Marsala wedding 101 - Rosalind and Charly's chic city centre wedding

In 2015 Pantone's colour of the year was Marsala - a sort of burgundy, wine, oxblood tone - and since then I've had a lot of couples look to incorporate this beautiful rich tone into their wedding day. People often like to team it with blush pinks, rose golds and creams, and it is great colour to use if you are thinking of getting married in late summer or autumn.

Often people think that working in a "wild" or "natural" style of floristry means you can't do chic, contemporary or city weddings but last year I had the pleasure of working on Rosalind and Charly's super stylish Edinburgh wedding at the Balmoral.

Rosalind is a stylist and has a fantastic eye for detail, her dress was simple, elegant and chic with a fabulous scalloped edge neckline. She asked me to work in a burgundy / Marsala colour palette with pops of fresh white and eucalyptus to represent her time in Australia.

I used a mixture of Scottish grown flowers from the lovely Paula at Millpond Flower Farm, and imported dutch flowers. As it was an October wedding burgundy was a brilliant colour choice and we used some gorgeous rich dahlias to get the really dark dark wine colour in her bouquet along with amaranthus (which I always love using for its texture), blackberry scoop scabious, astrantia, garden roses, wax flower, eustoma and grasses. I loved the deep tones and different textures of her bouquet and although it was an all round design I still worked in loose and natural style letting the flowers showcase their beauty.

Charly had a buttonhole of succulents, thistle, wax flower and sedum to match in with Rosalind's Marsala bouquet.

 

We dressed the ceremony and reception rooms at the Balmoral in beautiful garlands of eucalyptus and autumn hydrangea, working with the muted tones of the room furnishings.

Photos by Crofts and Kowalczyk

Fiona and Nial's Crear Wedding

I was lucky enough to work on a really varied set of weddings last year, from bright colour pop warehouse ceremonies, to ethereal woodland weddings, pastel blooms in ancient castles to deep burgundy and marsala in Edinburgh city centre. I love that every couple is unique and while there are trends that run through wedding flower preferences, no two bouquets or arrangements are the same. 

One of my favourite weddings from last year was Fiona and Nial's August nuptials, which took place at the beautiful Crear on the west coast of Scotland. Fiona was initially attracted to my terrariums and dinosaurs with air plants in them, and succulents and tillandsia were soon added to the list of ingredients for her wedding flowers!

The muted tones of the Scottish grown flowers were inspired by the colours of the the Scottish landscape. Fiona wanted her bouquet to mirror the tones and textures of the West coast- the sea, sky and mountains. She loved Scandinavian design, clean lines and plants so I used a beautiful tillandsia air-plant as the focus of her bridal bouquet with the unusual lines and colours reminiscent of the sea shore. She could then keep the plant after her wedding as a memento.

Other ingredients included echinops, lavender, mint, dahlia, nigella (also known as love in a mist) and clematis. Her flower girl carried a giant allium head and I added a small tillandsia plant to Nial's buttonhole to tie in with Fiona's bouquet.

For favours Fiona and her mum wrapped mixed succulents in hessian and attached handwritten name tags. I love how the greenery of the foliage, the pale lavender, blue and white tones of the flowers pick out the tones of the landscape and their photographer Lisa Devine has beautifully captured the light and atmosphere of the setting.