Creative Ideas and Tips for Wedding Flowers

These unique and modern ideas for wedding flowers and decorations are sure to inspire your own creations.

Your wedding flowers offer ample opportunity to stretch your creative muscles and add a bit of originality to your wedding day, so don’t be afraid to design a floral scheme that bucks tradition. This list of our favorite ideas for bridal bouquets, centerpieces, colors, and other decorations is a great place to start designing a memorable decor scheme.

9 Creative Ideas for Wedding Flowers…

Play with Shape

Arrangements with a just-picked, unstructured look are replacing the tightly bound bouquet and centerpiece shapes of previous seasons. Ensure a modern, not messy, look by choosing the right flowers. Hearty blooms like roses, orchids, and amaranthus work well in looser arrangements because of the sleek shape of the individual blooms. Seeded eucalyptus will add texture without looking messy. Also consider incorporating non-floral elements like feathers, wheat, berries, and crystals to add interest and depth.

Think Pink

Believe it or not, pink is back. From bright, honeysuckle, and coral shades to classic, sophisticated blush tones, we can expect to see both in the 2011 wedding color palette. Many brides are daring to think beyond basic hot pink by incorporating the softer shades into their floral schemes with garden roses, peonies, and even mini-carnations, which offer great texture. Avoid chocolate brown (so last year!), and instead pair your brighter coral pink with tangerine and lemon yellow, while warm grays and gentle golds will complement the softer, rosey, champagne pink.

Look Beyond the Vase

Options abound beyond the basic floral vase for holding your flowers. Consider instead mixing and matching clusters of unique containers like old bottles, mason jars, vintage tins, pitchers, or milk glass to add interest and reflect your wedding theme. Some ideas: Fill watering cans with wild flowers for a garden fete, or cluster old apothecary jars with just one or two blooms in each each.

Lighten Up

Candles, always a popular choice for centerpieces, are becoming even more popular as a budget and eco-friendly enhancement to traditional floral centerpieces. Ample candlelight lends the day a romantic, organic feel, while the natural resource saves electricity and drapes the setting with an intimate glow. A large cluster of votives in the center of the table will set things aglow. Using long, rectangular tables? Fill the entire center of the table with votives, in rows, pressed tight together.

Go Green

Going green is easy when it comes to wedding flowers. Consult Mother Nature for inspiration and bring the outdoors in. Natural objects like stones, antlers, even twigs can add an organic aesthetic to your reception décor. Place in rustic containers or place amongst pillar candles for added ambiance. Get more green weddings ideas and advice here.

Make It Personal

Further seeking to personalize their weddings, brides are using their wedding flowers to call out specific interests by incorporating unique items into bouquets and centerpieces and creating a conversation piece for guests. For instance: Bookworms can use use intricately piled leather-bound books in place of floral centerpieces, and wine lovers can use wine bottles and decanters as centerpiece holders.

Tie it Together

The hand-tied bouquet continues its reign as the most popular bouquet style as brides opt for a tailored and natural look to their wedding flowers. A fresh bunch of flowers gathered and wrapped in a wide satin ribbon or lace presents the look of simple elegance, but brides wishing to up the glam of this otherwise simple look can embellish the bouquet with brooches, pins, and crystal picks.

A Single Bloom

Using a single type of bloom is a simple, elegant, and interesting approach. The texture of one type of flower can make for incredible, consistent texture. Peonies, garden roses, ranunculus, and mums are a timeless choice for this technique, while mini-carnations and dahlias are unexpected but fun. Tulips and daffodils are stunning in spring, and lisianthus looks amazing alone because of the multiple blooms and buds on each stem.

Lose the Corsage

Modern brides are forgoing corsages and instead having the moms carry nosegays down the aisle. Besides the fact that corsages tend to conjure up memories of proms gone bad, there’s practical reason for this trend because it saves the dress – often made from fragile fabric – from pulling and tearing from the weight of the corsage.