church flowers

The bridal bouquet and bride’s maid’s flowers are usually quite time consuming to make, these are the types of designs that require all of florists experience and talent.  Every bridal bouquet is different and some take several hours to prepare and construct.  Wired teardrop bouquets for example consist of many small pieces including flowers, leaves, decorative wire or beads.  Every single flower and piece of foliage is painstakingly wired with different gauges of wire depending on the size and weight of the flower and then taped to seal in moisture.  The buttonholes are also time consuming as they are also wired and taped.  The afternoon before a wedding often turns into a very late day putting the finishing touches to designs and preparing toolboxes and props to take with us for assembling any designs that have to be put together on site at the church or wedding reception.

On the morning of the wedding it’s all hustle and bustle.  We check the itinerary for delivery times so we know where we have to be at specific points of the day.  The ribbon on the bride’s bouquet and bride’s maids bouquets are finished off once they have been taken out of water, and carefully packaged for transporting to the bride.  After a final check over all the other designs we are ready to pack up the van for delivering the flowers.  Packing the van can be a challenge itself, to get everything in safely and positioned so it won’t fall over or crush any other designs en route.  The bridal flowers are normally delivered to the bride one to two hours before the wedding.  I like to deliver the bride’s bouquet personally to ensure the bride is delighted with the flowers and advise her how to hold her bouquet.

After delivering the bridal flowers the next stop is the church or ceremony room.  Usually the men’s buttonholes are delivered to the ceremony.  We attach pew ends arrangements and position other arrangements like pedestal flowers or garlands.  We have to set up the ceremony flowers and leave before the guests arrive.  If the groom and ushers arrive early they usually need a little help attaching their buttonholes.  Next stop is the reception venue.