Silk Bouquets

Outside of holiday work permanent botanicals have not been something I spend enough time showing here on florissimo. Time to change that.
Silk and dried flowers of course have their place in interior decorating but are generally only thought of in bridal work only in relation to being more cost effective. Unless you are buying low end silk blooms prices are very comparable. In my opinion permanent elements must be chosen even more carefully than their fresh counterparts, in wedding photography there will be close up shots of the flowers and inferior quality blooms just don't show well.
  Top - A cascade bouquet of; roses, ranunculus, mini hydrangea, maidenhair fern, hops and pearl strands. In the modern cascade movement is key.
Middle - A clutch of peach roses, spray roses, ranunculus and seashells (photo by Rachel Bader.)
Bottom - A lily-of-the-valley bouquet.
  There's nothing wrong with wanting to have and hold your bouquet forever, I just suggest going to your design professional first.

peonies and ranunculus

A familiar, pretty combination of peonies and ranunculus. If a flower, style or color story is particularly relevant It will show up here more often, it helps both brides and myself be more trend conscious. The bridal bouquet is of; pink peonies, white ranunculus and green button mums. The bridesmaids bouquet is a monobotanical arrangement of white ranunculus.

structure

This past weekend I was at the Illinois State Floral Association's conference and had the honor of assisting Hitomi Gilliam. I used to build armatures and structures for my designs but was apparently quite lazy about it. River cane, curled and bound Midollino stems and red ranunculus in a cube vase. Bottom; a structure of fibersticks affixed to a metal stand that I assisted Hitomi with - a 4.5 ft. armature constructed in all too little time. When I get some appropriate flowers we'll talk about her "neo tropica" approach. Thanks Frankie, Shaun, Garrett, Arthur and Adam for a great time and some serious design inspiration!

tulips and friends

Some flowers for a show at Summit Lake Winery in Holts Summit Missouri. Tulips, roses, hydrangeas, ranunculus and buplerum. Come on spring!

narcissus

A pretty take on the all white bouquet: polar star roses, ranunculus, and wonderfully fragrant paper whites. Carrying white will always be in.

Marisa Boyd

           

Here we have another beauty - Marisa Boyd. Her wedding was at The Meremac Learning Adventure Ranch, a gorgeous lodge-style facility in the middle of nowhere in Steelville Mo. Other than the bouquets everything was created on-site. In my first meeting with Marisa she brought in a power point presentation of her vision. My kinda girl! It will take several posts to give you a feel for her day but we'll start with Marisa and her bouquet. I showed her bouquet shot against black last post so you could really look at the bouquet, but when a smiling girl holds a bouquet the flowers smile too!

a lovely white bouquet

Ranunculus, roses, some perfect mini callas and hypericum sprayed white. Using more ranunculus than roses along with the berries gives these classic girls some nice, color and texture variation. Aside from the bouquet and the dress nothing else in this wedding will be white...

garden roses

The juxtaposition of  delicate peach garden roses and yellow ranunculus against the rougher textured green button mums and pink astilbe makes this a fun bouquet to look at. You can take in the bouquet as a whole or focus on individual blooms. An excellent designer once told me that the most important aspect of design is choice. With today's round bridal bouquets this is especially true. Without the opportunity to use linear elements to make the eye move through the design it's good to focus on texture and color. Choose your flowers carefully and know what job each one is doing.

blush and white

A peek at Taryn Waint's bouquets. Blush pink peonies for the bride and monobotanical bridesmaids bouquets of white dahlias, roses and ranunculus. I didn't get all of the bouquets in this post and the centerpiece ideas are great. If my trend tracking is correct, this June bride is dead on. A sweet girl and a wonderful family from dad to dog. I feel a wedding crash coming on!

under the hood

Here is a lovely "scepter" style bouquet of hydrangea, tulips and ranunculus. The handle of this bouquet is about 1&1/2' long, hence the scepter moniker. If you look below you can see that some of the stems are quite short, so to create the illusion I've used headless stems of flowers to give it length. These are going to be some great bouquets and I will post the finished product tomorrow or Sunday.

  

black and white

A beautiful bouquet of anemones, ranunculus and roses.