Bloomsday Flowers

Love this vintage lace wedding theme from HeartLoveWeddings.com…pretty paper nosegay cones and crochet lace rosettes in the bouquets!

Another recent bridal bouquet using Cool Water roses…love this rose, the perfect shade of purpley-pink to go with all the navy and midnight blue bridesmaids’ dresses that are popular right now.  Combined with all of our favourite summer flowers–phlox, stock, chamomile, viburnum–it has become a bit of a signature bouquet for us!

We did a beautiful wedding a couple of weeks ago, in the Bayview Hotel in Ballycotton, Co. Cork.  The bride loved our vintage style ‘collection’ table centres, but wanted to use china, crystal, and silver vases, along with some of our little collaged jars.  I suggested that we line the tables with a selection of antique linens and doilies that we have here in the shop, to complement the pretty, ‘granny’s dining room’ feel.

The Bayview has a lovely atmosphere, very intimate with low ceilings and lots of antiques decorating the room, and is perfect for vintage style weddings.  We were all delighted with how they came out, we used the pew ends from the ceremony in a large vase along with cuttings in the smaller containers and fallen petals on the table.  I would recommend collecting or hiring vintage china cruets and sugar bowls in the future, to complete the look, but it was a gorgeous effect altogether, with the sun filtering into the room which overlooked Ballycotton Bay, a really stunning reception venue, can’t recommend it enough!

Contact the Bayview Hotel in Ballycotton, Co. Cork, on 021-464-6746 or visit their website at bayviewhotel.com.  For china hire, contact Pearl and Godiva on 086-783-8298 or visit pearlandgodiva.com.

The summer issue of Martha Stewart Weddings magazine has a beautiful feature on affordable wedding flowers.  Love the images and the ideas are really practical and entirely suitable for Irish brides!

Lots of seasonal ‘wildflowers’, which is a look we always recommend, in really loose arrangments and bouquets.

Love the gypsophila garland– gyp is cheap, holds well out of water, and is available year round…would look beautiful for a winter wedding.

You can see the entire photo gallery at marthastewartweddings.com.  Be sure to have a look around the site, amazing wedding inspiration there!

I came across a tutorial for this pretty garland and it spoke to my deep and abiding need to hang pretty things everywhere.  It would be perfect for wedding decorations, around the door of the church or across the top table, maybe?  It would be easy to make up in wedding colours, use up scraps of fabric or indulge yourself in a few metres of gorgeous quilting cottons.

It’s really easy to make–really!–and only requires some basic childlike skills, such as cutting with scissors and tying knots.  Perhaps some ironing.  Everything you need could be bought at Hickey’s, and if you can’t find the fusible interfacing, you could just use PVA glue, seriously.  Get your bridesmaids over and ply them with wine and cakes, you’ll end up with metres of it in no time.

This tutorial is courtesy of the beautful blog Two Shades of Pink, and is in two parts, here and here.

It has been positively arctic this last week in Ireland!  Up north, everyone is snowed in, and even down here in Cork we are struggling with the bitter cold and icy roads.

My heart goes out to the couples who have planned their weddings for this week!  Not only is it so hard to travel, but even the logistics of getting everything moved and delivered must be so difficult.  At least they will have beautiful snowy, wintery photos!

If anyone is planning a winter wedding, a suggestion for a beautiful flower to include in bouquets and church flower is the snowberry.  The best feature of the showberry is that it grows really well in Ireland and is easy to find!  Even the imported version from Holland is really reasonably priced and has a long season, starting in late summer through to winter.

Snowberry looks most dramatic in white, but also comes in a pink variety,  It has a woody stem with long, dangling side shoots, and looks beautiful cascading down in a teardrop bouquet or a raised table centre arrangement.  The berries make gorgeous buttonholes, too!

These examples of bouquets made with snowberries may inspire you…the mixed, all white bouquet features a wide ribbon that adds a vintage romantic touch.  A full bouquet of all snowberries looks amazing, and would actually be really good value as it is not an expensive flower.  The buttonholes feature dried scabiosa seed pods, which look great on their own or could even be sprayed silver or gold for a bit of christmas glitz.  The bridal bouquet photos are from Martha Stewart Weddings, and the buttonholes were featured in an amazing wedding blog feature you can view here.

If you are interested in having a consultation for your winter wedding and would like to see some snowberries, just let us know when booking your appointment and we will try to have them in the shop to show you!