A Whimsical Garden Wedding
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
In the last few years we have seen a deconstruction of the typical, formal wedding flora of tight buds arranged in a structured, uniform manner relax into an airy, whimsical landscape. This new trend pulling from the past is exciting and full of unexpected moments. Often featuring lush greens, many colors, branching wisps and dramatic shapes, the garden wedding feels almost painterly.
We are featuring a wedding this month created at Roxanne’s Dried Flowers for a client who had this very dream. The couple’s wedding featured soft, pastel colors with moments of bursting color. We took inspiration from the Rococo era of muted but colorful designs embracing asymmetry as well as the traditional English Garden aesthetic. The English Garden is wild but controlled - filled with roses and other blooms, but highlighting the greenery as well.
Throughout this post we will take you on the floral journey to a whimsical garden wedding and give insightful tips and tricks to help advise you on your own DIY garden wedding.
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
Whimsical Bridal Bouquet
With every bride we take our time in understanding what exactly she is envisioning. We think about all aspects from the dress to the event space to the bride’s height. No detail is too small! For this bouquet, she didn’t want her bouquet to overshadow or compete with the dress or the other arrangements on display. We kept it tighter and more formal with moments and wisps of lightness and intrigue. This allowed for more drama between the other flowers, creating moments of compact calm that turn into elegant bursts of longing branches.
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
Dried Flower Centerpieces
The centerpiece is often the flowers guests are most intimate with, so it's important to consider them carefully. Centerpieces, due to the sheer volume usually needed, can get pricey. The garden style is a great way to get the most ‘bang for your buck,’ as the loose greens and asymmetrical shapes allow for a lot of intrigue and ground to be covered with little effort. They also don’t require as many expensive bloom heads as a compact vase of roses would. On the contrary, they can add even greater value and prominence to the flowers in their deliberately minimal and delicate placing. Choosing a vase is an important aspect of the arrangement. For this wedding, the couple wanted the flowers to do all the talking, so we kept it very simple with a plain, white cylinder vase. This allowed the flowers to really pop, and give the viewer’s eye a moment of rest while also adding a simple, modern feel to a traditional look. Using an antique urn or brass bowl would alter the feel into that of an old, cherished and fanciful garden, whereas this wedding felt very fresh and vibrant while still embracing whimsy. These small choices can have a big impact and it is always wise to refer back to the overall tone or environment you are trying to create.
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
The Star of the Show: the Wedding Arch
The ceremony arch is always one of the most important and show-stopping displays of the event. Larger stems of foliage and branches as well as clusters of roses or clouds of grasses are great ways to fill up space, be cost efficient, and create dramatic moments. For this one, we actually wired the arch up around the hill all the way to the fence behind. If there is a will, there's a way! Always discuss options with your florist even if the event space originally declares no nails/screws or altering of the space.
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
The Wedding Party
The bridal bouquet may get all the glory, but the bridesmaid’s bouquets and the groomsmen’s boutonnieres are elements not to be overlooked! Carry on existing themes or use them as an opportunity to show something different. The personals can mimic the design of the bridal bouquet or tell us something new. For bridesmaids bouquets, having all one type of flower or mixed foliage are both options that make the bride stand out even more by creating more contrast and uniqueness. Having one cohesive look across all the personals and elements gives the appearance of one large garden for your guests to be entranced by.
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
Unexpected Magical Moments
There are always other cracks and crevices at every event space that allow for other magical landscapes to awe and inspire your guests. In this space, we had a beautiful stone fireplace mantel to work with. Always consider nontraditional areas for adding flowers – especially for a garden wedding which you want as lush and voluminous as possible to create your very own oasis. If you feel your space may not have what you are looking for, always work with your florists, we can create shapes and structures just about anywhere!
photo credit: Lindsey Zern
Details!!!
This wedding had cocktail tables where we added sweet, little bud vases. We kept them simple and complimentary and let the bigger moments shine while steering away from having empty, unconsidered areas. The cake is another important area to consider adding florals. And don’t forget the bathroom, entrance table, aisle, buffet tables, bar, and light fixtures,
Key ingredients to a whimsical wedding
-Clumps of garden flowers such as roses, hydrangea, and peonies. The big, lush heads will give grounding points to the areas of negative space and help dramatize the extended branching moments. Clustering the flowers together gives the effect of an actual plant growing in nature. Garden themes get their name by alluding to and even mimicking actual flowers growing from the ground with groups of flowers surrounded by foliage.
-Wispy, branching drama galore. The key to whimsy is delicate, airy moments with ample negative space and heightened contrast in lengths of stems from compact, clustered moments to a lone branch extended outward.
-Lots of foliage. It wouldn’t be a garden without lots of lush greens and leaves.
-Keeping a bright but soft color palette. You will want to restrain from limiting your color palette and be sure to incorporate the whole range of colors. Having too narrow a palette will stray from the wild look. It is also good to avoid too many dark colors to keep things bright and light. Lastly, neon and an over-abundance of bright colors may become too loud and lack overall softness.
-Let things droop! Allow stems to hang and dip down. Consider materials that will help accentuate adding drama and length in every direction.
-Avoid symmetry and uniformity. One of the most key ingredients is keeping things as beautifully wild as possible and freeing the viewer from any remnants of the man-made. Symmetry and uniformity are the enemy of garden style. Embrace uniqueness even from centerpiece to centerpiece, bridesmaid’s bouquet to bridesmaid’s bouquet. There is a scale of control you can practice here on just how wild you want to go. This is the area that will most greatly impact how “garden-y” or whimsical your wedding is. Anywhere on that scale is a fine place to be!
Materials we used for this wedding:
Roses, craspedia, lunaria, happy flower, broom bloom, caspia, plumosa fern, eucalyptus, ammobium, stoebe, integrifolia, peonies, echinops, strawflowers and sola flowers.