Adding Luxury Ideas To Your Wedding Design - Part I of 3

The following are TIPS and Ideas on design that can move your wedding and reception from a nuts and bolts, mechanized, ho-hum experience into a celebration reflecting your…

Standards for elegance
Electrifying personalities
Joyful, LUXURY surprises
Stylish Additions
Out of the box ideas
photo by DUPhotography.com
                                                                                                 
Luxury statements can be placed throughout the entire wedding or focused on one area of the wedding day celebrations. We will cover methods in this three-part-series. Join Judith Rivers-Moore, The Wedding Coach on WeddingLinks.co  and add your ideas to to this topic - here on the WeddingLinksBlog.

                                         Remember, you are the royal couple on your wedding day!
#1. Meeting & Greeting the Guest With Luxury: Everything from your personal website, save the date card, list of local hotels, maps to your event sites in the invitation to ample parking and good signage on where to go or adding transportation will lead to less-frazzled guests.

An Entry Host to direct the reception guests and  a water or ice tea service are especially appreciated on hot days. Depending on the venue, we see couples setting up a cocktail or wine bar ahead of the ceremony with music favorites being played. This provides an added luxury to greeting the guests. We also see couples providing a water service or bottled water just after the ceremony on hot days.

Making certain seniors and senior guests have someone assigned to pick them up and deliver adds to their luxury and welcome. Finding one's way in a region can be difficult. Very formal weddings often have a reception line. More casual methods are for the couple to go to each reception table and greet guests.

#2. Flowers & Decor & Lighting Enrich  Your Setting. Brides love garden settings with beautiful backdrops and environmental views. The ceremony aisle being spread with rose petals is a royal carpet treatment and focal point for the nuptials. Even a simple room may be enhanced with flowers on the aisle.

#3. Luxurious Ideas For Wedding Invitations: Invitations set the tone of the wedding. Very high style custom-made papers that include eco-friendly types with beautiful, hand–written calligraphy are available and add a special touch on wedding invitations. The gold leaf border (or a copper wax seal) might be enough trim. Create a personal monogram or watermark on the paper with your initials. The style chosen can be used as a unifying element for your invites, reply card, menu card, envelopes and ceremony programs. Conveying your theme or the wedding colors on all the paper products including your Thank You Notes will add that touch of luxury. Whatever design you choose, make it's eye-catching. Be sure to indicate if your wedding celebration is a black tie formal affair, or a themed wedding with costumes etc. and/or is cocktails and dinner following and/or any uniqueness. There are specialty services to assist with this and some brides have the invites addressed and mailed by the services with special stamps or hand canceling. When weddings are in major cities, the added touch of messenger delivery is a possibility.

We have seen:
Fabric boxes with the invitation set inside to be an outstanding delivery through mail or messenger. These may also be placed on the tables at the reception as an added display with your centerpieces.

Gold Rose Boxes with flowers and invitations being delivered at the same time.

Wine or champagne bottles sent by messenger with the invitation affixed as a label or attached in the envelope to the neck. Additional bottles can be your wedding favor - set on the tables for the guests to take home.

Boxes of candy or chocolates mailed with the invitation inside - shipped to guests.

                                                  Your invitation to a sweet affair.

Beach Wedding Invitations with grains of sand or sea shells (not a real starfish)

Beautiful Invitations with initialed SEALS on the envelopes.

We will cover venues in the next blog, please give us you input.

Wedding Flowers, Bridal Bouquets & Table Decor That Reflect Your Wedding Style

Set your style with wedding flowers, bouquets, ceremony and reception table decor.

This takes several concerns into consideration.  Determine your love of flowers, your favorites, whether the chosen blossoms FIT the venue you have selected and your budget!

Choosing who will complete this for you also rests on your passion for flowers. 

(Find all types of florists for every budget in WeddingLinks.co and there are several articles and a LIST  regarding flowers and florists links on WeddingLinks.com.)

                                                

                                                          Photo by DUPhotograhy.com

Floral Designers - Can pull the aisle, ceremony area, bouquets and reception flowers together to enhance and complete your theme.

Full Service Florist - Often have someone in their shop that specializes in floral design.

Grocery Stores  - Will often have someone who can create the basics of most arrangements, but do not deliver - nor do your cake flowers (if necessary). 

Do Them Yourself - Buying wholesale and creating the bouquets is NOT for the bride's hands.  Your hands are in many photos and flowers are not easy to do - staining and breaking nails.

Often I am in awe at what a floral designer or florist will create. This photo of a design specialist brings a soft combination of flowers into a pure romance bouquet...and this photo does nothing to really show you how beautiful the above creation is with sea shells for a beach wedding.

Your altar or ceremony flowers, arches, canopies and settings for your nuptials bring in the romance and can key the color theme you choose.  We see so many exciting ideas and unique floral displays. There are a few concerns for the tables and I will address these.

                                                         Photo by DUPhotography.com

Special Tips:

1. Centerpiece flowers on your linens should display low (no higher than 12 inches) or quite high 1.50 to 2 feet.  The ability to talk across the table without hindering the view is important for your guest's enjoyment.

2. Most flowers hold up well, but choose wisely as some have excessive perfume and may give a concern for hay fever/headaches.  

3.  When your colors from the ceremony work well with your reception room selection, your flowers from the ceremony can be transported to the reception and used at the head table and/or on the cake table or as an entry display.

4. Understand prices and availability have a great deal to do with the season of the year.  ie  Valentine weddings are sooooo romantic, but trying to put your flowers together for a wedding is often a challenge, and much more expensive. (Place your order early on these).

   Photo by DUPhotography.com Evening wedding reception
notice how the floral color choice pops in the photos.

Find our AWARD Winning California Florist in our e-Magazine
 "Best Style California  Wedding & Honeymoon"

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Wedding + Flowers = Beautiful

Photo by DUPhotography.com

Custom Wedding Flowers and Decor

            Whether you are attempting to achieve a loud WOW or a hushed awesome wow, you will want to set the style and add romance to your wedding with flowers. They are at the top of the list in achieving themes, fantasy, passion, flirtation to your wedding and reception. They also bring creative beauty to indoor and outdoor settings.  

Photo by DUPhotography.com

Wow your guests with the vibrant hues, exotic or traditional blossoms available today, or draw them into your romantic setting with soft floral shades, tulle and candlelight. With our worldwide flower markets anything goes in today’s wonder of flowers. Imagine the remarks from the guests if you had no flowers… We have many local florists linked in WeddingLinks.com for every budget. 

 No matter where the wedding and reception are, it is important to work with a local professional florist who offers you several recommendation letters to call and confirm his/her standards from prior clients.  Yes, call those recommendations -- who knows better than someone he/she has worked for previously? You’ll want to know …

·         if the flowers were delivered on time and was the order what was talked about and requested?

·         if the order was filled completely and marked for who gets what?

·         if the flowers were fresh and held up well throughout the day?

Your best question is ....Would use that florist or floral designer again?

Photo by  DUPhotography.com

We will discuss table flower decor in the next blog. Questions, join Judith Rivers-Moore on Facebook.

Enjoy the new honeymoon travel articles from your mobile phone on http://honeymoonlinks.co

WeddingLinks.com shares 3 articles for ideas about flowers and ways to purchase rose petals and Hawaiian wedding flowers.



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Seven Tips On Wedding Flowers, Bridal Bouquets & Table Centerpieces

Love to have you join the weddinglinksblog.blogspot.com

 Photo by  DUphotography.com

Brides are as different about choosing wedding flowers as they are about selecting a wedding dress. Many brides-to-be could care less about the floral décor while others, must be surrounded by specific blossoms or they will not think this, “the wedding of their dreams”.  Share with us on the blog, your flower ideas or requests!

I Want - What I Want - When I Want It

We all get a bit cheeky about it being “our day” and “we can have what we want”, but with everything there is a plus and a minus. Your mind may dance with a wedding and reception profuse with flowers, but certain blossoms will cost you two to three times more out of season and other favorites do not hold up well in heat, or after they are picked. We quickly understand there is more to planning the flowers than we anticipated.

Photo by DUphotography.com

Trust these tips will help:

1. Understand if you order from the web, they may not get there on time or will need to be stored in a cooler to keep them fresh. With wedding flowers it is best to work with a local professional florist who will contract to create them “just as you requested and deliver them fresh and on time.”

2. Order early (6 or 8 months in advance) when you are married on or near popular flower gift times.  Mothers Day, Christmas, Valentines and Easter for the USA and other countries have specific celebration dates.

3. If you must keep your floral designs within a specific budget, it is important to have your bridal bouquet with your favorite flower(s). This is the most photographed and memorable display.

4. Flowers may be transported from the ceremony room to the reception room and decorate the front table, the cake/dessert table(s) and we have also seen them on the reception tables held in vases.

5. Allergies to flowers can sometimes require the removal of the flowers from a reception table. No one should be embarrassed by this request and made to feel at ease. Most people come prepared for their allergies, but new things (flower types) can set them off.

Please note the centerpiece height. Photo by JR Moore

6. When designing the individual reception table centerpieces, they should be kept very low so people may talk over them, or built high so people may talk through the base to their table partners.  

7. During Victorian Times books on flower meanings were the rage.  Bridal bouquets and hair flowers in particular give unique messages. You may want to study this and often your florist has a list or books.  We will be blog posting some of these meanings in the near future.

You are welcome to add your input and ideas to our blog.  

For local floral designers in your area or destination weddings, WeddingLinks.com offers a wonderful variety of articles and links to professional florists. We have also placed a link to growers of Hawaiian flowers and rose petal companies.

#weddingflowerideas, #weddingideas, #sonomaweddingflowers