Wedding Flowers

Book excerpt: Drawing on 15 years’ experience of designing wedding flowers for royalty and celebrity clients, with Wedding Flowers Paula Pryke guides you through planning the floral arrangements for your own wedding day. Beginning by helping you choose a theme for your wedding, Paula then looks at each element of the day in detail. She shows how different flower types and colours can be used to create an overarching theme, and how blending seasonal choices with cultivated flowers can help achieve your chosen look. From the reception centrepieces and ceremony flowers, through the bridesmaids’ and other attendants’ accessories, to the bridal bouquet itself, Paula helps you find the style that is perfect for you. The bridal bouquet is a key part of the bride’s outfit and Paula devotes an entire chapter to looking at this in detail. She shows how to match the bouquet shape and colour scheme to the bride’s dress and accessories, using a series of case studies in modern and traditional styles. Throughout the book, exquisite photography shows the fine details of each arrangement, while the text describes exactly which flowers you need to recreate any of the bouquets featured within. In subsequent chapters Paula has tips on designing flowers for the bridal party to compliment the bouquet, including planning decorations for child attendants. She gives a host of ideas for embellishing entrances, pew ends and chair backs to create a beautiful overall effect and shows how flowers can help your reception to sparkle, with the simplest of floral napkin rings or the most elaborate of buffet table focal points. Finally, for those readers who wish to contribute to the event themselves, a series of step-by-step arrangements are included, demonstrating how to recreate some of Paula’s most popular wedding flower designs. With Paula Pryke to guide you, your wedding day is guaranteed to be one to remember.