The Garrison & Brides Magazine

We love Friday weddings! We get the whole weekend off which we have not had in months. When you have a Friday wedding, you keep thinking it is Saturday the entire day and then you are pleasantly surprise once you figure it out. This wedding was at The Garrison http://thegarrison.rtrk.com/?scid=1548911&kw=7144121&pub_cr_id=4359558190


You have heard me rave about this place before and have seen all the gorgeous work and the view.


The ceremony took place at a church in Stony Point so I didn’t get to take photos of the bridal party. I set up my usual staged photos of the bouquets. Except I never got a photo of the brides bouquet because she chose to have it build on branch and it was too hard to photograph. Those types of bouquets look better when held.


It is interesting, we have done cascading style bouquets for many years but this year it is really catching on. This particular bride saw our staged bouquet in Brides magazine. See article and earlier entry

http://www.stevenbrucedesign.com/images/pr/SBD_ChicagoBrides (This was a national article therefore you will see it in all the Brides spring issues.) for more articles please visit our press section on our website.

In the article below there were some comments about the long bouquets being distracting.
http://www.brides.com/blogs/aisle-say/2010/07/the-new-shape-of-bouquets.html
http://www.brides.com/wedding-ideas/wedding-flowers/2010/05/BLM_SS10_Bouquet_Shapes#slide=1

That the guests would be looking at the flowers and not the bride. We do not agree, we think a gorgeous bouquet of any shape will only enhance the experience and the Wow factor of the bride walking down the aisle. It’s always a moving experience. Even if the long cascading bouquet is not your style it is still a beautiful and bold choice.


In Europe and many other countries, this has been the traditional look of bouquets for a long time. You may feel a large and cascading bouquet may over power a bride of smaller stature it will work for a medium or tall Bride. If you are a smaller person than you can modify the bouquet with a shorter cascading one. I will post a few examples of past wedding at the end of this Blog entry.
Funny, I was looking to link one of our photos, featured in Brides NY spring/ summer issue and found another one of our bouquets from the same photo shoot. What a delightful surprise. How cool is that? See above link.


For the bridal party bouquets, we made the hand held kind. In the Maid of Honor and Brides maids bouquet we used lady’s mantle, peach Stock, baby blue Bella Donna Delphinium, white Scabiosa flowers, pink Godetia, pink Mokara Orchids and Cherry Brandy Roses.

For the Mom’s Posey, we added more Cherry Brandy Roses tying the bouquet with silver ribbon.
 There was a one and a half year old Flower Girl who got a little headpiece and this Button Mum Pomander tied with Rope Vine. So cute but who knows if she ever held it.

 The Boutonnieres were really pretty. We used white Ranunculus, Mokara Orchids, Ivy and Nigella Pods.

The grandmother Corsage had a pink Cymbidium Orchid, Mokara Orchid, Ivy, and Nigella Pods and flowers.

You have seen these really nice glass river rock containers before. We use them for Cocktails.These had alternating colored clusters of Roses. We used Cherry Brandy and Amnesia Roses with Ivy. I especially love the color of the Amnesia rose. We have used it quite often this season. I believe it is a new breed. It’s soft antique, dusty lavender.

We cannot believe that many of our brides say they don’t like Roses. Do not fear the Rose. They come in so many amazing colors. There are close to 3000 varieties. I am surprised when I hear anyone say they don’t like a particular flower, I love them all. Many brides seem to like Garden Roses for their fullness. I like them a lot too. They can be more expensive though.

For the tables we alternated, don’t we always?
We love doing this so that the tables look different. This time only the containers were different but the flowers were pretty much the same on all the tables.


Each table got three small bubble bowls with river stones and floating candles. One set of centerpieces had floral rings around a low dish with floating candles, river stones and Orchids. The other centerpieces had a floral ring and a pillar candles with hurricane glass and the last ones were square glass with river stones.

The flowers we used were green Hydrangea, pale orange Roses, Amnesia Roses, pink Dahlias, pink Godetia, pink spotted Mokara Orchids, ivory Stock, Ivy and red James story Orchids- that were important to the Bride.

The look we created for the guest gift table was that of a French flower market display. Male guests got a bottle of wine while the women got a small bouquet of flowers. We would have liked to have filled the whole area with flowers. We brought an old metal chair and many buckets. In Paris, you would see chairs and tables filled with buckets of flowers. We even had a tall bundle of Curly Willow leaning against the wall. One trend we saw there were flower buckets with floral prints.

The Registration/Escort card table was simple with wine crates and three tall pieces of glass. We put rocks at the bottom and used James Story Orchids, the brides’ favorite.

The Sweetheart table was really nice. I was going to leave because I needed to get back to our two-year-old daughter but I am glad I waited. Steve likes to do the Sweetheart tables when he is there and without thinking about it first. I love how he tied the Orchids to rope vines. We first saw the rope technique in Europe. You can see other examples from previous weddings in our cylinder table arrangements.

For the bar, we used a low metal dish with stones, Roses and Orchids.

On the gift table, we used Millet, Grass and Delphinium.

The sign the couple placed on the gift table marking their wedding day was great. They took a photo of each number. A great idea for table numbers as well.

finally some cascading bouquets. I will post them all after I find them. I will have more from this season after I get copies from the photographers.