End of the year flowering

Feeling rather low after a major Christmas infection that hurled me into bed for a few days despite having my wonderful family at home for a few days, I ventured into an incredibly windswept field today and was delighted to pick an end of year table decoration to include hellebores and heleniums, scabious and snow-in-summer, cornflowers and astrantia, eryngiums and even an Oriental poppy and a shirley poppy! Was there ever such a strange year. At this rate the already-budding paperwhites will be flowering with poppies, certainly some very usual bedfellows. If the rain and wind stop for a while tomorrow I may get to venture further! There are quite a number of hellebores out already in the top garden, some that were already here, but some that I brought back from my mother's garden, so were delighted to pick some of those to have on the Christmas table as we toasted her health.

I'm looking forward to 2012. Lots to do, and hopefully lots more energy, this year has been a bit tough on the personal front here but god bless those little flowers which really do help to keep me smiling.

There will be some new mail order services from here from spring, and some special bridal offers, I'm already looking forward to our first wedding in London in February. And I've discovered a glorious dress shop, if you're planning your wedding do check out Belle and Bunty, which now has to be my favourite dress shop particularly for brides to be, and they have posted a lovely piece on our flowers - Thanks Girls!

http://www.belleandbunty.co.uk/blog/?p=815#comments

This time next week I will be on my way to some warmth, so I'm about to dig out the bikinis from (very) cold storage. The phone messages will still be answered every few days, and mails replied to, and I shall be back towards the end of Jan. Hopefully with a bit of sun on my skin and renewed energy for what I hope will be a fantastic flowery year. A New Year resolution will be to improve admin and actually do some marketing, so watch this space!

November with Rock and Roll antlers

Ali and Dan did a huge round trip of hundreds of miles the day they came to visit, and all they wanted was bouquets and buttonholes. But now I see the photos of their November 12th wedding - featured on Rock 'N Roll Bride today - I understand why they went so so much trouble. Amazing ideas and some rather wonderful photos from Laura Babb

http://www.rocknrollbride.com/2011/12/a-psych-folk-horror-themed-wedding-ali-dan/#more-97849

Lots of brides ask about the differences between the wedding flowers we send out by courier and the wedding flowers where we bring everything to you and do the whole arranging service. Basically the flowers are broadly the same, at the same prices, but we can only send certain types of bouquet and decoration by courier, other times we need to come and set everything up for you.  And some of the more delicate flowers or types of arrangement won't travel so we only use these when we are arranging everything for you.  Our bouquet and buttonhole service is Increasingly popular and we have designed new packaging for this and other wedding flowers for 2012.

We also have an increasing large collection of vessels, from pewter pots and glassware through very individual vintage jugs and teapots as well as candelabra and churns, buckets and baskets.

I can't resist this bouquet picture, it might just be my favourite of the year!

It's August again

Lovely photos just in from Fiona Kelly, of Lottie and Jake's wedding at the beginning of August. I'm rather pleased with them - and the flowers of course! I think Fiona really captures the freshness of the day. And how lovely to be looking at sweet peas today when outside it is drear, and seriously clarty.
All Photography by Fiona Kelly Photography
www.fionasweddingphotography.co.uk

January

I won't be around much in January. I haven't told the gorgeous but needy dogs yet that an interloper will be house sitting.

It's the one time of the year when I can take time out completely with no flower concerns and although I was assuming I'd just be hunkering down at home and getting on with planning and sorting, something rather wonderful has just happened. Completely out of the blue some friends have asked me to join them as their guest on a trip around the Moluccas. It seems to involve a schooner, nature and volcanos.

So on my birthday I shall be in Papua New Guinea. Now that's not something I was ever expecting to say!

wintry wedding shoot

After a vile day of wind and rain it was OK on the day for Gemma Williams photoshoot at Wilton castle near Ross on Wye, now a wedding venue. OK so marigolds and cornflowers aren't really wintry flowers but I thought it would be fun to go for some cheery colour to lighten a dreary end November day. Too often winter wedding flower arrangements go a bit green, or are seriously imported.

I think the flowers looked fun and the colours certainly shone brightly in Gemma's atmospheric pictures, I had fun making up a bunch with fluffy grass seedheads too.  

Contact Gemma at

www.gemmawilliamsphotography.co.uk

Summer memories

A few photos just arrived in my inbox from the gorgeous stylish Lara's wedding at Barnsley House in June. Nothing spectacular of the bouquet unfortunately as it was really beautiful, delicately arching sprays of two different kinds of orange blossom, deleaved. with roses honeysuckle and asparagus fern. It took ages and ages and was very delicate and looked beautiful when she carried it.....  Adult bridesmaids had three peonies, little bridesmaids just headwear.... The groom and groomsmen had possibly my favourite buttonholes of the year, dried hellebore heads with brown seeds still in place, with vintage fabric leaves attached to the stems.

The chairs for the ceremony were tied with bundles of beribboned fern which did rather suit the setting, and all table decorations were in random white china, colours throughout were whites, blush and olive or emerald shades.