Rustic Chic Fall Wedding Flowers

Autumn is a wonderful time to get married, as far as wedding flowers are concerned!  Farms and gardens are full of goodness that time of year.  Fall wedding flowers don’t have to be just about Sunflowers; look at those gorgeous Chrysanthemums!  And those Dahlias – not to mention the Roses!  This couple chose rosey and rusty oranges with plummy tones for their end-of-September affair at Crockett Barn on Whidbey Island in Washington.  Now that is a color palette I can get behind!

The bride chose metallic silver as an accent, so we used our silver mercury glass compotes and votives to add sparkle to the table.  I always like to “mix it up”, so we created three basic schemes:  some tables had compotes/low floral arrangements, some had a “collage” of bud vases and our mismatched, vintage silver cups with buds in them, and some had elevated centerpieces.   By the way – all of these candles and containers are available to rent for our clients, and for anyone planning a Whidbey Island wedding!

Having an interesting wedding flower design amps up the “wow factor” and provides entertainment for your guests.  Using some sparkling metallic accents and graceful glassware turns the typical barn wedding into an upscale affair.  Fall wedding flowers don’t always need hay bales!  (Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with hay bales and Sunflowers!!).

In large rooms like Crockett Barn, I like to use a few elevated centerpieces to provide some panache, and to marry the scale of the room and the ceiling height with the table tops.  Here we kept it budget-friendly by using a mix of evergreen and fall foliage.  This is another way to bring the indoors out.  This creates a woodsy feeling, but the elegant glass trumpet vase makes it feel quite chic.  While they soar over the heads of the guests who are seated at that table, I’m careful where I position them in the room, so as not to create an barricade to viewing the bride and groom.

While the couple had been dreaming of an outdoor ceremony with a foliage-covered arbor, mother nature had other ideas.  The day was quite soggy, so the ceremony was moved indoors.  The backdrop became the cobblestone walls and the historic windows of what used to be the stables when the property was still a farm.  We added a graceful lacing of foliage to maintain the original intent of the ceremony decor vision.  I think it turned out to be quite lovely!

All these wedding flowers are “slow flowers”.  That means they were grown locally.  Mostly they came from Washington flower farms that have Salmon-Safe certification.  A lot came from my own garden.  It is important to me – indeed, it is part of my business mission statement – to support local, eco-friendly agriculture.  In doing so, I am helping to care for the earth, and I’m supporting the local economy.  And if you hire me to be your wedding florist – you’ll be doing this too!

Another practice I love to employ is to include fragrance in the bouquets I make.  In addition to “real” roses (many from my own little farm garden) that have real scent, I include herbs such as Agastache, Geranium and mint.  Since so much of our memories are stimulated by scent, I love the idea that whenever the bride smells these plants in her life to come, she will be transported back to her wedding day.

I am very grateful for “my” wonderful couples like these folks.  And I’m also thankful to Renata at Nataworry Portrait & Event Photography for sharing her gorgeous images!  Additional credit goes to Whidbey Island Weddings who runs Crockett Barn and coordinated a lot of the non-floral decor you saw in these photos.