Southern Weddings

Hi belles! Our friend and former Southern Weddings intern Jessica Clinch is the newest gal to take you through her wedding process here on the blog! Jessica will be blogging for us once a month until her wedding this May. In case you missed her introductory post, be sure to check it out here! — Lisa

Y’all, I am a huge flower person–fresh blooms simply make my heart happy! While I hadn’t planned all of the intricate details of our wedding before Zack proposed, I did know the types of flowers I wanted to include!

There have been a few factors that played into our floral decision making that I have found really helpful, and I hope these ideas help you, too!

Budget: While it is not the most fun thing to discuss, knowing what your floral budget is ahead of time is extremely helpful and important! We are lucky that our wedding planning team, Rebecca Rose Events, is also designing our wedding florals, so they knew our budget going into our floral consultation, and were able to manage my expectations!

I adore fluffy peonies as much as the next bride, but I also know they come with a rather large price tag. We are going to incorporate them into key details, like my bridal bouquet and our table designs, while using more affordable (but still stunning!) flowers in other areas. Something that I have learned along the way is that greenery is gorgeous, and using plentiful foliage with a few blooms helps to balance the cost of more expensive flowers. Luckily, I adore silver dollar eucalyptus, so we will be using it to frame certain elements of our ceremony and reception décor. Chat with your planner and floral designer about how you can balance your floral tastes to fit within your budget!

Clockwise from top left: Tracy Enoch via Southern Weddings, Kim Box via Southern Weddings, Paper & Stitch, Sarah Gawler Photography via Rock My Wedding

Design Aesthetic: Both my personal style and bridal style are a mix of classic elements with fun and romantic touches, so I knew I wanted to carry that aesthetic into our floral design. To me, that looks like soft, flowing floral arrangements that still have a bit of structure to them and are full of vibrant color! How can you pull from your own personal style to translate it into your floral design? Look at the clothing and accessories you have in your closet, your home décor, and items from your wedding décor (like your linens and bridal party attire). Are there common themes? Try envisioning a variety of floral styles paired with those elements to see which you think would be the best fit!

Colors: Choosing our floral colors came after we nailed down our design aesthetic. For me, more is more when it comes to color! I appreciate a classic all-white bouquet, but that is not our style. We want our wedding to be full of life and joy, and, in my opinion, that translates into abundant color!

We are trying to incorporate all of our wedding colors into our floral design: blush from our peonies and antique garden roses, a purple-hued pink from our ranunculus, fuchsia from more peonies, peach from our Juliet garden roses and hypericum berries, navy from our anemones, and a mixture of white and green from Queen Anne’s Lace, ivory hypericum berries, green amaranthus, stock, and eucalyptus.

KT Merry via Style Me Pretty, Amalie Orrange

Venue: We had originally been looking at garden wedding venues before choosing our gorgeous golf course venue of Gettysvue. While our venue has beautiful rolling greens, it does not have plentiful flowers like the garden venues did, so I knew I wanted to bring the garden feel into our venue!

That is playing a large role in our decision to incorporate so many colors and lots of lush greenery. Had we chosen to have our wedding at a garden venue, I likely would not have quite as many flowers, focusing instead on our bouquets and centerpieces. So, how are we trying to turn our venue into a garden-style setting? That, my friends, we are keeping a secret for now!

I’d love to know: What factors influenced your wedding floral style? How did your floral designer help guide you toward which flowers would be best for your wedding?

Written with love by Lisa