11 Bloomin’ lovely! Jenny’s Wedding Diary

Next on our list were the flowers. Again, we didn’t have much of a budget for these, so we had to be inventive…

Luckily, the church will do our flowers for us (if we pay for the foliage itself!), and members of the flower‐arranging group will hopefully arrange them for us. Mum has helped decorate the church a few times (for services at Christmas, Easter and the Harvest Festival), so she knows how it all works. But that still leaves us with the problem of what to do with the reception venue…

As we are going for a very traditional wedding, we decided to go for traditional flower arrangements. There are a few rafters in the reception venue, so we thought it would be really nice to have some hop bines across them. Hops are really traditional, and they’ll give the venue a lovely rustic feeling. We tried looking through the usual sources ‐ magazines, the directories on confetti and so on ‐ but we couldn’t find exactly what we’re looking for.

Eventually, after hours on the internet, we found a company down in Kent, who have agreed to send some hop bines up to us in April ‐ just a couple of months before the wedding. This way we can take them down to our reception venue and arrange them ourselves. The hop company also sold decorative wheat stooks, and so we bought a few to decorate the tables.

For the bridesmaids’ bouquets, I decided to go with the same rustic, summer theme. A local gentleman makes corn‐dollies and flower baskets. We went along and asked him if he could make some small, decorative baskets for the girls, and he produced some beautiful examples of his work. After a few weeks, a box arrived at the house, with six, perfect corn‐dolly baskets inside. They are exactly what we wanted, and we can’t wait to fill them with flowers.

Finally, I had to decide what I wanted for my own bouquet. My dress is quite simple, and so I didn’t want my flowers to overshadow it. In the end, we popped into our local village florists and asked for their help.

They suggested that I have a hand‐tied bouquet, which looks as if I’ve walked through a meadow and gathered the flowers myself. I also remembered that Dad grows roses in our front garden ‐ he nurtures them through the winter, and every summer they bloom and fill the garden with colour. He has one white rosebush that has been there since he and Mum moved to the house nearly thirty years ago. I’d really love to have some of these white roses in my bouquet, and the florist has said she can work them into the arrangement.

I’m really glad we’ve gone for the more traditional ideas for our bouquets. They’ll give a lovely “country wedding” feeling to the day.

I think the most important thing to remember when you’re arranging your flowers, is that they are one of the most important things for defining the style of your wedding. They’re the first things that the guests see at the venue, and they’re very important for complimenting your outfit. They have to be what you want them to be. Experiment ‐ go to flower shops and markets, and have a look at what’s available; and if you have an original idea, don’t be too shy to ask someone how to achieve the desired effect.

Now there are only eight weeks to go for us, and the big day is getting very close! I’m not sure whether to tear my hair out and run round like a headless chicken, or jump around and boogie with excitement! Maybe I’ll do both!