Happy Wedding Wednesday, y'all! This week, we are talking about our favorite topic, which is floral and event design! Specifically, we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions about COVID wedding flowers. We have an amazing floral community in Seattle, and a lot of us are friends. We help each other all the time. So we won’t be offended if you read this guide and choose someone else to do your dreamy elopement or chic micro wedding! But obviously, we cannot recommend other florists here when we are so excited about these smaller COVID weddings. So, if you are dreaming up some stunning COVID wedding flowers, you can tell us all about it here. And if we are not available, we promise to refer you to an amazing flower friend we trust!
Photo: Missy Palacol Photography
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, you should know how amazing small COVID weddings have been in 2020 for florals and design. With couples finding they have more budget than they thought, we have been able to make some INCREDIBLE design happen! This is especially true now that couples are thinking outside the box for design inspiration and color palettes. In 2020, we were able to pick from the best of what was on the farm to meet each couple’s design inspiration. I’m talking romantic summer blooms on mountaintops, dreamy boho backyard weddings, and moody vintage blooms for fall. It has been so much fun! So don’t think that your small COVID wedding has to be less exciting than a big wedding – it’s actually the opposite. You have so much latitude in design with a COVID wedding that you can make some real magic happen!
WHAT FLOWERS DO I NEED?
Your COVID wedding flowers will partially depend on what kind of wedding you are planning. For an elopement, you may only want personal flowers for you as a couple: florals like bouquets and boutonnieres. Sometimes our clients add personal wearable flowers for their officiant and close family and friends, which is a great idea! Trust us, we have never given someone personal flowers that they were lukewarm about. Everyone is thrilled to get their own flowers on your wedding day! It just makes everything feel that much more special and personal. And with fewer than 10 people, it’s pretty affordable to get personal flowers for everyone.
Many couples eloping during COVID also request some kind of arch floral installation. Whether this is feasible depends almost entirely on your elopement location. Setting up an arch floral installation requires tools, buckets of flowers, and the arch itself. For a mountaintop elopement, we’ll go ahead and say you are probably on your own, because carrying everything would be a tall order. But a backyard elopement arch would be totally feasible! Elopement arches in public parks are iffy, and often require additional permitting or permissions.
Photo: Between the Pine
So, if you are dead set on an arch floral installation for your COVID elopement, make sure you choose an elopement location that we can easily access and set up. And please plan ahead for permitting and getting permission to install a temporary art piece! Most parks have rules about what can and cannot be done on the grounds.
For small weddings, you can usually go as wild with wedding flowers as you want! Small COVID weddings, including minimonies and micro weddings, most often take place at wedding venues. This means that for every small wedding, we are able to load in early and set up as if you are any other wedding. We can make an extraordinary amount of magic happen, totally transforming your venue, even if you have fewer guests. If you are just having a minimony, you will not need table centerpieces since guests are not staying after the ceremony. But that is just an opportunity to make your ceremony backdrop even more incredible!
If you are having a small wedding with a reception, you can think through all the normal flowers you would think about for a wedding. This includes items like personal flowers, arches, aisle flowers, centerpieces, floral installations, and more! If you need help with this, please check out this past blog post – we have a gigantic checklist that will help you. And as we discussed earlier, the small nature of COVID weddings allows so much creativity and personalization that may not come through in bigger weddings. So, use this opportunity to get creative with your design inspiration and work with a pro who can support your vision!
Photo: Ariena Photography
EVENT DESIGN & RENTALS
We should also note here that adding event design and rentals can make your COVID wedding flowers even more amazing. Obviously, most couples that request a floral arch will also rent the arch from us. But there are some really cool event design rentals that will transform your wedding into a truly incredible experience. How about a jungle-themed sit-down dinner with rattan chairs and lanterns, tropical foliage, and leaf print napkins? Or maybe a Moroccan-inspired wedding with rented cushions, lanterns, and blue Moorish patterned dinner plates?
Creative event design can totally transform your wedding into an unforgettable experience for your guests. And while wedding florals can definitely help create this type of atmosphere, rentals are also key to this type of design. Think about details like seating, furniture, lighting, fabrics, menus, plates, flatware, and artistic objects. We offer event design services to our couples, and we absolutely love adding these types of details to our floral packages to help couples create truly extraordinary events!
Photo: Missy Palacol Photography
So if you are taking this opportunity to make your COVID wedding even more exciting, think about finding a florist who can also help you with event design! (And if you want to have the jungle or Moroccan wedding of OUR dreams, please get in touch!)
We hope this helps you think through the wonderful possibilities that a COVID wedding can offer you in terms of florals and design. If you can’t tell, it is something that we are super passionate about, and one of the few silver linings from 2020. If you can dream it up, you can probably make it happen! And this is the best opportunity to break from tradition and do something that feels true to you! So we encourage you to get creative, think outside the box, and design a COVID wedding that reflects your personality.
If this was helpful, we would love for you to share it! And if you are ready to read more right now, you can head on over to the full COVID wedding guide for Seattle. You can also download a free PDF copy below!
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