Hannah and Lee
Everything is better with friends. Truly, is there anything better than a client that is a friend first?! Especially friends that have a fun and creative vision in mind! Lee and Hannah are part of my husband and I’s friend’s group that spend most of our summers camping near Lake Cle Elum and attending music festivals. Lee is the chill, rational guy, that if I close my eyes I can see his head bobbing to whatever background music happens to be present. Hannah is this joyous and kind, beam of sun that I hope you get to hear laugh at least once in your lifetime.
Hannah’s approach for florals and decor for their 80 person wedding at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA was a simplistic and organic Wabi Sabi look. It’s about appreciating a full life cycle and finding beauty in the imperfection, incompleteness, and flaws. In a floral sense, she wanted to use an organic flow, natural elements in earth tones, and also look a little modern. The design definitely evolved as we continued to bounce ideas around, since Hannah mentioned off-handedly that she also had this desire for it to feel like the garden from The Secret Garden (I mean, every 90’s kid dream wedding is one that reminds them of The Secret Garden movie if you’re asking me). So with that little tid-bit I ran with it and what we ended up with is nothing short of magical.
Vendors
Photographer: Carley Mae Photography
Venue and Catering: Fort Worden
Florals: The Copper Dahlia
Photobooth: Lionize Event Portraits
Crystals: Infinite Spiral
Hannah’s bridal bouquet had white Japanese anemone, deep red dahlias, brown tinted carnations, peegee hydrangea, rust tone spray roses, chocolate cosmos, dried rumex, grapevine, raspberry greens, crocosmia pods, clematis pods, and white preserved fern. Adorned on the ribbon wrap was a citrine crystal. Hannah’s one specific request when it came to florals was to incorporate raspberry greens, these particular stems were grown by her mom (so were the Japanese anemone and dahlias.)
Lee’s boutonniere was a citrine crystal accented by chocolate cosmos, grapevine curls, autumn joy sedum, and hebe greenery.
If it feels like I’m posting more than the appropriate amount of couples photography for a floral blog, please just internally cope with that feeling, because I gush over all of these.
I mean… come on… put these two on a magazine cover!
The wedding ceremony took place on the lawn at the bluff at Fort Worden. Accenting the coolest embellished mirror, was a ground arrangement of big leaf and peegee hydrangeas, hanging amaranthus, dried rumex, white Japanese anemone, dark burgundy dahlias, brown tinted carns, variegated fatsia, and nandina greens.
Their ceremony space (below photo taken by me) had 3 altarpieces. I wanted the wispy grasses, madrona branches and slate stone semi-circle to echo the surrounding landscape. Those pieces had peegee hydrangeas, dahlias, white Japanese anemone, rust spray roses, dried rumex, purple feather grass, dried poppy pods, nandina, hosta pods, dried lunaria (money plant), fatsia, dried blue echinops, and madrona branches.
Happy folks just got married! Also peep the spaz in the blue dress in the above photo that managed to throw her petal cone as well as the petals at the bride and groom (I never said I was graceful.)
For cocktail hour on the bluff, I put together an assortment of budvases to spread out amongst appetizers, drinks, and high top tables. The assortment included tweedia, spray roses, Japanese anemone, hydrangea, and lots of different varieties of dahlias.
How did I have so many different varieties of dahlias you ask? Well, the florals for Lee and Hannah’s wedding was a group effort. When Hannah told me her family was a family of gardeners and wanted to provide florals for me to arrange I wasn’t sure what to expect. It can get really tricky planning out ingredient recipies and what to buy from the floral market when you’re depending on friends or family of the couple. You never know seasonally what they’re going to look like (especially as hydrangeas change color as the season progresses- white will no longer be white and green fades to pink or even red.) It’s also hard to plan for what you may need quantity-wise; you could be expecting 30 stems from someone and they show up with 10.
So we started with getting photos of both her mom and aunt’s yard so I could identify varieties I would want to use and I just circled on the photo what to send back to each gardener. The best part about this approach is that when it came time to circling, Hannah and I were on her phone in the rain, in the middle of a concert crowd, at a festival in Gasworks Park. Flowers are always on my mind, I’ll tell ya.
Then about 2 weeks out, I had placed my pre-order with the market/wholesaler for a few specific items: the chocolate cosmos, dyed carns, and tweedia (at market I eventually also picked up the rust spray roses, burgundy poms, amaranthus, and about 6 bunches of dark, dark, burgundy dahlias.) The week of the wedding I spoke with Hannah’s mom and aunt on the phone as they gave me a run-through of what they could send for me to use. I knew I would have plenty to work with, but never would I have expected in what ways they would deliver!
Since the wedding was in Port Townsend, I did most of the designing at my parent’s house in Hansville, about a 50 minute drive from the venue. Hannah’s uncle delivered the flowers from both gardens and we did some swapping of branches so they could bring them to the venue ahead of my arrival. He opened up the brand new Ford sprinter van and I was FLOORED. We’re talking 15 home depot buckets of hydrangeas. Garbage bins full of greens, Japanese anemone, and all sorts of fun botanical accents I never even knew I needed in my life. Vases upon vases of dahlias! So needless to say, our plan worked. I got to work designing and had plenty to choose from. It’s such a special touch to know that Hannah had items from her family in her bridal bouquet especially.
The USO Hall reception space at Fort Worden is a long room that Hannah and Lee’s family hung lights across, and had a stage at the end. They had such an organized and dedicated family crew setting up all the details!
Hannah and I had talked a bit about some sort of statement piece either on the stage or on the floor in front of the stage as something that would catch everyone’s eye when they walked in. She ended up finding a pretty cool branch ceremony backdrop example photo. When she sent the photo I had an intense visceral reaction I was so inspired. It was going to be gardeny, tall, sculptural, and I also had no idea how I was going to find logs that big to accomplish it within 6 weeks, but I was stoked.
Within a week, I was blessed by a visit from the flower fairy in the form of my neighbor across the street hiring a landscaping crew to remove a drop-dead gorgeous 15-18 ft coral bark Japanese maple tree. If you are a plant person, you are reading that sentence again and questioning why those words would ever be arranged in that manner. As someone who watches that lush maple turn colors throughout the year out our front windows, I was heartbroken. As a floral designer that can’t pass up a good branch, you better believe I was flagging down the crew as they had the base of the tree attached to their rig, trying to pull it out by the roots. They agreed that instead of taking the branches with them they’d just drag them across the street on to my lawn in “smaller” pieces. Over the next few weeks I sawzall-ed the straightest branches down to more manageable sizes, shaped some of the smaller branches (thanks for the help mom), and de-leafed them all. I kept two big branches with the right curves specifically for the installation.
The structural mechanics of getting the branches in the right position involved some survivalist rope tying instructional videos to create tripods in two different sizes (you learn something new every day.) The smaller tripod is holding the large sideways branch, and on the taller tripod I attached the other longer vertical branch and some madrona. With the framing in place, I constructed the arrangements both on the larger tripod piece and three additional altar pieces placed at the base of the framing.
Here’s a long list of materials used starting from left to right:
Cottoneaster branches with coral berries, white japanese anenome, specialty laceleaf green hydrangea, red smoke bush greens
Dried smokebush with leaves removed, peegee hydrangeas, blue big leaf hydrangea, burgundy button poms/mums, fatsia leaves, purple/burgandy dahlias
Nandina, queen anne’s lace, coral hanging amaranthus, dyed brown carnations, dried rumex, dried lunaria, autumn joy sedum
Peegee hydrangeas, blush cactus dahlia, purple burgandy dahlia, blue large leaf hydrangeas, fatsia, seven son flower (this is beautifully fragrant!), hanging amaranthus in coral, pink, and preserved white
When it comes to color selections, Hannah and Lee’s main color pallet was dusty pink/rose, burgundy, amber/rust, white, and a touch of blue. Other natural earth tones of browns and grey with the addition of black brought that wabi sabi look to their tablescape by incorporating long branches and river rock. The simple black and amber votives also perfectly echoed the ripple effect on the chargers.
A fun textural accent I collected for placing on top of the menu were sweet gum seed pods. The little spikey balls were a fun touch to bring in another natural element. I also pressed all of the queen Anne’s lace for the place cards which Hannah assembled.
For table centerpieces, I was initially going to go for a very simple and small ikebana style arrangement, but when I had the volume of hydrangeas and other beautiful materials to work with, they ended up being more of a standard centerpiece size. Each of the 10 arrangements had a slight difference in the color of dahlias being used and greenery of either hellebore leaves, fatsia, or lady’s mantle. Arranged in groups, they all had lunaria, black mondo grass, peegee hydrangea, white Japanese anemone, and either burgundy, deep wine, or terracotta orange dahlias.
After the ceremony, the altar pieces were moved to the “guest quilt” table, memories table, and bar. The various desserts I decorated in cute little wispy clusters with anemone, chocolate cosmos, dahlias, carns, spray roses, and hydrangea.
I had so much fun being Hannah’s idea board for different decor and design inspiration. I tend to have a lot of enthusiasm about the brainstorming process and creative ideas. It’s not every day that clients are always open to a different direction or approach than one that they’ve maybe had in their head ahead of time, so I definitely don’t take offense when I pitch a design and a client just prefers a different style or just wants exactly what they asked for. Hannah was actually open to every idea (haha,) so we narrowed down to exactly the feel she wanted for their celebration and how we could tell that story to her guests.
Hannah and Lee trusted me, and I am so honored to have been a special part of their day, especially after meeting all of their flower loving friends and family!
