Corsages

There is a huge choice when it comes to wedding flower bouquets. But how do you choose one to suit you?

Here is a quick run-down of four popular styles of bridal bouquets. If you consider these before visiting your florist for a consultation, you are much more likely to have a constructive meeting and come away with flowers that will be perfect for you.

Posy Bouquet
Traditional shape, giving a simple elegant look. Suits flowers such as roses, tulips, furunculous and peonies.

We've noticed hand-tied posy bouquets becoming more and more popular.

Click here for more ideas on posy wedding bouquets

Shower Bouquet (Cascade Bouquet)
Traditional teardrop shape, consisting of a posy with a trail of flowers and foliage.

Suitable for use with a wide variety of flowers. Click here for more photos

Sheath Bouquet (Arm Bouquet)
Long slender bouquet that is designed to be carried over one arm.

This is best suited to long stemmed flowers such as calla lilies (arum lilies), as seen in this photograph.

Creative Bouquet
These wedding flower bouquets are especially for the bride who wants to make a statement. They don't follow any set design and can be artistic, flamboyant as well as unique.

So let your imagination run wild, or really put your florist's creative skills to the test.

We created this bouquet using vandal orchids and made extensive use of decorative aluminum wire.


Decided on your style of bridal bouquet? Click here for ideas on types of flowers for wedding flower bouquets

Don't forget the bridesmaids. Here are some ideas for your bridesmaids' flowers

Terry Davies,
Flowers in Wales

check out more flower sites:

* Driedflowers.com Since 1978, J&T Imports has supplied both wholesale and retail customers with the finest quality dried & preserved botanicals in the world. Through industry trade shows and our colorful easy-to-shop website (www.driedflowers.com), we currently provide our customers with a large variety of products, including dried and preserved floral and botanical products, artificial and dried fruits and vegetables, wreaths, bouquets, decorative feathers and balls, recycling fountains, birdhouses, floral lighting, sandcast artwork, and beautiful hand-made products from Sonoma Lavender.

* NZ Flowers & Flower Shops NZ Flower Shop is an online flower directory of NZ flowers and NZ florists

* http://www.greenfieldflowershop.com/

* DeliverFlower.info - links to Flower directory resources and information websites.

Choosing Flower Colors

A challenge to every bride is choosing flowers to co-ordinate with the wedding color theme. Here are some guidelines on how to choose the color of your wedding flowers.

For bridal and bridesmaid's bouquets, an important point to consider is the color of the dresses. You can choose to co-ordinate or contrast the color of your flowers with the dresses.

White Wedding Dress
If you are going to be wearing white, you can co-ordinate your flowers with your bridesmaids' dresses. You can see in the photo below how we did this at a recent wedding.

The flowers used in the bride's bouquet are calla lilies, roses and wax flower. The foliage is hard rescues. The bridesmaid's have white roses. The bridegroom's buttonhole (boutonniere) also featured a color co-ordinate mini calla lily.

Choose your flowers after choosing your dresses and deciding on your wedding color theme. That way you can give a fabric swatch to your florist so he/she can color match the flowers.

Colored Wedding Dress
If your wedding gown is going to be white or ivory, you will not have any problems with the color of your bouquet. But what if you are going for a colored dress? A little more thought needs to go into the color of your bouquet. Here are 3 ideas for you.

a) Use the Same Color - A pleasing effect can be obtained by using flowers that are shades of the color of your wedding dress. For instance if your dress is blue you could incorporate flowers that include intense deep blue through to paler blues. This is sometimes called a monochromatic color scheme.

This method of choosing shades of one color is also a common way to choose flowers for your wedding arrangements.

The photo on the left is a bouquet that I made for a pink color theme wedding. Rather than just choose one type rose, I actually used 3 different varieties of rose in the bouquet. This provides a lovely variety of color.

b) Use a Complementary Color - Using a complementary color provides a natural color harmony. If you have a red dress you could have a bouquet that was predominately green (the complementary color to red). The other complementary colors are yellow/purple and blue/orange. Complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other on the artist's color wheel.

Complementary colors can also be used as a way for choosing the colors in your wedding flowers. In the photo on the left I created an arrangement based on the complementary colors of red and green.

These included chrysanthemums, tulips, anthodium’s, and orchids.

c) Use White - If you are struggling to decide on colors for your bouquet, white wedding flowers will always look good against a colored dress. In the photo you can see how the white tulip bouquet looks wonderful against the red wedding dress and black cape.


Terry Davies,
Flowers in Wales

more great flower websites:

* | Florist Shop Directory

* Flower Pictures

* Brant Florist- Order Flowers Online

Vintage Style

Everywhere you go, vintage fashion is all the rage. It's now even sold in high street, high-fashion shops - not just in specialist boutiques.

Found a gorgeous retro wedding dress and want to know what flowers will look best with it? Take inspiration from your favourite era in days gone by and re-create the vintage look in your flowers.

The main way to get this look is through the florists' technique, so make sure you find a great florist through recommendation or here. Between the 40's and 70's, florists' foam was only just coming onto the market and was very expensive, so bouquets were made from a frame of moss and wire, with all the flowers individually mounted onto wires and taped specially to retain moisture. The effect was vintage through and through, so choose your favorite era and pick a style best for you!

40's and 50's
Flowers were threaded through a moss-and-wire frame in a flamboyant 'shower' style, which looks like a huge tear-drop shape. The richer you were, the grander the shower! The most popular flowers were carnations and chrysanthemum with lots of trailing asparagus fern foliage. It's true that all things come back into fashion – chrysanthemums are enjoying a huge style revival in modern times, especially striped or big, blowsy blooms.

60’s
More flowers were becoming available or were simply more popular with the coming of an era where celebrations always included flowers, and people enjoyed expressing themselves with floral motifs. Brides carried 'S' or crescent shaped bouquets most popularly. Some had extravagant shaped bouquets, consisting of a side 'shower' shape and flowers cascading from the other side. Modern versions can be created with grasses for the trailing effect rather than always using (occasionally stiff-looking) wired blooms. Brides had the choice of lily-of-the-valley, roses, stephanotis and freesia, so there was an emphasis on scent to add to the bride's allure. Some brides carried simpler, smaller nosegays of one or two flowers such as lily-of-the-valley and freesia.

Bridesmaids' bouquets were what is known as a Victorian posy, with flowers arranged in concentric circles. The central flower would be a rose, then a carnation would be 'feathered' (where the petals are carefully removed and wired into pretty florets) and placed in a ring around that. Then there would be a ring of hyacinth buds, then more feathered carnation. A lot of technical skill from the florist who made it!

Gents always had carnation button holes and ladies always wore orchids.

There's so much choice now, isn't it fabulous you can choose your flowers to match your style, theme and coloring?

70's
Bouquets were moving from all white to more colorful arrangements. The most popular styles were a smaller version of the shower from the 40's and 50's. Peaches and oranges were popular colour themes and bigger, blooms like dahlia and carnations were being used.

Retro 80's
Everything was bright, big, and flashy! Lilies became popular as wedding flowers, especially stargazer lilies (which are white with a pink stripe down the center). Wedding flowers were more abundant as people began to spend more on weddings, so there began the fashion for a more mixed bouquet of many types of flowers such as Diana's bouquet of roses, orchids, freesia and stephanotis. Big shower bouquets were popular.

90's
The early 90's still resembled the 80's, with fairytale, puffy-sleeved gowns and blowsy shower bouquets. The later part of the 90's saw the rise of the handtie, with flowers being more natural, and more varied and unusual choices for wedding flowers such as sunflowers and garden-type flowers. The bouquet shape in contrast became more compact and modern, often using one type of flower such as roses or peonies (in a tight bunch); and this is still a very fashionable look for today.

Top tip: if your favorite era is the same as when your Mother or even Grandmother got married in, have a memento from their wedding like lace from their dress or a brooch incorporated into your bouquet.

Terry Davies,
Flowers in Wales

check out these great websites too:

* Directory4Flower.com - Flower directory includes florist websites and flower companies by local and by servies.

* Florist and Flower shops Web Directory
Worldwide florist and flower shops Web Directory; Find out huge selection of sources for Flower shop and send flower on line from a local florist around the world.

* Bloomcentral-Comprehensive florist web Directory.

Productive Garden Irrigation :

The Irrigation Season begins usually on April or May according to the date in which the rain stopsand the weather begins to warm up. usually you'd start to irrigate about 35 to 45 days after the lastrain has fell. when its spring and summer one must be strict with constant irrigation of plants and flowers in the garden especially when they're young.
the climate area, type of flower and its position in the garden set the amount of water for irrigation.
irrigation must be managed according to aoperation schedule that will be calculated and adjusted tothe plants water consumption. this type of irrigation will pave the way to good plant cultivation and saving water.

Terry Davies,
Flowers in Wales

more quality flower resources:

* FlowerListing.com - Comprehensive online Florist Directory link to flower resources and information websites.

* Flower Directory - An online resource of wedding floral design, floral preservation, silk flowers and more.

* Arm Florist

Welcome to "Flowers in Wales"

This flower blog deals only with flowers types common in the vicinity of wales. this blog will benefit flower enthusiats,designers and others with fascination for wales to learn more about one of its gegoraphical signatures and how they are grown and cared for. questions,comments,corrections and reviews may be referred to terryd1977@gmail.com and they will be responded to as soon as possible.

with pleasure,

terry davies,

Flowers in Wales

Check out these quality flower directories:

* FloralTop.com
- Online Florist Directory, Flower Shop and Florist Retail, Flower Business.

* Only Florist - Send Flower directory.

* BloomBest.com - Flower and Florist Web Directory