I have the most amazing autumnal Stone Barn Wedding Flowers to share with you today on the blog! Chris and Liz were married last October and provided me with the key brief to focus on seasonal, autumnal blooms focusing on lots of texture in the way of foliage and berries! The dream brief for a florist or what?! The photos from Aga Tomaszek are stunning, they really capture the day beautifully. I love it when clients put their trust in my floral vision, by giving me free reign on your wedding flowers you can be sure that you will receive the finest, most in season and most beautiful blooms that are in existence at that moment in time! Just like food, flowers are at their best and enjoyed the most when they are in season. You wouldn't eat asparagus in the winter, so why would you want peonies in the winter?!
As a wedding florist at Stone Barn I have worked at this venue countless times so know what works well here! The venue is the most beautiful barn in The Cotswolds, with cotswold stone for the ceremony and a more modern interior for the dining room, all alongside a magnificent open kitchen where you can see (and smell!) the chefs creating their delights. For the wedding ceremony florals we created huge suspended floral chandelier. You can see from the photos this provided the most amazing feature within the barn, enjoyed throughout the ceremony and then the party afterwards.
Autumn wedding flowers are such a joy to work with, the sheer amount of textured foliage available is insane! We used big copper beach branches, huge stems of smokebush, super long trailing rose hip branches and rusty oak leaves to create the hanging installation. Branches of euphorbia, seasonal chrysanthemums and were the floral clusters adding a romantic element to the chandelier.
On the ceremony table we created two natural and elegant arrangements in pickling jars. These could be moved early after the ceremony and fitted in with the laidback, autumnal vibe of the wedding. I adore the copper Vienna chrysanthemum blooms I used as the focal flower. Autumn is the ideal time to use chrysanthemums, when the dahlias are finished these are the perfect substitute! People often view chrysanthemums as a petrol station flower, a cheap supermarket bloom, however I have always valued certain varieties and used them within my wedding work. The amount of beautiful varieties that are available have increased over the last few years, and the British grown chrysanthemums are stunning too.
When I was 13 I started in my local florist as a Saturday girl, 25 years ago! The flower varieties available were pretty slim pickings, but we did have locally grown chrysanthemums. My hometown of Wellington in Somerset had huge greenhouses which had grown them for years, family business called Rowes that specialised in growing them. We'd have big blooms at the busy periods and then the AYR (All Year Round) varieties at, you guessed it the rest of the year. When the dutch started importing and we all started buying more, sadly overtime the farms sold off to developers and the infrastructure was lost.
The bridal party carried stunning autumnal bouquets, filled with all kinds of seasonal blooms. Dahlias in rich reds and burnt oranges, copper Vienna chrysanthemum blooms with ... .... I adore how each bouquet looks slightly different and will be filled with similar kinds of flowers and tones, yet all very much unique as the person carrying them!
We dressed the wedding breakfast tables at Stone Barn with lots of glass bottles filled with seasonal blooms and ceramic votives. Adding colour to your tables is a great way to add interest to the white linen lots of venues provided. If you are not going to hire your own linen, then I advise you to work with the venue and make sure your flowers match this. The tables at Stone Barn are long oval shapes and round, so the clusters work well throughout the long table, still allowing lots of room for the gorgeous sharing platters. Candles work brilliantly too at an autumnal wedding, I am a fan of coloured tapered candles, so match your tones to your flowers!
If you are getting married in the autumn and looking for Stone Barn wedding flowers then I really hope this wedding has provided you with some inspiration. Be sure to work with the seasons and embrace the rich burning reds, oranges, ochres, and all kinds of brown tones. Autumnal weddings g=do not have to mean garish tones, they can be the traditional autumn colours just paired back and toned down. I like to think that we excel in doing colour stylishly here at The Rose Shed! Congratulations to Chris and Liz and thank you SO much for sending through your photos.
A lovely little testimonial from the happy couple: "We can't recommend The Rose Shed enough! We hired Rachel to do all of the flowers for our wedding and we couldn't be more happy with that decision. All of the flowers looked absolutely incredible! We had so many people comment on the arrangements, they really did look stunning! Organising everything with Rachel was also super easy, she was very friendly and helped us to figure out all of the flower details."