When starting to plan wedding flowers, it is good to first start with this simple question:  what do you want them to do for you?  What is their job, their purpose, on this carefully planned day?

Let’s be real.  The most important components of your wedding are you, your partner, and the public commitment that you undertake in front of your kindred people and their bearing witness to it.

The rest of the details, while not necessarily required for the ceremony, are crucial to the experience you want this exchange of vows to be and the celebration to follow.

This planning is about the experience you want to have on your wedding day.

As hosts, your work in planning this experience is twofold – how it feels for you and your partner to be traveling through this day that you are right now working so very hard to put together with thoughtfulness and authenticity.

You also have the experience of your guests to consider. As hosts you have a tremendous privilege in creating this journey.  Think of it like a theater production. What is the story you want to tell them about who you are as a couple?  You get to decide what the set looks like, how the plot flows, what aspects of your personality will come to life, what they will eat and drink, taste and touch. You get to decide what this world even is, because as masters of this wedding plan, you understand that you have it within your power to create a world that has never been seen and will never be seen again.

The job of wedding flowers is to be the background music, as well as the melody in the story.

© Dave Stremikis Photography

Your attendants stand in a line on each side to create a visual funnel that draws everyone’s eyes and attention and positive energy towards you and your partner, and this transformation that you will undergo before their very eyes. The colors of your bridal party’s attire tell this story as well as the flowers that they bear in their hands, on their lapels, and the anchoring backdrop that stands behind you as a grounding force in all of this delicious exchange of attention, i.e. energy.

The flowers along the aisle create a pathway for you, marking this journey as something out of the ordinary, not a simple saunter down an open space surrounded by chairs, but an act much more sacred.

Flowers and centerpieces have a very important job as well. They are what invite the guests into the overall experience of the reception. Joined with the food on their plates, the drinks in their hands, the conversation that happens around the table, the flowers tell your story within the greater expanse of the space and also echo the style vibe that prevails over the whole day. The wedding flowers arrangements serve to unite the guests to each other, to the greater story, but certainly not impede the exchange of that congeniality. They should not interfere with conversation or with the line of vision between you and others among around the room. They should be a relevant thread that binds the guest at that table to a greater whole.

All of this is to say that the flowers guide the attention of you and your guests as you all journey through the experience of your day.  The flowers become or set the itinerary of this production.

Let us not forget that it is the people that are most important, but it is the flowers that enhance and inspire and support these people, lending them an air of the extraordinary to carry them through the journey of this wedding day.

© Dave Stremikis Photography

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