Grow Your Own Wedding

Every year we get quite a few phone calls from customers who are planning a wedding and would like some ideas. This week we thought we would have a look at weddings and share some ideas about how you could have a grow-your-own wedding.

It seems hard to imagine it now, with the wind furiously doing laps around the garden, but eventually summer will come, and if you or someone you know is planning a wedding for summer, then now is the time to get planning.

If you are hosting a wedding in your garden, you will certainly be planning your planting so that the garden will be looking its best on the big day. We are often asked for suggestions for flowers to grow for a garden wedding. Our advice is usually to grow the flowers that you (or the bride and groom) like the most. Consider when the wedding will be held and do some research into what is likely to be flowering at that time of year. Choose flowers that are easy to grow and that flower for an extended period of time, and make sure to raise more plants that you think you will need, so that you can replace any casualties. As the wedding date approaches, make sure you dead-head your flowers so that they will keep flowering right up until the big day. And have a contingency plan - you never know what each growing season will bring!

Rather than hosting a wedding, you may be planning to grow the flowers that will be used for bouquets and buttonholes.

This can be a wonderful contribution to the day - a bouquet made from flowers grown by family and friends can be something very special for the bride.

If you are planning to provide the bouquets, it's definitely worth having a dry-run at putting them together so that on the day you know what you will be doing and can be sure you have everything you need.

Bouquets can be as simple as a single flower tied with ribbon, can be artfully put together, or can be a simple bunch of wildflowers.

You could also contribute flowers for the tables - a pretty wildflower wedding table is simple and easy to set up and looks just stunning.

There are plenty of other ways your garden can contribute to a wedding - you can grow living place markers to show your guest where to sit or you can add real flowers to a simple wedding cake to stunning effect!

(At this point, I would like to mention that it is not easy writing a blog post about weddings when two of your workmates are pelting you with broad beans.)

If you would like a wonderful idea for a wedding, how about some wildflower seeds as wedding favours.... your guests can take these home and sow them and have a living reminder of the day! This is a lovely idea - you can buy the wildflower seeds from us in bulk and package them yourselves to suit your wedding....(you can find some ideas for packaging here and here).

You can choose wildflower seeds, or there may be other seeds that have a meaning for you - sunflower seeds to tie in with your wedding flowers, perhaps.

Hopefully you will have a lovely long weekend this weekend (if only the wind would stop!!!) ...

... and if you have a wedding to look forward to this summer, we wish you all the best for both the wedding planning and for the day itself!