Wedding Bouquet

Wedding Bouquet via Flickr: jenniamigo

Tips For Brides to Bring Nature & Romance Into Your Special Day

In a previous post about natural wedding trends we discussed wedding gowns and bride’s maids dresses, wedding invitations, and table card ideas, as well as wedding hair and makeup that we have seen gaining increased popularity in our NJ weddings. But natural wedding trends extend to so much else, especially flowers and décor. Read more…

Wedding bouquets have been brightly-colored for the past few wedding seasons, with more couples choosing vibrant shades rather than pastel shades for their bride’s bouquets and bridesmaid bouquets. We’re in an era of lively hues for both daytime and nighttime weddings, with combinations of 2012 wedding colors such as lilac and blue, orange and yellow, and red and orange, with seasonal weddingcombinations also abounding.

Wedding Bouquet

Pastels. When 2012 wedding couples choose pastel bouquet shades, it’s most often for a romantic, Victorian-style wedding, or one inspired by the royal wedding. Soft pinks and blush blue bouquet colors are still in-demand by today’s romantic-styled bride, and we’re also seeing pastel yellow and soft sage green in the pastel wedding bouquet trends list.

All white with sparkle. All-white wedding bouquets still stand out, with our New Jersey brides adding in lots of bling in the form of Swarovski crystals and rhinestones in the bouquet construction itself, often pressed into the centers of roses, or affixed to ribbons that wrap around the bouquet handle or cascade through the bouquet design itself.

Brooches with bling. Artsy brides are starting to create DIY wedding bouquets made entirely of rhinestone brooches for dazzling sparkle, carrying a piece of jewelry art rather than florals.

Fluffier flowers. The flowers used in 2012’s top wedding bouquet designs include roses, calla lilies, gardenias, imported tropical stephanotis, and softer, fluffier flowers such as peonies and ranunculus. Carnations are no longer looked at as a ‘cheap flower,’ since the new varieties of this bloom give brides an array of bright colors and fluffy, ridged petals, some striped and some lined with coordinating colors.

An array of flowers. Brides want visual interest in their bouquet flowers and are choosing a blend of traditional, unique and local flowers to keep their costs down while designing their dream wedding bouquets. What’s out is the single flower carried by each of the bridesmaids – it’s too obvious an attempt at wedding budget savings and doesn’t make enough of a design impact.

Handle design. Brides are paying special attention to the décor on their bouquet handles, often requesting that their floral stems be wrapped with lengths of stunning satin or silk, tied with a ribbon bow, and pinned with pearl or crystal accents in a line down the handle. The days of the arched plastic carrying handle are over, and now the handle gets its time to shine. The fabric on the handle may be an intricately-wrapped combination of white and pastel pink satin, with a crystal brooch affixing the ribbon wrap. Or a crystal brooch affixed to the bottom circle of the bouquet stems for a unique effect. Some of our Northern New Jersey brides say they attach saint medallions, goddess medallions and family heirloom pins or medallions to their bouquet handles to provide an extra dash of luck and protection for their marriage.

Personalized to your wedding look. Wedding bouquets invite our brides to partner with their local floral designers to create a dramatic bouquet coordinating with their dress and complementary to their height and frame, also personalized with their choices of flower colors, foliage styles, and added bouquet accents for the perfect, dream bridal bouquet, as well as subtler bridesmaid bouquets and the new trend: small bouquets for moms, grandmothers and flowergirls to carry.

Your bouquet will look lovely coordinated with the romantic wedding venue’s gardens in bloom, as well as with your wedding décor details.

Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau

When brides design their bridesmaids’ bouquets, they follow the latest trends in coordinating these pretty wedding flower pieces with their own spotlight bride’s bouquets. Of course, the bride’s bouquet stands out above all with its size and the lushness of its florals, the sparkle of rhinestones or the shimmer of crystals accenting the bouquet. Most of our New Jersey brides want their own bouquets to shine, but they also want their bridesmaids’ bouquets to be lovely both in person and in their wedding photos and wedding video. They want their bridesmaids to love the flowers they’re carrying.

Another trend that carries into bridesmaid bouquet design is the use of those bouquets as wedding décor accents, perhaps surrounding the wedding cake, or placed as decorations by the guest book, tribute photos, on the family photo table and at other spots throughout the wedding venue. With a décor spotlight on bridesmaid bouquets, great care is taken to design these beautiful bouquets.

Here are the top bridesmaid bouquet design trends that we have seen here at the Pleasantdale Chateau and that local New Jersey special event planners and floral designers have reported as being the most often-requested wedding floral design ideas:

• The bridesmaids’ bouquets are a few inches smaller than the bride’s bouquet. Not dramatically smaller. Not half the size of the bride’s bouquet, but just a few inches smaller in diameter.
• The bridesmaids’ bouquet colors coordinate with the bride’s bouquet flower colors, with the bridesmaids’ flower colors featured in more pastel shades than the bride’s vibrant bouquet hues, or the bridesmaids’ vibrant bouquets being comprised of two bright colors – such as red and orange – while the bride simply carries an all-red bouquet.
• The maid of honor’s bouquet is most often designed to stand out from the bridesmaids’ flowers, often including a greater number of brightly-colored flowers.
• The bridesmaids’ bouquets consist of mostly the same types of flowers that the bride has included in her own bouquet, but the bride gets a greater number of exotic or larger flowers in her bouquet.
• Bridesmaids’ bouquets are made in the same style as the bride’s bouquet, with the vast majority of our New Jersey brides from Short Hills, Mendham, Morristown, Far Hills, Franklin Lanes, Basking Ridge and other local regions choosing hand-tied bouquets for their bridesmaids. This is a return to a true bouquet style for bridesmaids, a welcome change from the budget-saving trend of having bridesmaids carry a single rose or a single calla lily. Many brides feel that a single bloom doesn’t fit with a lavishly-planted, floral garden wedding venue or a wedding ballroom decorated with large, dramatic floral arrangements. So bridesmaids’ bouquets have returned to a chic, modern hand-tied style.
• Bridesmaids’ bouquets are designed to include a touch of sparkle from crystal or rhinestone pin accents within the blooms or affixed to the handle.
• Brides are using unique leaves and tiny flower filler in their bridesmaids’ bouquets to provide a visually interesting look and also keep their floral design costs lower, giving them more of their wedding flower budget to devote to their own bouquets, centerpieces and wedding cake flowers.

Best,

Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Château

A bride may dream most often and most vocally about her wedding gown, but it’s the design of her bridal bouquet that puts that perfect finishing touch on her wedding day look. The trends in wedding flowers change often, with bouquets growing larger then shrinking again into tightly-packed masterpieces filled with roses and stephanotis, and our New Jersey brides’ bouquets are now especially accessorized with sparkle and glamour and diamond pins.

We’ve collected the latest trends in bride’s bouquet designs, to help you create your ideal wedding flowers look, and complete your dream wedding day ensemble:

Bouquet Styles: Ninety-five percent of today’s wedding bouquets are hand-tied designs, in which the flowers are gathered together by hand in a symmetrical, round design, then the stems are wrapped first with securing floral tape, then wrapped again with wide, satin ribbon. This style provides for both formal and informal wedding looks as the most modern and stylish of today’s brides’ bouquet selections.

Bouquet Colors: Vibrant colors are in, with our New Jersey brides looking to the recent Pantone Color Report for wedding hues to adhere to the current hot shades of coral, turquoise, yellow, bright red, fuchsia, and purple. Bright, vibrant wedding bouquets may be monochromatic – such as an all-red bouquet — or they may be mixes of bright colors and a lighter shade of that same color. Still popular among many of our brides is the all-white bridal bouquet, perhaps with subtle touches of light pink or sage green flowers to add just a bit of dimension in the bouquet.

Here are some of the top bouquet color combinations expected as the hot shades of spring and summer this year:

• Red and orange

• Coral and yellow

• Yellow and sage green

• Purple and lilac

• Blue and purple

Bouquet Flowers: The top bride’s bouquet flowers include the top overall wedding flowers in the New Jersey wedding realm, with roses continuing to be the most popular at elegant weddings. Our brides love exotic wedding flowers in their wedding décor as well as in their bouquets, so we’re seeing more orchids and gardenias in floral pieces carried by our brides. And for both formal and informal garden weddings, the bride’s bouquet includes lilies, peonies, tulips, hydrangeas, and stephanotis.

Bouquet Accents: As mentioned, our local New Jersey brides bring their sense of sophisticated style into their bridal bouquets as well as to their wedding gowns, accenting their bouquets – within the blooms and on the wrapped handle — with crystal pins, jewel pins, rhinestone picks, pearl pins, and even true diamond brooches or pins that may be gifts from the groom or their parents, or may be an heirloom jewelry pieces handed down to her by a beloved relative or her new in-laws. Our brides are also incorporating into their wedding floral décor and bridal bouquets tiny accent touches that convey their wedding theme: seashells or butterflies or feathers are seen most often lately here at our West Orange wedding venue. And many of our brides add a touch of good luck to their bouquets by pinning on saint medallions or inserting a lucky penny into them.

With so much design thought and value placed on the bridal bouquet, it’s rarely this floral piece that is presented to a special female relative, or thrown to the awaiting single ladies. Most of our brides have at the ready a separate, small bouquet or nosegay featuring bright, fresh flowers that is used for this wedding celebration ritual.

Best,

Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Château