Retro Wedding Theme Part I

By on July 14, 2012 in Daily Scoop, How To, Wedding Design Ideas

afloral.com retro wedding flower theme

Retro wedding themes are a popular throw back.  Setting themselves apart from the trendy vintage wedding theme, retro weddings take elements from classic pop culture and at times using vintage finds to create a fun playful look.  Pair a fun location with the right wedding flowers and you’ll have the start of a totally rad wedding day.

Afloral.com’s recent wedding photo shoot gives us some colorful wedding flower, retro wedding inspiration.  The retro wedding flower choices are a blast of powerful color, which sets the tone for a vibrant, playful wedding day.

afloral.com gerbera daisy retro wedding flowers

Found throughout the DIY retro wedding flower bouquets and centerpieces in this theme are gerbera daisy wedding flowers.  Gerbera daisy wedding flowers are a simple floral choice with a traditional look; large deep centers with colorful petals.  Color options are bright and bold as seen in the play of primary colors, red, blue and yellow in these DIY wedding ideas.

A blast of colorful retro wedding flowers set the tone for your wedding day, but bring it home with the right location.  Look for a fun, non-traditional reception setting like afloral.com’s retro amusement park locale.  How about a retro diner or ice cream shoppe, a roller skating rink or drive in?

If you can’t make it to one of these actual locations make sure and grab some fabulously, rad prop ideas.  An amusement park setting think vintage, hand-painted signs for rides and tickets, popcorn, cotton candy and photo booths.  An ice cream shoppe think sundae bar with classic glass dishes, classic ice cream choices with some vinyl and checker patterns.

Retro weddings are a playful, fun take on American staples.  Take favorites from by gone, happy go lucky days and style yourself a special memorable  wedding day.  Stop back next week for Retro Wedding Theme Part II, where we’ll break down some DIY retro wedding bouquet and centerpiece ideas.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

· Comments { 1 }

Real Brides Can DIY Wedding Flowers

By on July 7, 2012 in Daily Scoop, How To, Wedding Design Ideas

DIY afloral.com colorful, whimsical wedding flowers

The wedding world is DIY crazy.  We’ve blogged a lot about this current trend and boast afloral.com’s DIY bride resources, like this blog, the afloral.com you tube channel and wedding design ideas on the afloral.com website.  There are such a plenitude of resources and guides out there for DIY wedding planning, but when it comes to doing your own wedding flowers you wonder, is it really that easy?

With the creative staff behind magazines, websites and blogs the question arises can any novice bride pull these DIY projects off?  Whether it’s from a friend, a friend of a friend or on a platform like blogs and websites featuring customer’s creations it is nice to hear a great testimony from an everyday bride who planned their own DIY wedding flowers.

I stumbled upon the blog mealsandmiles.com author Meghann shares with us her journey in choosing to do DIY wedding flowers.  She watched her engaged sister find the right resources, get the right advice from a family member and have the right plan in pulling off her DIY wedding flowers.

After watching her own sister plan her DIY wedding flowers, Meghann realized how, “Easy, inexpensive and fun the whole experience was.  My sister and aunt worked together for months on selecting flowers, exchanging arrangement ideas.  The Thursday before the wedding, my sister picked up the flowers, and a gang of us headed to my aunt’s to help with arrangements.”

Seeing how her sister’s DIY flower planning went Meghann concluded, “My budget is just as tight, and the way that our friend raved about it, she convinced me to go that route too.  Watching the process unfold, I began to grow more and more excited about my own flowers.”

Meghann’s blog post is the perfect account of the everyday bride learning how to plan their DIY wedding flowers.  She gave us the right information and tips to look out for.
DIY wedding flowers can save you a bundle in wedding budget costs and can look just as gorgeous with the right planning and resources.  Meghann and her sister used a wholesaler to purchase real flowers, consider ordering silk wedding flowers in bulk from sites like afloral.com to save you more money and allot you more time to create wedding flower arrangements.  She used Pinterest in planning what wedding flower look she was going for by pinning inspiration photos and types/colors of wedding flowers.  Find a friend or family member with a little flower know how to help with your arrangements or do some more research online to identify flower types and seasons and DIY instructions and tutorials.

DIY afloral.com white/yellow & retro wedding flowers

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

· Comments { 3 }

Lovin’ DIY Summer Wedding Bouquets

By on July 3, 2012 in Daily Scoop, How To, Wedding Design Ideas

Gerbera-Daisy-Retro-Bouquet, afloral.com

DIY weddings are a huge wedding trend.  Couples are looking to save money by creating and taking care of wedding needs on their own but also they want to express some of their own personality.  Making your own wedding decor items and wedding flowers are a great place to start and save money!

Sleekgossip.com blogs, “Making your own bouquet is an economical and fun way to put a creative touch on your wedding. It’s simple to do!“  Sleek Gossip boasts making your own wedding flowers is a great way to add “creativity and personality to your special day.” 

They go on to give us the run down of how to start planning your wedding flower bouquets.  Preliminary planning, “decide which colors, species, and sizes of the flowers you will use.” Next, you should decide how large your bouquet will be.   The final aspect of your decision process is what shape the bouquet will be; round, cascading, long bouquet or free formed.” 

There is a lot to take in when starting to plan your wedding flowers.  Sleek Gossip gives great advice on where to start.  When you’re in your beginning stages of planning take a look at various types and colors of wedding flowers, whether you’re drawn to a particular variety of wedding flowers or you’re just going by a favorite color.  Most sites, blogs and even Pinterest allow you to search wedding bouquet inspiration by both type of wedding flowers and colors.

Lovin' Summer Wedding Bouquets!

photo credits: white peach/pink bouquet-bridefinds.com;purple/blue/green bouquet- jldesigns.blogspot.com; yellow & white hand tied bouquet- afloral.com;  twine tied summer bouquet- summerweddingdecor.com;retro wedding bouquet- afloral.com; pink/peach/yellow with blue bouquet- weddingwire.com

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

· Comments { 2 }

Pinterest Wedding Planning

By on June 30, 2012 in Daily Scoop, How To, Wedding Design Ideas

wedding-planning-pinterest; cinemotive.com.au

How do you wedding plan?  Are you a bride whose been planning her special day since she was a little girl?  Or an engaged couple with an approaching wedding date you need to iron out the details for?

There are so many resources out there in the print and digital world to help brides in their wedding planning and finding wedding inspiration.  A recent blog post on Destination Weddings Blog shares with us how the recent Pinterest craze is changing the face of wedding planning, Yasmin Bilimoria gives the details in “Planning Your Wedding with Pinterest”.

“For years, brides in the midst of wedding planning have been inspired by torn out photos and articles from bridal magazines. These pictures have inspired them while choosing their own gowns, cakes, invitations, flowers and wedding party attire.”  Bilimoria says the popularity of Pinterest which soared in early 2012 has changed how brides are organizing their wedding planning and inspiration.

With it’s popularity at a high in 2012 Pinterest was been a “hot topic among brides since then. Today this site is a common wedding planning tool which boasts millions, if not thousands, of wedding inspiration boards belonging to the top wedding planners and bridal magazines to college and high school students planning their dream weddings.”

Pinterest is not only a great resource but also a great tool and that is where it’s popularity comes in.  Not only can you search pins and boards for fabulous ideas of wedding themes, wedding flowers, wedding gowns ect. you can also organize everything you’ve found in your own boards.  Organize boards by inspiration for wedding themes or by specific categories like wedding flowers.

Afloral.com pinterest page

Personally I’m a visual person, quite often I get a magazine and flip through the entire issue looking at all the photos and ads before I even think of reading an article.  If you’re like me Pinterest was designed for people like us.  You can stroll through thousands of pictures searching by key words or others’ boards for fabulous and endless inspiration and guides.  Afloral.com can be found on Pinterest as Afloral Wedding Flowers, boards are organized by specific wedding colors (which is another wedding planning trend) and by theme.

afloral.com pinterest pink board

Tags: , , , , , , ,

· Comments { 3 }

Picking Your Wedding Flowers

By on May 30, 2012 in Daily Scoop, How To, Wedding Design Ideas

A bride to-be has a lot of decision making when it comes to picking the right wedding flowers.  Wedding flowers have a big impact on the look of your special day.  A bride wants her flower choices to reflect her personal taste, work within an allotted budget, and also speak for the look the couple wants on their wedding day.  That’s quite a bit to take in.

If you’re currently tossing around this complex decision of what wedding flowers to go with for your big day, I’ve come across some wonderful advice in a recent article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette online.  Margaret LeRoux from Worcester Living discusses the importance of wedding flowers and points us in the right direction with tons of great tips from Worcester florists in Bunches of Love: Finding the Right Wedding Flowers.

The following quotes are just a few of the fabulous tips she’s pulled from area experts on the topic of planning and picking the right wedding flowers.
“Flowers are important in setting the mood and tone of the wedding,” said Sean Maher, floral designer at La Jolie Fleur in Worcester.  Echoing his sentiment Virginia Orlando, co-owner of Seed to Stem, which is moving in June to Worcester from its current location in Sterling, agrees that flowers “create the vibe for the wedding.”

Orlando goes on to comment on some current wedding flowers trends, saying, “We’re seeing lots of muted pastels in bridal bouquets and off-white, cream and green, though some brides want bright colors, usually blue or purple for punch.” Veteran Worcester florist Cathy Walsh, proprietor of Sprout says, “No matter if the color choice is subdued or bright, the big thing now is texture.  Everyone wants succulents, pods, berries or creeping vines in their bouquets.”

Some of the florist give more advice on picking the right wedding flowers that reflect your personal taste, and note not to go with something that is outside your comfort zone.  And as you can see, current trends also affect what’s “in” with wedding flowers.  Right now white, off-white and muted pastel wedding flowers are  big.  White rose, hydrangea, dahlia and peony wedding flower bouquets are popular with this trend.  Also  for the texture trend in wedding bouquets. Succulents like echeveria, baby agave and lambs ear are a great accent.

photo credits: texture wedding bouquet with sprays- greenweddingshoes.com; texture bouquet with baby’s breath and peacock feathers-site.advantagebridal.com; “stunning succulent bouquet”- polkadotbride.com

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

· Comments { 1 }