And the sun shone too – finally!

The fabulous bright colours of Hannah and Adrian’s wedding flowers were totally in keeping with the joyous feeling of the day.  They are a really cool couple and they carried off with style the beautiful clash of dark purples, pillar-box reds and acid greens.

I used a combination of gerberas, tulips, lisianthus and bupleurum  to create contemporary, summery bouquet for Hannah with red gerberas for all her bridesmaids and the buttonholes and corsages.  Adrian was happy to go for it with his buttonhole so he got the sexy dark lisianthus too.

The reception was held at St. Dunstan’s College in South London which has a large and very grand hall.  Hannah organised the arrangements for the tables but I sorted out the quantities and purchase of flowers from New Covent Garden Market to ensure that the quality was good and costs were kept down.  There are lots of ways of keeping to a budget (something Stemgirl is a bit fanatical about) and this is a nice example of florist and client collaborating to make things work.  Here’s what Hannah has to say about Stem:

“Ruth was a joy to work with, from the first meeting when she welcomed us into her home to her smiling face as she handed over the bouquet on the wedding morning. The flowers were gorgeous, she chose perfectly for a us as we had no idea of all the varities on offer, one of the best things was during the consultation being shown in a book what flowers she was thinking of. The final result was even better than we expected and looking back at the photos they match perfectly with our bright colourful day!”  Thank you, Hannah!

And very well done to you both!

 

Thank you to Rachael Emily Photography for letting me use her fantastic, vibrant photos.  They really capture the  joyous vibe of the day.

A lovely, busy weekend

Well, what a great (if exhausting) weekend Stem had at The UK Wedding Show!  Once we’d negotiated the slightly mad roads around the ExCel Centre London, managing to get lost only a couple of times, we set up our stand with fabulous spring-time flowers and a collection of beautiful bouquets.

In planning the flowers we were going to use, we tried really hard to come up with a way of giving a good indication of Stem’s personality and creativity.  We hoped to create a slightly whimsical, magical display and I think it worked!

Quirky accessories, cute little brightly coloured birds, loads of seasonal foliage and branches of blossom looked absolutely gorgeous next to the fragrant narcissi and hyancinths, tulips, anemones and feverfew.  We even planted  jewel coloured primulas in teacups, milk-jugs and sugar bowls.

We had a smashing day working alongside Beauberry House, Shot by the Sheriff, Katie Fine, SLR Management and Eloise Prouse and were really frantically busy talking to lovely people on both days. Thanks to all of you who came to say hello!

Stem’s in print again…

Take a look at the September/October issue of Wedding Flowers Magazine and you’ll see some of our gorgeous flowers.  Hooray!

As the photoshoot took place at the very beginning of the summer, I made full use of the fabulous English flowers and foliage – Sarah Bernhardt peonies and Sweet Williams from John Austins and sorbus from GB Foliage.  The rambling rose was foraged in West Norwood!

loving this dress thing

Wow!  Professional photos of my flowers are on the wonderful Love My Dress blog after a really fun photo-shoot at Beauberry House.  Wedding organiser Andri Benson brought together a group of fabulous South London women who are all in the wedding trade and we rocked the whole day.  Pretty vintage flowers, romantic dresses, amazing cakes.   And now one very proud stemgirl.

And here are some of the photos I took.  Just so you can see the difference between my efforts and what a professional can do!

garden of (mimi) eden

If you’re thinking pretty and vintage I think the delicious colours of this delicate rose are absolutely fantastic in a bouquet or table centre.  I’ve used them here with ‘Akito’ roses, ‘Jana’ spray roses and wonderful, wonderful ‘Roma’ astrantia so the bright pink just pops here and there.  However, ‘Mimi Eden’ looks really beautiful when used on its own.  Recently, little posies for flower girls looked very cute.

On the down side, the petals are really delicate so I am very picky about the bunches I buy as there’s often already evidence of bruising at the market.  And they are not cheap!  But worth it, I reckon.

perfect and pink (and white too)

 

I don’t think I have to say anything, really.  How absolutely perfect are these nerines?  They’re in season now and are completely magical!  The bright pink ones above were used for all the bridesmaids (and buttonholes too) and the fantastic combination of white cymbidium orchids and nerines below was for Emma’s gorgeous bridal bouquet. 

passionately pink

Well, I think there’s no denying it.  Pink flowers are completely and utterly gorgeous.  And pink peonies and roses are just about as good as it gets.  For this summery wedding, Stem used an abundance of marshmallow pink ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ and lipstick pink ‘Dr. Fleming’ peonies throughout Beauberry House.  Then there were the armfuls of delicate pink and fragrant ‘Sweet Avalanche’ roses and romantic, lacy ammi.  Ooh, and tiny-leaved variegated ivy just to finish things off.

I love the simple groupings of flowers on the tables which were made a little more fancy with Stem’s posh silver-leaf votives!  And the newly painted pink wall in the Entrance Hall was zingingly complemented with loads of peonies, roses and acid green molucella (that’s Bells of Ireland to you and me) in a grown-up not grannyish pedestal display.  Little details, like the floating peony heads up the stairs with sparkling wire, make everything feel just a little more thought out and special.  A stunning, beautiful, romantic, sexy collection of blooms!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

roses are really red…

February has been a busy and romantic month for Stem Flowers.  Hooray for brides who choose the most gorgeous, most sexy red flowers for their weddings during this month!  Although the cost of red flowers (in particular) are really a bit silly around the 14th, my brides just went for it and chose rich colours, lots of candles and plenty of seasonal foliage.

We used fabulous ‘Royal Velvet’ and ‘Red Lion’ amaryllis and stunning ‘Majestic Red’ calla lilies.  And then, of course, there were the jewel-like ‘Grand Prix’ and ‘Black Baccara’ roses…..  Completely spectacular!  

a riot of colour

“Apart from the vows, the flowers are the most important part of my day” said my bride when I first met her.  No pressure, then!  This wedding was a real challenge for me because I knew how vital it was to get things right.  Not because Emily had outrageous demands but because getting the colours and textures spot-on were fundamental to making a massive, creative impact.  Oh, and the flowers needed to be individual, distinctive and un-weddingy….

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that I absolutely adore the combination of flowers and foliage we decided upon.  Magenta dendrobium orchids, intensly blue ‘Volkerfrieden’ delphiniums, deep cerise ‘Milano’ and garnet red ‘Grand Prix’ roses literally popped out of lush green flowering mint and zinging green bupleurum.  And the little details of red and pink satin ribbons on the bouquets, or the red pail for the flower girl, just added to the slightly quirky impact of the flowers.  Completely gorgeous!

Beauberry House is a very beautiful venue and a fabulous backdrop for gorgeous flowers so the absolute abundance we had really did the job of bringing colour and excitement to every room.  A wonderfully riotous and (not so) random selection of vessels and flowers adorned every availabe windowsill, table, mantelpiece and loo with everything coming together in an enormous expolsion of foliage and blooms in a contemporary Entrance Hall pedestal.  The two olive trees at the main doors didn’t get away with staying as they were – red and pink ribbons were candy-striped down the trunks and complementary kalanchoe plants were crammed around the bottom of each.  A rather exhausting day for stem flowers, I have to say, but there’s nothing so good as knowing that a venue looks fantastic and that the bride and groom love what you’ve done!

some things really make me feel happy

It’s lovely to get letters or phonecalls from people who are over the moon with our flowers.  It’s even lovelier when it’s from someone you wouldn’t necessarily expect to make contact.  One call came from a guest at Vanessa and Will’s gorgeous ceremony at Templeton House in Richmond.  She simply phoned to say how wonderful she thought the flowers were (and how lovely we were too!).  She wasn’t interested in passing on new work or anything like that.  She wasn’t a possible client.  She just wanted to say that she’d been there and the flowers were wonderful.  That made me feel rather good, I have to say.

And then the colour-fest that was Rebecca and Mark’s wedding at Beauberry House on Easter Saturday resulted in the most lovely card from Bec’s mum.  I was so touched that she had taken the time to write independently of her lovely girl and that she felt that “the colours were amazing”, that “everyone commented on how lovely the rooms at Beauberry looked” and that it had all helped make the day “happy and memorable”.  One quite chuffed stemgirl.