It was lovely/daunting/thrilling to be asked to do the flowers for Sarah and Tom's wedding. They are fun and smiley people, who like knitting and Doctor Who. They write and perform comedy and are generally all round good and kind folk.
Their invites were starbursts of acid yellow and fire engine red; exuberant, and not at all stuffy. So when Sarah and I met a couple of months before the wedding and she said she was thinking that she should have a blue colour scheme I said 'nah, you want oranges and pinks and reds and yellows, you want a clashing mess of happiness' she agreed. (and later emailed to tell me I was super, and that she was feeling both affirmed and excited about flowers, which is not how she'd felt before hand)
Ranunculus were declared *the* favourite flower, but given the time of year, it was touch and go as to if they would be available, so I promised a bouquet of full and petally loveliness, and headed to New Covent Garden the morning before the wedding to choose a heady selection of joyous flowers. By sheer good fortune I arrived early enough to snaffle four of the only five bunches of ranunculus in the country: Italian beauties in gold, saffron and reds. I freestyled from there buying flowers with names I dont know, and can't remember.
I had also made plans to steal folliage from Tom's parents gardens (and a few neighbours) which despite being November proved fruitful, and particularly useful for the altar flowers and button-holes where little leaves, and swaying fronds helped to create a magical hedegerow like feel I was going for.
Sarah's grandparents -who'd sadly passed before seeing Sarah wed- were champion fuscia growers, so it seemed like a fitting hat tip to them to incorporate these pretty little flowers, along with rosemary for rememberance. Fuscias are seldom flowering in November and don't live long once cut, and all the websites I looked at said they are ill-suited to wedding floristry but actually they joined in brilliantly, nodding along happily.
[this is sarah with her pa, not with tom]
These great photos were taken by Idil Sukan, I do hope she doesn't mind me including them here, I couldn't fit my camera in my purse (and they wouldnt have been half as nice)
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