Snapdragon's garden

Claire and Kieran's wedding

Yesterday I was back in East Lothian where I grew up, arranging flowers for a couple who were getting married looking out over the sea in the Marine Hotel in North Berwick.
The brief was originally for an outdoor ceremony but the truly awful weather we have been having put paid to that, so I tried to bring a bit of the sea and limpid colours into the flowers.

These are the buckets of foliage parked on the workshop deck.
cerinthe, mint, poppy seed-heads and white willow herb seedpods.

The table centres were designed to split into 4 bunches which were given away as favours.  There were 2 different colour schemes - white and lilac above and below and pink (which i omitted to photograph it seems!)

The bride and bridesmaid's bouquets were the bit that was most stressful due to the weather - they were to be pink and densely flowery - no chance to add in bits of rain resistant foliage.
I seemed to spend hours picking of bits of wet yucky disgusting petals from inside dahlias but in the end it was undetectable.  Just shows.  Flowers are more resilient than you think.

There were also 2 large urns framing the ceremony - Claire, the bride phoned me this morning to say thanks and described them as an "enchanted forest" - of fennel, eupatorium, willowherb, plum tart gladioli and rip city dahlias with a cloud of stipa gigantea seedheads lightening the mix.  She has photos but I don't!

At the start of the week I was beside myself with worry about whether there would be any flower and cursing myself for being such a stickler for the home grown.  now I am very glad that i held my nerve and very glad that tweezers can rescue dahlias from mush.

The last rose

This was the last rose in my garden.
Made into a buttonhole for a wedding guest at the weekend.
It is Wiliam Lobb and smelt amazing - the roses haven't liked the thundery showers that we have been getting - so I have to pick the roses in bud for this type of work and let them open out inside.  Otherwise there would be the risk of everything becoming a soggy, bruised mess outside.
I put them in a bucket in the cabin loo as it is dark and vaguely cool.  For the latter part of last week it smelt divine.

Jenny & Jeremy's wedding part 3

I had hoped that the dark moss rose would be blooming for Jenny's bouquet.  In the end, despite a fortnight of sunshine, it stayed tight closed.  I was a bit despondent as I wanted a really special flower for the bouquet.
I had forgotten about these though

dark plum oriental poppies.

In the end I think I prefer them to the roses.

They were mixed with grass and cirsium rivulare for a bouquet.

Beautiful and elegant.  And not really do-able by anyone else.
Which is sort of what it is all about. :)

Jenny and Jeremy part 2

Sometimes it is the details that make an impact.

The table plan - wood from Branshogle saw mill.

The tables - summer flowers in tea cups napkins with briza minima.

It was such a beautiful wedding, wonderful couple, great family and friends.

Grass

This morning saw me up early - scooting round the chicken run picking grass.

I need it for a series of 12 large rings of flowers which I am making today for the wedding tomorrow.  The flowering grasses are just so beautiful - something that I take for granted and just don't look at properly until I cut them and bring them in.  After I have finished the manic weddingy weekend I may cut some and have a vase of grasses in the house.
The rings will also have euphorbia, catmint, valerian, cow parsley and so on and will hang against the grey stone walls of the castle.  I really like doing this kind of thing as it is about as far removed from a high street florist as it is possible to get.  Definitely needs the right bride & groom though!

Jenny and Jeremy part 1

So much of weddings is in the preparation -
Today I started preparing for Jenny and Jeremy's wedding on Saturday.
I made a tiny bag for the flower girl to carry - there will be a bunch of flowers in it on the day - and she can keep it afterwards as a memento

  and have begun making up the bases for rings of wild flowers which will hang on the walls.
The wedding is in a beautiful stone hall and the couple have chosen to have flowers that look as though they have been picked from the surrounding countryside and brought in to "deck the hall".
It is a good choice as the Trossachs are looking wonderful at the moment - grasses, buttercups and cow parsley - mixed through with spires of foxgloves and silver thistles.

I'm obviously in the same mood as - of all the photos I took in the garden this week - this was my favourite.

Church flowers.

Today I went to pick up my urns from St Anthony's church in Balfron - the venue for Ruth and Euan's wedding last Saturday.

I'd left them in the church so that people could see them on the Sunday.

These urns are the best things I have bought arrangement wise for the business.  I got them about 7 years ago and have used them constantly since.  They are fibre-glass so are light & can be chucked in the car boot, they are hollow so you can weight them with sand or bricks if its windy, they take a standard florist's bucket in the top and - as they live outside accruing lichen - they look like stone.

As usual, my record shots are absolutely terrible, - dark, wobbly, out of focus - but at least you can see that the urns held a froth of white lilac, euphorbia, cow parsley and allium "purple sensation".  The whole church smely of lilac when the guests walked in.

Next week they will be in Fintry full of thistles and foxgloves for Jenny and Jeremy.

2 days to put up . . .

and 25 minutes to take down.
  well that's wedding flowers for you.  Here are all the table centre teacups coming home.

There is a new newsletter out - with instructions on how to make these

Flower globes to decorate a marquee or hang from a tree.
If you want to sign up for the newsletter e-mail me at snapdragonjane@googlemail.com

The badge thing has really taken off - I know that I had said that I would limit it to the first 100 but then that kind of viral thing happened (for the first time with my blog) and within the 1st 48 hours I had over 250 requests.  Everyone was so nice in their e-mails and really I don't want my first contact with people to be me saying "NO" so I have decided that I am just going with it - Isobel is busy stuffing envelopes as I type - but it will definitely stop at 9am on Wednesday.

A village fete wedding

The one thing - the one solitary thing - that I hate about weddings is the few hours before a bride comes to make the final decisions about what flowers are going to be used.
It is a peculiarity of the way I do things that final decisions often can't be made until the week of the wedding - we can do our very best to get certain flowers in bloom, we can make educated guesses but we can't guarantee anything.
Often - as today - decisions aren't made until 48 hours before the big day.  As today has progressed I have become more and more nervous.  What if I have misread the brief - what if she hates all the flowers?

The wedding that I am working on this week is to be in a marquee in Balfron and the theme is very loosely "village fete" - no bunting or tombolas but pretty garden flowers in tea cups on all the tables and globes of flowers strung from the ridgepoles.

Most of the decisions about styling were made back in March but bride and groom visited today to double check everything and decide on what flowers to use for the bridesmaid's bouquets.  Originally they had wanted plain bunches of lavender but its too early for that
Now we shall be going for the last of the bluebells.

Tied up in a purple ribbon to match the shoes.

Now that the bride has been and is happy, I am happy.  happy but with a lot of work to do.

The free badges from yesterday's post have been in demand but there are still about 40 left - pass on to anyone you think might be interested.

Janet and Alan

 A few snaps from today's wedding preparations.

 

a glimpse of the bride's bouquet (dark reddish pink tulips and dicentra) with the bridesmaid's sumptuous mount tacoma tulips.

 

More shots of the white tulips

 

The venue was Ross Priory on the banks of Loch Lomond

 

Look at that view.  The ceremony was to be outside in the walled garden.  As I left, half an hour before the wedding was due to start, the rain was on and the piper was getting fractious. .  as I reached home, the sun came out and has stayed out all afternoon.  They will have had a wonderful time.