Whimsical Woodland Florals at the Saltbox Lodge

Last week I had the pleasure of creating a massive floral sculpture! The occasion was a styled photo shoot, organized by Rachel, mastermind of Bad Boss Bride.

I first reached out to Rachel about putting together this photoshoot because I had a vision of a floral arch I desperately wanted to bring to life: lush and bold, colorful yet controlled, and absolutely chock full of flowers.

Rachel took my floral concept and expanded it into a beautiful photoshoot, brought together by a super talented team of other vendors. I hope our work will inspire people to look beyond traditional white and blush wedding flowers and embrace more colorful palettes!

Apart from being just plain fun to design with, a colorful palette opens up opportunities for a wide range of seasonal flowers that a white and blush palette leaves out.

Because this shoot started with the flowers, I want to take some space here to talk through my vision for these creations.

The Flowers

First things first: what flowers to feature in this shoot? For a fall shoot like this, some of the most obvious wedding flowers people think of–peonies, roses, ranunculus–would not be in season. The obvious answer? Dahlias, dahlias, dahlias!!

Unluckily, Sea Change Farm got its first frost a week before this shoot, which wiped out some of our dahlias and other summer flowers. In addition to our own-grown flowers, I sourced flowers from this shoot from my friend Marina at Shoving Leopard Farm and from Cedar Farm. All 100% seasonal, locally-grown blooms 🙂

Besides dahlias, some of the fall flowers featured in these arrangements are lisianthus, sunflowers, hydrangeas, zinnias, marigolds, chrysanthemums, celosia, and snapdragons.

The Arch

As the focal piece and main inspiration for this entire shoot, I wanted this arch to be spectacular. As in, a spectacle. I wanted a real “wow” factor here!

And so, it is. Absolutely. Covered. With. Flowers.

At Sea Change being environmentally responsible is our main thing! So this is a completely foam-free arch installation. I also steered clear of any single-use plastic, swapping out things like one-and-done zip-ties for a reusable option like bendable pipe cleaners. All of the materials that I used to construct this arch are reusable.

I managed to remember (for once!) to film myself constructing this arch. I made a timelapse video! Technology! 3 hours of arch construction, condensed down to 2 minutes for your viewing pleasure.

This arch is everything I’d hoped it would be! I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do 😉

The Bouquets

Dahlias, dahlias, dahlias! I designed a round bouquet for one of our models. She wore a bright white gown with sparkly details (courtesy of Lotus Threads) so I made her bouquet bright and sparkly in its own way! The clean white fabric set off the bright colors in this bouquet nicely.

Our other model wore a beautiful butterscotch colored gown. Her bouquet featured warm peach and pink colors and coppery hand-dyed silk ribbons to finish it off.

The Centerpieces

Juicy colors: that’s what I wanted from these centerpieces!

For this shoot, I adorned the table with three large compote arrangements. I got bright teal vessels for these, which contrasted nicely with the warm peachy tones of the flowers (complimentary colors, for anybody following the Flower Color Theory blog posts!).

At a wedding, or any celebration for that matter, your guests will spend much of their time seated and eating. Table centerpieces are the flowers they’ll spend the most time looking at! These compote arrangements provide a lot of visual interest, but are still low enough on the table that they won’t block the view of your dinner guests’ across-the-way neighbors.

Putting together the florals for this shoot was so much fun! A lovely day of flowers in a gorgeous mountain setting with a group of friendly, talented people. What could be better?