It was an absolute pleasure to create the wedding flowers for Cheryl and David at The Hidden Hive at the end of May this year.
The Hidden Hive is a wonderfully secluded venue and was perfect for their laid back natural style. Along with the fabulous tipi there is also the delightful ceremony hut and in the evening it’s such a magical atmosphere!
I love decorating tipi’s they really suit my natural wild flower style using seasonal locally grown flowers.
As the mother of the groom and the florist I had to carefully consider the arrangements as I wanted to make sure I had time to spend with visiting family the evening before and have time to get ready on the morning of the wedding. If you are ‘doing’ the flowers for a family wedding then plan your time very carefully and don’t take on too much, the last thing you need is to be stressed and not enjoy the day.
Cheryl and David wanted to be involved in creating the look and style for their day and as we are an eco conscious family that never throw anything away that might be useful we were able to do all of the decor ourselves. I am also an eco friendly wedding florist and always consider the environment when creating floral arrangements. I don’t use floral foam as it is a single use plastic that doesn’t biodegrade and on wetting it for use all the fine plastic particles go into our water course, which is catastrophic for our marine wild life. So all the fresh flower arrangements were made in a water source. Wild Meadow flower boxes were placed in front of the ‘Welcome’ sign and ‘Order of the Day’ sign.
Vintage milk churns full of wild garden style flowers were placed either side of the ceremony barn to welcome guests. These are one of most popular arrangements as they can be moved easily and repurposed making the most of your wedding flower budget.
Cheryl’s bridal bouquet of pretty soft pastel shades in my relaxed garden gathered style. Most of the flowers were grown by us at The Flower Patch with just a few extra blooms from Mel at Cornerfield Flowers, another local flower grower friend. I think I added pretty much everything we had growing into this gorgeous bouquet. In late spring it’s hard to predict exactly what will be flowering as it really does depend on the weather, which is why we can never guarantee specific flowers. However we and other local growers always grow a wide variety of flowers so there will always be something beautiful blooming for your wedding day.
In Cheryl’s bouquet I included Loco Koco Roses, Sweet peas, Icelandic Poppies, Orlaya (which were all grown in the poly tunnel), Cornflowers, Nigella, Corncockle, Sweet Rocket, Dicentra and grasses, picked from the flower field.
Buttonholes need to be quite robust as they can get easily squashed with all those hugs. David’s rustic buttonhole was designed to compliment his suit. I used a dried Echinop thistle flower, bunny tail grasses, quaking grass and a little sprig of Lily of the valley for scent, tied with natural twine.
Cheryl also loves dried flowers so for the ceremony area we made a frame out of silver birch poles, with strings of dried flowers and added a fabric drape. We were originally going to add a feature arrangement of fresh flowers on the frame but fortunately Cheryl and David preferred our frame with dried flowers so this made my life much easier, as the fresh flowers would have needed to be put together on the morning of the wedding.
We decided not to add any decor down the aisle as we had flower girls scattering petals and didn’t want anything to get knocked over in their enthusiasm, especially as they were quite young.
A meadow box of beautiful wild style flowers greeted guests just inside the tipi, this also doubled up as a seating plan. We added a few brighter colours of flowers in the tipi as I think you need stronger shades to give more impact in a larger space.
Vintage bottles of seasonal flowers decorated the tables in the tipi, we kept these to a minimum as we were having sharing food platters so the flowers didn’t take over.
I also created a large feature hanging installation of dried flower which hung over the dining area which helped to bring a cosier feeling to the space. Choosing dried flowers was also a good option for me as to create a large flower hoop of fresh flowers wouldn’t have been possible. Fresh flowers need to be made just a few hours before the wedding and would also need two people to make and install, which is why the cost is high.
We also made dried flower place cards for every guest, these made a lovely memento of Cheryl and David’s wedding day.
I hope this inspires you to consider the environment when planning your tipi wedding, whether you are going for rustic, vintage or festival wedding vibes I’d love to chat to you about which arrangements would be best to fit with your flower budget. Take a look at our wedding flowers services we offer a full bespoke service or package options where we create bouquets and buttonholes and supply beautiful buckets of blooms that you can arrange yourselves.
Venue: The Hidden Hive
Flowers: The Flower Patch
Videographer: Tom Kellett Videography
