India's love affair with flowers

Maybe the shenanighans of last weeks Rigaud Bollywood party have had a strange effect on me; came across this nice little selection of photos on the BBC website which I  thought I would share.

I Heart Barcelona

It's official - Barcelona is my most favourite place in the whole world. The city has it all; cutting edge design, fantastic bars, amazing shops, the best food, cava for breakfast, sunshine, beaches, street festivals, architecture... So it's hardly surprising that their florists would be anything short of creative geniuses. Cue floral design company Bornay and their amazingly inspiring arrangements, blasting them straight to the top of my most loved list and making me consider taking up Catalan lessons - Ole!

Local Boy in the Photograph

Beautiful pictures from the Brett Harkness photography course featuring my flowers foraged from the gardens here at Rigaud!

Ready, aim, shoot!

So this morning I get up nice and early fully prepared to set off in search of a decent selection of flowers knowing that this would probably result in a 80km round trip to Bordeaux and may even involve attempting to make a purchase at the flower market; no easy task, believe me. Feeling a little apprehensive, last week’s scouting mission around what the more local flower shops had to offer was let’s just say ‘not exactly inspiring’, I took a walk around the gardens here at Rigaud seeking some solace. Alas when I actually looked outside my own front door there was a fantastic selection. From amazing deep red roses and dahlias to dried thistles and grasses in the meadow, it was all here right under my own nose, pretty jammy eh? I have to add that the flowers are for a photo shoot taking place here at the chateau tomorrow so there wasn’t the budget or the volume requirement to do a direct order from Holland. With the only restrictions on the brief being that colours should reflect autumn and the bouquet should take into account the dress style, I’m relatively free to be as creative as I wish (bonus!) Check back soon to see how I get on
 

Picked fresh from the garden

I think these thistle heads have a fantastic architectural quality that will tie in nicely with the detail on the dress

Beautiful traditional red rose from the pergola in the back garden

The couture dress

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Pew ends in position. Photo by Tom Darrieau

Fab couple Joanne & Ashley kept their colours simple to great effect, the flowers were all white  highlighted with a gorgeous steely blue ribbon. The colours were repeated throughout all the elements of their stationary from invites to orders or service and resulted in a very classy coherant overall look to their wedding back in August. 
For the ceremony here on the lawn at Rigaud we marked the special spot by hanging chrysanthemums and dahlias from the tree. Instead of the awfully fiddly fishing line this time I opted for 6mm white ribbon which was not only much easier to work with but I think looks prettier (will be ordering more of that for next year and banishing the fish line to the bottom of my kit box me thinks!) Another simple but incredibly effective element were the aisle runners using freeze dried white rose petals. Joanne's bouquet was made up from old favourite, David Austin Roses (where would I be without these when peonies are out of season!) sweet peas, bouvardia, dahlia and a selection of herbs from the veg garden here at Rigaud.

Lovely pic courtesy of Rigaud's most popular photographer Tom Darrieau

Dahlias and chrysanthemums threaded onto ribbon

Close up of pew end

Joanne's bouquet

Ice-cream sundae

Sometimes it can be difficult to show restraint when it comes to creativity, especially when given the opportunity to go wild. Fun loving couple, Emily & Dan, really wanted to go all out on multi-coloured flowers. As a lover of colour myself  (yes I do have a magenta pink living room) that should be easy? Well theoretically yes, you could just go crazy and buy a whole mish-mash of everything but the end result might not be so pretty. In order to reach the thrown together look there had to be more thought - think about it from a fashion sense; effortless chic is oh so much harder to achieve than the polished designer top-to-toe look.

The brief included coral pink and purple, not the most conventional colour combination - but hey I like a challenge! Having been through the whole wedding planning process with Emily and Dan I knew that at the day after BBQ they would be having an ice-cream cart, so BANG there was my inspiration - ice cream colours!

Buying flowers online can be difficult, especially when it came to selecting something to co-ordinate with coral pink. Unfortunatley the beautiful coral peonies that I got earlier in the year were no longer in season. Instead we opted for Gerberas which come in a fantastic range of colours. Now to pick the correct one, from a computer screen to match a dress that I had never seen...tricky, but somehow it worked (okay so maybe that was just a little bit lucky)

Understated Vintage Glamour

Antonia's bouquet

If there was ever a perfect example of how to do understated vintage glamour then Antonia & Ian's wedding was it. The bride wore the most amazing hand-made lace veil worn by not only her mum at her wedding but also her grandmother at hers, the wedding car was a classic french citreon 2CV and the flowers were inspired by the fantastic 'Real Flower Company'.
 Antonia introduced me to this award winning English business who do the most amazing things; creating their own rose varities, running rose farms in both England and Kenya, creating some beautiful bouquets oh and if that wasn't impressive enough launching a pop-up store in Anthropologie! Check out their website at The Real Flower Company

Antonia chose a palette of ivory, lilac and green, after careful consideration we selected David Austin Roses, Freesia, Hydrangea, Sweet Pea and Peonies as well as using a mixture of Rosemary, Sage and Mint from the veg garden here at Rigaud.
 

Bouquets

Garlands at the church

 

Lavender Hill Mob

Buying fresh lavender in the South of France in June should be easy right? Wrong! As I discovered three days before the bride arrived... Cue panic and a rather stressful Sunday evening. All was resolved on Monday after a quick phonecall to Bordeaux flower market and a order was placed for twenty bunches to be collected on Thursday morning. Meanwhile we could get to work on the table centres, which, inspired by an idea on one of my favourite bridal blogs style me pretty was to be living lavender plants. The pots were chosen to co-ordinate with the scallop edging feature on the brides dress (it really is all in the detail!) and I think the overall effect makes a fantastic alternative to cut flowers, not to mention all these lovely plants have now found a new home in the Rigaud gardens = beautiful grounds for many more weddings in the future.






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1st garland under construction
in the veg garden

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After rain stopped play and
required relocating to the barn

With the sister of the bride taking control for the bouquets and church displays that left me free to get to work on garlands for the barn




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Many hours later...

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The finished result

And last but not least the strung carnations for hanging on the beams of the church. Having learnt my lesson from the week before regarding transport issues this week threw up the challenge of moving lengths of fish wire strung with flowers. After some debate (and a bottle of Rose) it was decided, that the best way to avoid hours of untangling on Saturday morning was to tape the prepared strings to the van floor... so at 10.30pm on a Friday night with a little help from my friends we did just that

Parma Violet

Ever popular and perfect for a spring wedding lovely bride, Sarah, opted for a lilac colour scheme. The flowers of choice included hydrangeas, sweet peas, delphinium, lavender and peonies, we even managed to sneek in a few flowering artichoke heads from our veg garden! Complementing the violet tones perfectly were the two grey urns found lurking in the corner of the Rigaud lounge which were allowed out for the day to make a trip up to the church at Pujols. As we packed up the little white citreon C5 van I remembered the wise words of my tutor Duncan at McQueens who told me to always ensure arrangements were very secure for transportation, I'm not convinced he meant that I should wedge myself in the back of the van with the flowers but needs must. I imagine the image of me peering out through masses of purple flowers as we zoom through the vines, shouting at Eric to slow down seems quite funny now...

Rustic cones at the church

Urns from Rigaud Lounge at the church

Just peachy

So maybe peach is the wrong word (in my head it conjures up images of an 80's bridesmaids) Nude is a better word and much more appropriate to the colour scheme of this weeks wedding. With the bride working in the design sector it was an extremely stylish affair from The Temperly Dress right down to the fabulously well dressed guests in their Louboutin's. To co-ordinate the colour palette ranged from mocha to sage through soft pinks, the aformentioned nude with highlights of magenta and coral pink.  

 

Diana's memory Dahlia

Juliet & Rosalind David Austin Roses

Buttonholes with succulents

Corsage

Wired flowers for hair

Table centres