A Bridal Bouquet Floral Recipe from Charisse's Wedding at Old Edwards’ Half-Mile Farm

Feb 4

Charisse and Ryan’s wedding day at Half-Mile Farm in Highlands, NC was a case study in “Blush and Bashful.” For those of you who missed my not-so-subtle reference to Steel Magnolias, just know that I’m saying the color pink was the linchpin of our aesthetic. If you missed Maddie’s post recapping their wedding day, be sure to check it out here and soon on Style Me Pretty!

One of the greatest joys for me as a floral designer and stylist is to create the bouquet a bride carries down the aisle. I loved Charisse’s bouquet so much. Isn’t it just the happiest little bunch of gathered blooms?

I don’t often stick to strict recipes for bouquets as I’m creating them - mostly because I think it’s important to maintain artistic freedom as the bouquet takes shape. I continue to reach for stems of flowers and foliage and carefully arrange them until the shape, weight, texture, composition, movement, and distribution of color feel just right. For a bouquet, I’ll always consider the overall wedding aesthetic, any preferences my client has shared with me, as well as the cut of her dress, her height and stature, and the overall setting. A bouquet is never a ball of flowers, nor is it just a fistful of stems tied together. It’s truly a piece of art, and anybody who tells you differently has never made one!

I didn’t use an exact recipe while I was creating this, but I can share it’s final ingredients with you, if you’d like to incorporate this look for your own wedding. Here are the flowers I used:

White (dark-centered) Anemones

Pink Anemones

Romantic Antike Garden Roses

Light Pink Ranunculus

Light Pink Sweet Peas

Quicksand Roses

Dusty Miller Foliage

Seeded Eucalyptus

Charisse loves texture, but nothing too wild - so we kept the overall shape relatively symmetrical with small moments of movement that were appropriate for a garden-inspired ceremony setting and a more traditional wedding ceremony.

When working with a limited color palette, variation of color is a game-changer. This bouquet would have looked so different if all of the pink tones were the same. And the centers of the anemones offer the loveliest little burst of midnight blue… a beautiful complement to Ryan’s dark suit.