Bouquet Breakdown: Finding Your Floral Style

From Emily March Photography... Whether you are the offbeat, boho gal or the lady with refined and elegant taste, each Bride is different, and finding a way to introduce your taste and style to your wedding day can often be difficult – especially when it comes to flowers. We all know about peonies and roses, but few Brides know how to achieve the perfect bouquet that shows off their personality. Below, Keegan of Petal Atelier provides a bouquet breakdown for five different bridal styles: muted, watercolor, bold, romantic, and minimalist. Each bouquet includes unusual elements – flowers most people have never even heard of – so you can see how texture and color add personality to the arrangements. Read on to learn more about what flowers and foliage appeal to you and Keegan's inspiration behind each of her gorgeous designs.

Muted

My background is in art and art history, and I like to bring these principles into my design work. For this bouquet, I wanted to play with the idea of tinting and shading from color theory, which is to change a color by adding white or black respectively. I chose blush, which is an enduring wedding favorite, as my starting point and moved out from there. There are very few true whites and no true blacks when working with flowers, but the feeling is the same with the near whites of the clematis and the deep inky tones of the smoke bush. We finished it with lots of flowing, raw silk ribbon from Froufrou Chic to continue the delicacy and movement of the exquisite clematis.

Bouquet Breakdown

• Clematis

• Café au lait dahlias

• Amnesia roses

• Koko Loco roses

• Blush garden roses

• Heirloom carnations

• Lophmyrtus

• Christmas bush

• Smoke bush

Watercolor

Watercolor is such a delicate medium and because of this really evokes the soft, heavily petaled blooms of spring. I wanted to include the current favorites like peonies, ranunculus, and David Austin garden roses with less common blooms such as sweet pea, locally grown heirloom spray garden roses, and hyacinths. I also wanted to showcase a variety of foliage without being too branchy. I chose the geranium for its velvety texture and beautiful lacy-edged leaf shape. It plays off the more familiar dusty miller, which is also velvety but has a soft blue-grey look. The acacia bridges the two with longer branches, but its soft fringy leafs soften the line while still create more length and shape. Though I love to work with muddy or sour color palettes, I wanted this to be pure tones. I used to do wet-on-wet watercolor painting, and my teacher described the technique as layering light – I sought to recreate that effect here. I love the way the different shades talk to each other both within the individual blooms and one to the next.

Bouquet Breakdown

• Peonies

• Garden roses

• Heirloom spray garden roses

• Sweet peas

• Hyacinths

• Ranunculus

• Blue viburnum berries

• Dusty miller

• Acacia

• Geranium greens

Bold

You may surprise yourself when it comes to flowers, especially with color. For instance, I am someone that pretty much only wears black, white, and grey. But when it comes to flowers, the more I work with them, the more I appreciate unexpected color combinations. I find the key to doing so successfully often hangs on finding an element that includes disparate tones to create a bridge between them. The tree of heaven foliage is lime with just a hint of pink in its leaves, so the bright reds and oranges look unexpected without being jarring. Similarly the flame eye garden roses mix the red and orange, but also the soft petaled texture surrounding the prickly-looking center bridges the dryer texture of the grass and straw flower. This allowed me to be bold with texture as well as color. I wanted it to feel a little more modern than wild, so I choose a tighter shape and included some more linear elements – like the gloriosa lily.

Bouquet Breakdown

• Red piano roses

• Flame eye garden roses

• Papyrus grass

• Gloriosa lilies

• Crocosmia

• Straw flowers

• Oak leaves

• Smoke bush

• Pineapple lilies

• Tree of heaven

• Italian ruscus

Romantic

In playing with idea of romance, I wanted to explore all the different meanings of that word. I drew my inspiration from European tradition of courtly romance, epitomized in the Arthurian legend and fairytales. I wanted something a little old fashioned with foresty touches, so I added the raspberry and forget me not. The rich jewel tones with softer hues, specifically the peach and red, add an ooh la la quality, evoking a more passionate, active femininity. I also wanted to pay tribute the grandeur of nature and 18th century romanticism, so I created a really loose, expressive shape that emphasized the natural line of the branches.

Bouquet Breakdown

• Ranunculus

• David Austin Juliet garden roses

• Red piano roses

• Hellebores

• Scabiosa

• Delphinium

• Forget me not

• Begonias

• Olives

• Plumosas

• Blackberry vines

• Italian ruscus

• Smoke bush

Minimalist

I love all the greens we saw recently inspired by the Pantone color of the year, and greenery's popularity is going to continue into the real weddings of 2018. Since many Brides have been dreaming about their wedding flowers for years, I wanted to meet in the middle between the greenery trend and a more classic use of green and white minimalism. I carefully curated both color and flower type but allowed more freedom in the texture and shape since that feels more current than the super sleek, mono arrangements of the early aughts. I opted for an asymmetrical structure with subtle movement, and these gorgeous parrot tulips were the focus. Hellebores, one of my all time favorite flowers, have amazing lines and created movement along with drape of the maidenhair fern. Their shape and movement, which is echoed by the Queen Anne’s lace, reminds me of dappled light, and the two together create dimension. I am also a big fan of texture, so I included pieris japonica and fuzzy geraniums for a tactile quality. The small size of this bouquet would be a perfect accent to a simple sheath gown.

Bouquet Breakdown

• Parrot tulips

• Hellebores

• Ranunculus

• Queen Anne’s lace

• Maidenhair ferns

• Pieres japonica

• Geraniums

Photography: Emily March Photography | Floral Design: Petal Atelier | Calligraphy + Illustrations: Kelsey Malie Calligraphy | Film Processing: PhotoVision Prints | Furniture: One True Love Vintage Rentals | Ribbons: Honey Silks And Company | Ribbons: Frou Frou Chic | Ribbons: Silk & Willow | Ribbons: Britex Fabrics