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Floral Chandeliers

Add some drama to your wedding or event with a floral chandelier.  It will create a focal point in the room and be a real talking point for guests.  Earlier in the summer I posted some articles about the Chelsea Florist of the Year and Young Florist of the Year competitions.  The florists had to create a floral chandelier for the Queen’s Jubilee dinner.  Some of the lucky entrants even got to meet the Queen when she visited the show and admired their work.

Today I’ve got some more chandelier inspiration for you and a few more of the amazing chandeliers from Chelsea Flower Show.  The design above has been attached to a chandelier in a wedding marquee.  It features vibrant lime, purple and cerise flowers, with dendrobium and phalaenopsis orchids hanging down.

The stunning chandelier above was made by Jessica Rose Andrews from The Garden Rose florist.  The design is based on a chandelier frame wrapped with textiles and hanging glass baubles.  I love how the intense indigo and violet flowers contrast with the green passion flower vines.  Jessica was awarded a gold medal for her design.

This chandelier by Betsy Ford is a simple but effective wedding decoration.  Betsy has hung germinis from a chandelier of fairy lights.

Katie-Jane Pridmore made this very elegant design, it contained lots of strings of pearls and intricate wire work.  The central garland of flowers contained phalaenopsis orchids, cymbidium orchids, carnations and gypsophila. Katie-Jane received a Silver Grenfell medal for her piece.

This beautiful tiered chandelier is by Erica Tippett of Bleujen Florist.  I really like this design, it was awarded a Bronze Grenfell medal, which I think is a bit mean.  The design features gold chains and hundreds of hanging crystals.

Floral Chandeliers can be very extravagant with hundreds of flowers and twinkling crystals, like the ones at Chelsea show or quite simple.  If your venue already has a central chandelier, your florist may be able to make a simple design of hanging flowers to rest on it. Which ever style of design you decide on it is sure to create wow factor and be remembered by your guests.

Images:

1 Cerise chandelier – stylemepretty.com, Donna Von Bruening Photography

2 Purple chandelier – Jessica Rose Andrews, The Rose Garden

3 Yellow gerbera chandelier – greenweddingshoes.com, Lemon Lime Photography

4 White chandelier- Katie-Jane Pridmore

5 Gold tiered chandelier – Erica Tippett, Bleujen Florist

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Amy-Ford-with-her-Chandelier-Chelsea-2012

Essex based florists Curtis & Ford have been awarded two medals in the RHS Chelsea Florist of the Year competition 2012. An amazing achievement! they are only business to gain two medals in the same year.  The floristry competition attracts hundreds of entrants from around the country and showcases the best in professional floristry.  The double success comes after winning international awards in 2011.

The brief was to design and produce a large Chandelier to be hung at a Jubilee dinner for the Queen.  Amy Ford gained a Silver-Gilt medal for her stunning white and lace chandelier design.  Amy Curtis was awarded a Bronze medal for her beautiful design that had a very natural and organic feel to it.

Amy-Curtis-Chelsea-2012

Amy Curtis
Amy has worked in floristry for 9 years; she has studied business management at A Level and gained a Foundation Degree in professional floristry at Writtle College.  Amy is relatively new to competing and was thrilled to qualify for this years Chelsea Flower Show.  She said “Many florists compete to qualify for the Chelsea final their entire careers without ever qualifying… so the fact that one of us qualified was fantastic but to both qualify and to both achieve a medal is just fantastic, we are very proud of all the hours of work we have put in!”

Amy-Curtis-close-up-Chelsea-2012

Amy’s design featured hundreds of branches bound with paper covered wire holding tiny test tubes.  The tubes contained phalaenopsis orchids, freesia, roses, eryngium, anemones and spray roses.  It was adorned with beads, crystals drops and diamante brooches. The intricate design took over 350 hours to complete.

Amy Ford
Amy has completed A Levels in Art & Design, Photography and English Literature.  She found floristry at 21 after studying Glass design.  Amy has since gone on to complete levels 2, 3 and 4 in floristry.  Amy gained the highest practical grade in the country for her Level 4 exam.

Amy-Ford-side-view-of-chandelier-Chelsea-2012

To prepare for Chelsea piece Amy painstakingly made over 100 panels with fabric, beads and wire.   They were sewed, crocheted and beaded; each panel took 2.5 hours to make.  On the competition day Amy worked from 4am on Wednesday right up until the final whistle at 12.45am Thursday to finish her design.  She used various techniques on her piece, she layered and wove bark and leaves onto the panels and dotted flowers throughout.  Amy made 18 beaded panels for each tier using a total of 20,000 beads!

Amy-Ford-Chandelier-close-up-Chelsea-2012

Many of the flowers were glued onto the design but some of the more fragile flowers were placed in tiny test tubes.  Most of the flowers were arranged in a massed style, Amy used reindeer moss, phalaenopsis orchids, white Lydia spray rose, Romantic Pepita spray rose, tanacetum, triteleia, spray carnations, brunia, cotton bush and hyacinth.

Both designs are now on show at Serenity Bridal, 17 St.Botolphs Street, Colchester.

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