A Woodland wedding in the Cotswolds
Your dream
Imagine a beautiful, remote, woodland in summer. You and your partner love nature and the great outdoors.
What a unique place to tie the knot! You’re both resourceful and creative and plan to make as much as possible yourselves. You’ve sorted the tipi, caterers and celebrant and would love the flowers to be wild style?
But it’s bothering you that the only flowers you’ve seen for sale would look completely out of place in this ancient woodland. How do you find the right florist?
Finding your florist
My advice is to hop onto the Flowers from the Farm website to find a flower grower/florist who can help near your woodland or wild location. A flower grower can often be a bit more flexible than a conventional high street florist. Some, like me, relish the challenge of wild style weddings and events. Needless to say, I was excited to meet Lucy and hear about her and Sam’s plans for a tipi wedding in a secluded woodland glade owned by Wild Woodland Celebrations near Nailsworth in Gloucestershire.
Cotswold Country Flowers is based not far away and I adore providing the flowers and floristry for country and rural style weddings. To share my passion for all things seasonal and local, couples are invited to visit the cut flower garden a year before their wedding to get a sense of the flowers and varieties they can expect on their actual wedding day.
Lucy did just that with her mum Maggie in July 2021. While wandering around the garden, cutting flowers that caught her eye, I could tell that Lucy knew what she wanted;
something fun to do with her friends who were coming from all over the country,
to keep things as local as possible to Stroud including produce and suppliers.
she was creative and resourceful too and wasn’t phased about giving things a go
I got the gist of her “vibe”; wild style flowers in pastel colours for bouquets, buttonholes and table flowers but more bold and eye-catching colours for a rustic arch (I noted she’d cut amaranthus, sunflower vanilla ice, and dahlia for this).
By the end of the visit, we agreed a plan based on an “over to you” wedding package:
1. A pre-wedding workshop in the tipi with her crazy friends (her words not mine) to make bouquets, buttonholes and table flowers
2. Buckets of flowers to adorn the hazel arch themselves (a permanent feature in the woodland)
Practicalities
Before leaping in, I double checked Lucy was aware of the practicalities of looking after the flowers overnight. For example a shady place to keep the flowers in buckets of water, a water source and ensuring the local deer population didn’t find them! Fortunately, a woodland setting during the heatwave of July 2022 couldn’t have been more perfect.
For me, the practicalities to take into consideration were the location (long bumpy track), transport of trestle tables and flowers to the woodland workshop (transit van hire required), and an extra pair of hands to help unload and reload the van and assist at the workshop. (Thank you Anthea)
Go for it
The huge tipi (Cotswold Tipis) was already in position and virtually hidden by the trees. We bagsied the kitchen area for the flowery workshop and set up the trestles with buckets of flowers and floristry equipment.
Shielded by trees from the hot sun it was a truly magical setting for the pre-wedding workshop. It was also the perfect antidote for Lucy and a great way for both her and her friends to relax for a few hours and have a good catchup over flowers. After well over a year of preparation, it all suddenly started to feel real.
Photo credit Zara Davis Photography
Lucy had first dibs on the flowers and chose exactly what she wanted for her bouquet as did each of the bridesmaids. They also made the buttonholes for their partners and adorned a collection of vintage bovril jars (discovered in their garden) with pretty flowers for the tables. They did a fantastic job.
Before finishing and packing up, we made sure all the bouquets had plenty of fresh clean water and would be out of the sun for their sleepover in the woods. One of the bridesmaids was in charge of snipping stems shortly before the ceremony the following day. The additional buckets of flowers were used by friends to jazz up the hazel arch the following morning. It framed Sam and Lucy perfectly while they made their vows. Their guests witnessed it all from the comfort of their hay bales.
It looked to be a magical day full of laughter, joy, fun, friends, family, music, food and drink and was captured brilliantly by Zara Davis Photography. “ thank you for everything you did to help make the wedding a resounding success. So many people commented on how beautiful the flowers were, and the arch was spectacular. Thank you wholeheartedly.“