A happy afternoon with eldestdaughter practicing bouquets, buttonholes and table posies.
She is off soon to Seattle USA to be a bridesmaid and be in charge of flowers for a friend’s wedding. (She is a journalist by trade, not a florist!).
The fashion is for natural flowers at weddings now. No more wired bouquets and stiff arrangements – jam jars are in, Oasis is out. And bouquets are hand tied affairs usually with unbound stems. (The seamstress in me worries terribly about plant juices dripping onto silk dresses!)
Country style hand tied bouquet
A raid on my little cottage garden provided all the flowers we needed for a dummy run. We picked roses, cornflowers, alchemilla, cat mint, ox-eye daisies, marjoram and sweet williams.
Cottage border at Tin Bath House
MiniPitel did of course learn flower arranging from an early age, at her mother’s knees. ‘Alchemilla mollis’ was one of her first words. So she was really pretty good at it – how hard can it be to cram blooms into a jam jar?
Jam jar posy
The secret is to have a variety of materials – nice foliage, some frothy flowers like gypsophilla, medium flowers and then some ‘star flowers’ such as roses – all to be placed together in a balanced distribution. And I explained the golden rule that everything needs to be stood overnight in deep water beforehand, otherwise it simply can’t last.
Buttonhole
I advise to do as much as possible the day before. Never let the bride help, as it will ruin her hands. Don’t forget to spray everything with water. It’s not only the guests who are going to need a drink – have vases at the reception ready to place the bouquets in, so that they can be revived. And do get the bride to practice holding her bouquet and looking in a mirror – pointing the flowers outwards, away from the body to avoid that ‘lollipop look’ in the photos.
Creating table posies
