To carry on with the rest of our DIY wedding (oh no, it didn’t end with the wedding dress!), the flowers were something we’d both thought about, but hadn’t really wanted to go overboard with, preferring instead for subtle and personal accents. My bridal bouquet of white roses, plus two bridesmaids’ bouquets, and a ton of rose buttonholes for the gents, were all made by James’s Auntie Anne, who is a keen amateur florist. She even sent me a self-addressed envelope to get fabric swatches of the bridesmaids dresses so she could best match their bouquets to their dresses!
How gorgeous is this centrepiece, too? I told her since we weren’t having “wedding colours” (ugh ugh ugh!) that she should either go for all colours, or just white. So she incorporated the bridesmaids’ dress colours into it and I just love it. I think it’s just stunning, and I’m glad we got to enjoy it during the ceremony and then again during dinner at the top table.
The flowers on the tables were all potted flowers that were very lovingly tended and grown by James’s mum, Anne. I wanted them to be pansies, petunias, and African violets in memory of my paternal grandmother, and she did a fantastic job coaxing these to their best long after they’d usually be in season.
And for the traditional confetti toss, we used lavender buds that we stripped and packaged up in vintage gardening labels as documented here. They worked great on the day, and thankfully weren’t too difficult to brush off us! They made the entrance to the mansion at Bletchley Park smell amazing for the entire day and well into the following day, too.
The last bit of flowers on the day were also well documented on this site as we’ve been working on them for months with many hands taking part in sewing on the beads! We made great and varied use of those organza flowers – some were thrown with the confetti, others were worn as brooches by special people, and the rest were used as decorations on the cake table.
Most of these photos are by Paul Tanner at Sixpence