English garden wedding flowers – June

Claire and Luke chose to get married in a chapel at Claire’s old school and to have a relaxed marquee reception in Claire’s parents’ glorious Birmingham garden. When I heard about this garden-inspired theme for their wedding flowers I was delighted to work with their brief and instantly excited about dreaming up designs uniquely for them.

What are the best June ingredients for wedding flowers?

If I was to choose a wedding date based on flower options alone, I think June would be my month as it’s when the British flower growing season really starts to swing into action, and sumptuous divas like scented garden roses and blousy peonies burst back onto the scene. As English garden wedding flowers, peonies are coveted by so many brides, but their glorious season is short (usually any time from mid May-June) so pick your wedding month with care!! Sweet peas and trailing clematis can also add charm to early summer wedding flowers and are available in a wide palette of colours. Foxgloves in varying shades of whites, pinks, creams, peaches and even browns can add stature to your early summer arrangements. Ten points to Claire for being ahead of the trend on ‘coral’ as is Pantone colour of the year at the time of writing!

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Meticulously planned by wedding co-ordinators That Black and White Cat, and captured in all its fun by talented photographic duo The Gribbons, it was a joy to flower up this beautiful wedding.

Make your wedding flowers work hard

Claire decided to go for a bespoke wedding flower order as she knew that she wanted flowers to be a big feature of her day. We decided to make the flowers work as hard as possible, re-using arrangements from the chapel to decorate the garden marquee reception. I was delighted that I found an urn which could hold exactly the same arrangement container as my milk churns – this meant that the large arrangement usedas the altar piece at the chapel, could, after the service, swizzle around in a phone box, and with the addition of a sweep of clematis, emerge transformed into a milk churn arrangement at the marquee!

Involve friends and family in your wedding flowers

Claire decided that it would be a lovely thing to get together with friends and family the day before the wedding, to arrange the flowers in jars and small vases for the marquee reception tables, and this was also practical in making the flower budget go further. I find that flowers always seem to bring out the emotions of events, and Claire’s mum Karin (my main point of wedding flowers contact while Claire worked her socks of for her medical finals), burst into tears of delight when I arrived at the house with buckets of blooms on the Friday – always a good sign in my book! This moment obviously stayed with Claire as well, as she said:

“Thank you SO much for arranging such beautiful flowers for our wedding You were a dream to work with and all of the flowers were just so stunning. I loved my bouquet so much! The flower arranging for the marquee was one of our favourite memories in the run up to the wedding, and of course my mum’s reactions when all the flowers arrived. They completely transformed the look of the venues and our outfits. We loved them so much, we dried and kept them!”

With a strong ethos of getting friends and family involved in the day, Claire’s aunt made the wedding cake – right down the little figurines of the bride and groom on the top, and I think that the photo below completely sums up the tone and joy of this couple and their relaxed wedding day. Here’s looking forward to more sunny days!

More information about weddings

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• more information about wedding flowers by Tuckshop Flowers
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