Welcome to the Mood Fleuriste Studio Journal
How do you even start to find wedding flower inspiration?
When starting on a design for wedding flowers, I tend to pull from a little stash of food photos I have hidden away. Here at Mood Fleuriste, we love to cook and absolutely enjoy making things not only pretty, but delicious. After hours of looking exclusively at just floral work for inspiration, you start to feel like your designs will stop happening organically or you can’t make something new. We try so hard to not just replicate work I see, even if it’s from florists I truly admire.
Why Food Photography?
Food photography is such a natural inspiration source for flowers because, well, they are both simply different manifestations of plants!
I know that colors in food are reproduceable in flowers. Local flowers are especially more delicate and are often grown in market gardens right next to produce you eat. When you choose the wedding colors from available linens at rental companies, creating an organic and unique color palette for the wedding flowers becomes difficult. Oftentimes those colors do not occur naturally in flowers.
The dishes are composed for (hopefully) flavor first, you often see color combinations that are not traditional. They are more vibrant and modern — just the kind we like here at Mood.
The Endive Salad as Wedding Flower Inspiration
When I saw this endive salad photograph from the New York Times cooking section, I stopped in my tracks. I was with Alexia from Wiley Events Company. We were chatting about how I really wanted to branch into doing wedding flowers with a more vibrant and modern twist. I was also explaining my food photography obsession and stopped at this photo on their site.
I got excited because it was a modern way to take the two most common wedding flower color palettes and give them a fresh take. I’m speaking of course of the white and green, and the burgundy color palettes.
Creating a Floral Design from the Inspiration
When I went searching for more flower-related inspiration images, I came up rather short. But that really was a good thing! Like I mentioned above, when you pull from inspirational images that aren’t just other florists’ work, you come up with creative ideas more organically.
So what I make ends up being a design board that is a combination of color inspiration but also texture, and movement within the pieces that I want to achieve. I also add color-palette bubbles to use when I order flowers. It’s helpful to have the colors prioritized so you don’t get flowers that are off-colored.
This is particularly hard with burgundy, which will either be more red or purple-toned instead of true burgundy. I wanted a more red but, alas, ended up getting a purple toned flower. However, it still worked out wonderfully.
And Now, Vibrant, Modern Wedding Flowers
From the concept, I was able to create a lovely example bouquet and centerpiece. It takes the greens of the traditional palette and adds a yellow undertone.
The burgundy touches come from seasonal columbine flowers. I highlighted the yellow of the egg yolk with a lovely pale-yellow peony. The endive whites are not big and bold. Because of this, I wanted to break up the white by using a delicate seasonal flower. It also gives the arrangement and bouquet some movement.
The bouquet has more burgundy touches as well as a modern twist with the large, heart-shaped tropical flower called anthurium. Their colors are so varied and they can contain several colors at once. This makes them a wonderful tool for blending the color palette.
Thanks for Reading
I hope you enjoyed this post and are moved to find inspiration in new places for your wedding flower design. If you are interested in this process for your wedding flowers, please contact me! Together, we will start on a creative path to make your wedding flowers truly you and unique.
Inspiration and Vendor Credits
- Photography by Mina von Feilitzsch Photography
- HMU by Mena Garcia Beauty
- Wardrobe Styling by Mood Fleuriste
- Concept and Styling by Mood Fleuriste