Wedding Flowers Part 5: Something (out of) the Blue

On a Thursday afternoon a young couple walked into the store out of the blue. They had found us online and were looking for flowers for a wedding … in two days! Usually our florists book a consultation anywhere from six months to a year in advance of the wedding date. Two days in advance? Most unusual. Were we up for it? Of course.

Our head florist sat down with the couple, Jing Yu Wang and Peng Fei Wu, and the groom’s parents and asked some basic questions to get the ball rolling. What is the dress like? Who is in the wedding party? The dress was to be short and “poufy” and the gathering was to be small and simple: just a few close friends and relatives.

To find out more about the Jing’s taste, we offered her a book with some sample bouquets and went to look at some ideas from the wedding section of The Flower Pot’s website. While the bride liked what she saw, we were still waiting for that “a-ha moment” – the moment when she would see the flowers that just felt right. For inspiration, we decided to go behind the scenes and brought the bride back to the work area to see what flowers were in stock. In the fridge we had some beautiful miniature pink calla lilies. As soon as she saw them, Jing knew that she had found her wedding bouquet.

The natural choice for Peng’s boutonnière was a coordinating calla lily. The groom’s mother wanted a colourful corsage, so we found a Cézanne rose with bursts of red and white, along with some decorative statis, which everyone agreed was just the thing. The red then worked into the red roses chosen for the best man’s boutonnière and a cousin’s corsage. And for the maid of honour’s corsage they went with a large cymbidium orchid wristlet.
The flowers were booked that Thursday afternoon and delivered early Saturday for the ceremony. It was surely a whirlwind, but then again, we like to be kept on our toes.