I take a lot of inspiration from this for my designs and shop ideas - take the hydrangea for example, an allium or scabiosa. I must add that this is not a Blog necessarily about being an eco queen but it is certainly good to talk about it isn't it and to be working towards ways of being more friendly to the environment whilst doing what you love - I am certainly trying!
Our wedding was on the 28 December 2019 and although Christmas is a very busy time for florists alike it does quieten down and we thought that it would be a very magical time to choose and I have to say we were not disappointed.
Over the years you learn as a florist to be savvy with your ordering but I think it is in our nature to over indulge at times, to pick the extraordinary beautiful flowers but now that I have a shop, wastage unfortunately is something I have a small battle with and there are a number of ways that I try to alleviate this - roses have to be my all time favourite flower and I tend to order more roses over other flowers so that I know if I have leftover flowers (which every florist shop does) I can make the petals into confetti for my wonderful couples for their weddings - and guess what, you can pre order my rose rain and I also sell small quantities in the shop too! Some of the flowers in my shop are salvaged at the end of the day to be pressed and some of these are given to my mum who makes the most wonderful framed images which are proving to be very popular.
Over the years I have learned to dry leftover flowers in my studio - I simply tie them into a loose bundle and hang them from the ceiling with string - they seem to dry best in dry and warm conditions - some blooms dry very nicely indeed whilst others do not but it all depends on the conditions. I had some Zanzibar sitting in the window of my shop last year and in the summer months the sun shone down on them and they were exquisite for Christmas arrangements as the sun had bleached them into this delicious golden colour - perfect also for button holes, and to be painted gold for Christmas. Eryngium (Sea Holly/that thistle looking thing) is another fine example - of which I used a lot of in our wedding arrangements.
Back to the wedding lark - I decided early on only to use only foraged or recycled flowers and all of them dried at that, there were a couple of reasons - I was the bride! Did I want to be conditioning flowers before my wedding day? certainly not, and the thought of having to clear away perishing flowers that would be going to landfill, etc. definitely didn't fill me with joy either. I have to admit I have never been much good at ordering to the mark for weddings although I am a lot better than I was, as my business has developed I have made mistakes and have always preferred to have more flowers than not enough but I always have a few stems left at the end of a busy wedding - if the stem has a bloom on the end of it it’s a keeper and deserves to be dried.
We were able to have a fully dressed wedding by using only salvaged florals that were either foraged or saved from leftovers in the shop, scraps of other weddings, leftovers from workshops, etc. Our ceremony was held at Exeter Cathedral which is a very important place for me particularly as it holds very special memories for both me and my family and we felt that because of its ornate interior we would keep the designs very simple. The intimacy of the Quire in the middle of the building which is where the ceremony took place meant that I could line the choir stall runway with pretty stems and this was constructed only by way of varying clear glass vases as weights, chicken wire and the stems needed - I wasn’t trying to hide any of the construction work here and instead made it a bit of a feature, the arrangement was intertwined with clear hurricane lanterns with simple ivory pillar candles to create shadows and some of the dried foliage and florals I used I had either sprayed or painted on with gold. An afternoon wedding in winter meant that the low light coming through the stained glass of the Cathedral windows and candlelight created this magical warmth and glow.
The bouquets as well as the buttonholes were made well ahead of time and I really enjoyed thinking about each of my pals/family members as I put them together - I have to admit, my mum (aka button holes queen) soon took over on the button hole front as there were about 20 to do. I used the very wonderful and local Penelope’s Child who creates the very best plant dyed silks and chose the most delicious rich goldy/bronze flowing ribbon which completed the bouquets beautifully and for the button holes, velvet silk taupe colours. I am not a fan of themes, in fact the word theme is not on my radar too much and it was particularly lovely to just go with my natural instincts on what to put together, nothing was identical or forced, just found and worked.
Moving on to the where all the fun happened, the incredible RAMM - yes, we had our reception in a museum and it was a BLAST! The process of being able to have dried flowers in the RAMM was a really interesting one and in the beginning I did have to roll my eyes around and think to myself, only I would decide to have dried flowers for our wedding when the advice from the Conservation Lead said that any dried matter must be frozen ahead of time which makes sense entirely. It was so interesting to find out about the process of how every artefact that goes into the RAMM is frozen for a period of time in a special freezer in an Exeter location and then transported back to be opened to get rid of all of the bugs. So in November I set about layering individual stems into boxes between thin sheets of tissue paper to protect the stems - in there I had poppy seed heads, bleached ruscus, various dried grasses, eryngium, all sorts. My idea for the RAMM was to keep it very simple, I made some little copper vessels which were bottomless to run down the centre of the tables and superglued some on top of each other to create different heights, these were then weighted down with white tac at the bottom. The varying height stems were then placed inside and then these were interspersed with little artificial T-lights (no candles permitted) which I decided to cover with scrunched tracing paper to make them look frosted and a great thing to be able to use again. My mum and sister-in-law did a fantastic job of setting up all the tables on the Friday whilst I created the runners in the Cathedral on the Friday and my mum particularly went the extra mile and hand dyed lots of linen sheets a delicious charcoal grey and chopped them to fold for our napkins, finished with a gold sprig of siergras on top.
All of the flowers used for our wedding were salvaged and taken back to my studio, some time after I then suspended all of them from the ceiling and when I can I hope to be using them again for arrangements, wreath workshops and hey, who knows, someone else’s wedding? If dried flowers is something that you are interested in for your big day and you like the thought of using something that is recycled, can be used again, then get in touch.
I hope you have enjoyed this little read and I hope we meet again some time for more tales…..
More photos below with huge thanks to our incredibly talented photographer and all round legend Harrera Images
Thanks also to our other wonderful suppliers who made our day just magic!
