Shannon and Dominic, Part 1
There are certain plants and flowers I gravitate towards, and certain colors too; personally I tend to favor earthy, warm colors, which is why this is my favorite time of year. But I also always love when a client comes in with a color palette that challenges my thinking and pushes me in a different design direction. Shannon and Dominic wanted shades of deep peacock blue, vibrant chartreuse, and rich latte or mocha brown. Ultimately these colors worked so perfectly in the setting of their wedding, at Barndiva in Healdsburg, a restaurant with a gorgeous patio filled with vintage furnishings, old signs and rusty sculptures, with an enchanting overhang of trees and lights.
The concept was to do little clusters of old blue mason jars with apothecary bottles and some loose succulents and tillandsias scattered about. I chose a deep blue delphinium with bright kermit mums, purple majesty and frosted explosion grass, parchment-hued annabelle hydrangeas, blue and white nigella, and café au lait dahlias. Also a few dark brown fiddleheads here and there. (Full disclosure: the fiddleheads are (ack!) imported! A bride from the previous weekend’s wedding really, really wanted them and I just couldn’t find wild local ones to save my life. So we made an exception to our California-only rule. They worked so well with Shannon’s color palette that I used the extras here.)
We also used a lime-green geranium leaf; I’ve found this plant to be super finicky, but I couldn’t resist it for this color palette, with its slight rusty-brown tint. Lots of the stems didn’t make it, but we still used it as an accent here and there (and as a lovely cuff for Shannon’s bouquet, which I’ll have to show you once their official pics come through!).
I can’t claim to have had anything to do with this sweet detail, but I loved it so much that I had to share: instead of laying the place cards on the plates, they tied them to these lovely garden chairs with twine. Charming!
For their ceremony at a nearby winery, Shannon and Dominic wanted something a bit unusual for their “altarpiece,” so we created a display with birch branches, shimmery solar lanterns, and dangling tillandsias. The bridesmaids each carried a single café au lait dahlia down the aisle and left it in one of the little jars around the base of the blue pot.
This was a fun one. Hopefully I’ll have some more photos to post soon. I loved Shannon’s bouquet, can’t wait to share that with you!
October 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Oh how beautiful, my favourite flower colours! I have been using chartreuse zinnias from our work cutting garden and they make every arrangement perk up! Chartreuse is the cat’s meow! Also love nigellas, that blue is so perfect, i found the white ones OK. Don’t you love the fact that the fiddle heads echo the curly filigree on the chair backs? You have such great ideas! I love the birch branches in your arrangements, they are so beautiful. I used some nice chunky ones in a mantlepiece arrangement last Christmas and they were amazing. I LOVE birch bark, was gathering some from the forest floor this fall to use in something, I lined a glass hurricane vase with it, love the texture.
One of our local nurseries has brought in some tillandsias, they are wonderful, it was great to see them, have never seen them for sale around here!! They also had a lot of cool succulents this year and made up some very interesting pot arrangements. Hmm, wonder if they have dicovered your blog?
Can’t wait to see the bridal bouquet!
Wendy
October 21st, 2011 at 4:24 am
very beautiful wedding work. this is the kind of work that i love, very much my style.