This time last year I was preparing for a beautiful Wedding in London. The ceremony was held at St James Church in the heart of Piccadilly, designed by Sir Christopher Wren it is an imposing building and my job in the Church was to create two large Urn arrangements and decorate 8 floor to ceiling posts with trailing Ivy. Two plinths were made to order for these heavy arrangements (by my super talented husband) and hand painted in a slate grey. The Urns were over a metre tall and nearly a metre wide and contained beautiful white Hydrangeas, gorgeous Garden Roses and tall spikes of white Delphiniums and Bells of Ireland. The colour palette was a mix of White and Greens with hints of Peach and Pink. It looked pretty and fresh on a warm July day......below are the two urn arrangements waiting patiently in studio to be transported to the Church...the biggest nightmare of any wedding is the transportation of tall, heavy flower arrangements...for this wedding we had to hire a lorry (not a transit van but a huge lorry sized vehicle) just to fit everything in and ensure there was space to pack everything .....

The Venue where the reception was held was a short stroll away (although of course we had a lorry to park in the middle of Piccadilly and unload) and was held at the stunning private members club Boodles which has been at the same location in Piccadilly since 1782. Its full of oldie worldie charm and character, with old paintings of Horse & Hound, beautiful rooms that hint at it's historical past......the entrance hall was decorated with another large urn arrangement to greet it's guests while the downstairs rooms were dotted with flowers and hurricane lamps filled with large church candles and fireplaces decorated with sumptuous foliage and flowers. Even the loos had flowers dotted around them. Upstairs two adjoining reception rooms had a mix of high and low table arrangements (always great to create impact and interest drawing the eye across and into the room).....the upstairs fireplaces were decorated with candles and flowers....

Flowers included gorgeous Juliette Garden Roses, Caramel Antique Roses, White Peonies, Hydrangeas, Delphiniums amongst others and the Bouquets were a mix of Roses and Peonies...We literally ordered hundreds of stems of flowers and foliage....

I met the lovely Bride through Facebook when I posted some flowers on a site that I had done for a previous client. She liked what I had done, sent me a message and we met up at the Venue to go through what she might like....she was open to suggestions and between us we came up with a rough plan, colour scheme and some flower suggestions.

After working on the ideas we agreed on the plan for flowers. Planning what to buy, costing and arrangeing vases and conatiners all takes time and thats even before you have the flowers delivered. They started arriving on the Monday before the Saturday wedding (we needed to open up peonies and roses in time for the big day so flower deliveries need to be staggered to allow for them to be at their peak on the day - every flower will have a different stage of ripeness and will take different times to open up), the base work was started and during the course of the week the arrangements were made up over Thursday and Friday. Saturday morning buttonholes and Bouquets were made up and bound and wrapped - the lorry was loaded and off we went to set up - the morning of the wedding (and usually the night before) is a long one and I am often up during the wee hours in order to everything out on time.

Prior to that two weeks before packing foam had been cut to fit flower buckets so that arrangements could be packed safely and securely into the vehicle so that they arrived in pristine condition. Its all about planning ahead, doing as much as you can in advance and never underestimating how long things actually take (just to load the van it took over an hour and then of course at the other end you have another hour to unload and the venue and then onto the church to do it al again - and don't forget it all has to be collected and cleared away the following day!)

Photography by Martha at Contemporary Wedding Photography. To read Martha's blog on Anna & Marks Wedding and to see her stunning images of the day please click here

A July Wedding