Aidan and Rachel - February 3, 2024

A great way to start off 2024 was with arranging the flowers for the wedding of my cousin Aidan to now wife Rachel. This wedding gave me the opportunity to practice a different style for the bridal bouquet.

Rachel wanted a whimsical and pastel theme for the flowers, and sent me a Pinterest board with lots of ideas to choose from. Her only condition was no roses, which actually allowed me to arrange something more my style, in the hand-tied bouquet design.

One flower that was common in all the photos was ranunculus and scabiosa, or pincushion flower, which both come in beautiful colors. Another common theme was delphinium. Using all the inspiration pictures I came up with some flower choices, and showed them to Rachel, who picked what she wanted. I ordered the flowers from Metro Flower Market as usual.

Aidan and Rachel were married in Connecticut, and I am from Virginia, but the family was going up for the wedding, so we packed all the flowers into the back of our suburban and made the drive. The flowers were in buckets with fresh water, and they all did amazingly well, even the ranunculus, which I left wrapped for extra protection.

One of my favorite parts about doing weddings is opening up all the flowers that are ordered. It always feels like Christmas or a birthday for me. Our basement always looks like an explosion of flowers.

I arranged everything in my cousin's house, in their dining room. The room was full of buckets of flowers and bud vases when I was finished.

The flowers that were chosen for the bouquets were blue delphinium, white scabiosa, pale pink astilbe, peach snapdragons, blush anemone, white asters, and pink ranunculus. The greenery chosen included ferns, bupleurum. The bupleurum added a perfect bounce to the bridesmaids bouquets, and added to the whimsical theme. I absolutely loved the astilbe; it's such a dainty flower, and is definitely perfect for weddings.

Aidan and Rachel with Aidan's parents.

The bridesmaids bouquets did not include the anemone, ferns, or the blue delphinium.

For the reception, Rachel wanted bud vases filled with flowers on all the tables. I used all the leftover flowers from the bouquets as well as white asters, purple mums, and peach alstroemeria. The bud vases were either thrifted, or purchased off of Amazon.

This wedding was delightful to arrange, and I loved the theme and the colors chosen. Rachel didn't want all the bud vases, so I receive quite a few, which was very nice! The bridal bouquet was probably my favorite to arrange out of all the weddings I've done.