Wedding Blog

There won’t be any roses at our wedding. No manicured, meticulously-crafted centerpieces. No pink, no white, no soft and feminine arrangements. No ma’am, I want loads of crazy and colorful flowers just busting out all over the place. Montana’s wide open skies, stately mountains, and rugged fields call for flowers that evoke natural beauty and wildness in a way that almost seems fresh-picked.

I’m imagining a lot of yellow, gold, orange, red, and burgundy, with maybe a splash of blue here and there as an accent. If we want to be true to our color scheme (burgundy, chocolate brown, and sunflower yellow) we’ll skip the “surprise” accents and look for a darker baseline like dried grasses and seed pods with lighter accents like wild wheat.

As for the flowers themselves, I absolutely love gerbera daisies, dahlias, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, yellow asters, calendula and zinnia. They’re all big, bright blossoms and there are a load of beautiful fall colors in each genus. I’m not a huge botany geek, so I’m not actually sure if all of these flowers will be in season in September, but I know that the majority of them are. Yay!

I’ve been collecting photos of wedding flowers for our reception. Sometimes I’ll like a particular style of arrangement, but not the flowers in it. Sometimes I like the flowers, but not the arrangement. Here are several collections of flowers that are close to the “wildflower” look I want to create:

The color scheme in this first set is much more on the “yellow/white” end of the spectrum than in our “yellow/orange/red” palate, but I looooove the gerbera daisies, and they come in SO MANY lovely colors! I think that the clear vases, the old cans, and the burlap table runners really create a nice, rustic/elegant look and tie these tables together nicely! We’re going to be using an assortment of antique glass canisters, mason jars, old cans, and canning jars for our flower arrangements for a similar look.
I absolutely drool over this set of photos. The wildness of the arrangements and the bright, contrasting colors is just what we’re looking for. I really like the spiky, orange-ish flowers but I don’t know what they’re called. Can anyone help?

We’re also thinking of using galvanized steel pails, like in the right-hand photo, but in a plain or aged silver rather than painted. I adore the vases hanging on the left-hand trellis and, if we have something to hang mason jars from, we might do something similar to that (another example below).
I swear, I was thinking of doing this before I saw this photo! And here’s one more for the road… I love the colors of these flowers. I think they are dahlias and maybe zinnias. I can’t remember where I found this photo, so I don’t know. Does anyone have any guesses?

What other fall flowers might make for good additions to our mix?

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (??)