We had the most amazing experience last weekend when a woman walked in with a photo of her mother and father’s wedding. They were celebrating thier 40th anniversary and she wanted to recreate the entire wedding including the bride’s bouquet, the four bride’s maids, the two flower girls baskets and the boutonnieres for the groom’s men. It was like an episode of CSI in the flowershop as poured of the photos to accurately recreate the scene.
The photos she had were in excellent condition and the quality was good, so we were able to determine that her mother had originally carried a triangular form, cascading bridal bouquet. It has a lace collar backing and tufts of tulle in the bouquet. It was all white featuring white cushion mums and white staphanotis blossoms (small, white, fragrant star-shaped flowers) in a bed of fresh ivy with a large purple catalaya orchid right at the center.
Her bride’s maids carried small posey bouquets of white and lavender cushon mums and babies breath with lace collar backings and tulle tufsts inside the bouquet. Streamers of thing ribbon in purple satin and white satin picotee (fine looped frills on the edge) cascaded almost to the floor. The flower girls baskets were festuned with bows of the same ribbon, filled with a bed of leather leaf fern and topped off with a mixuture of white and lavender cushion mums.
Her father wore a boutonniere of three stephanotis flowers with a simple ivy leaf on the back and his grooms men wore single white carnations with ivy leaf backings.
It was a trip pull out some techniques we hadn’t used in years and recreate a magical memory for them. We did have some interesting hiccups in the process. The cushion mums weren’t available for the bouquets so we used the Florigene lavender carnations and white carnations.
We had lost the box of stephanotis stems. The natural stem on stephanotis is short, less than a 1/2″ so each flower has a soaked cotton fiber plug on a long wire inserted down inside it. They are then securred with floral tape and a pearl is glued into the throat of each flower to camoflauge the cotton fiber plug. It was eventually found in the very back of a drawer.
We had also just the month prior, thrown away a package of premade lace bouquet collars. They aren’t used anymore, since most bouquets are handtied with the natural stems exposed. When we do use a bouquet holder (the foam spheres in the plastic cages with the plastic handle) we normall use live folliage to cover the back of the holder and ribbon to cover the plastic handle. So, we had to make our own using a mantilla style lace on a roll. It was a lot of labor, but the end result looked so close to the photo, I know the bride was thrilled.
We didn’t have time to get photos of the bouquets before the bride’s daughter picked them up, but to see pictures of our bridal work and bouquets we have created for wedding runway shows, click here http://www.lowesfloral.com/flower_gallery/52 .
All in all, the wedding was a great adventure to re-create and we know the couple had a wonderful anniversary party with their family and friends. We waited to publish this post since the bouqets were a surprise and we didn’t want to spoil it!
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