Dahlia

Most people think of dahlias as late spring and summer flowers, but this year has been a tough one for dahlias. According to our farmers, dahlias need a cold winter and a warm spring to produce the most beautiful dahlias. That was not this year so it’s just been recently that we’ve been able to get the large, gorgeous dahlias that we’re used to. The deep colors are perfect for our fall brides’ bouquets.

Astrantia

Astrantia looks like a wildflower to me. It’s delicate and willowy and comes in different colors. It is not a focal flower. When added to a bouquet or arrangement, it adds surprising texture and depth. Astrantia also ties different colors together into a cohesive look–whites and burgundies, pinks and maroons.

Strawflower

With a texture that doesn’t feel like a real flower, strawflowers are just fun! If you’re hoping to hang your bride’s bouquet upside down to create a dried bouquet, strawflowers are a perfect addition. They look the same when dried as they do when freshly cut.

Celosia

While many people don’t know this flower’s name, they sure can describe it! It’s the Dr. Seuss flower! Celosia comes in many forms and colors from mustard colored cranial flowers to bright red feathery spiked flowers. This is a fun flower to add whimsy and texture. We’ve been enjoying this soft lavender colored Asian Garden celosia that came to us unexpectedly from a local farmer.

Thistle

Trevor has been known to call this his secret ingredient, and it’s easy to see why! He’s particular to the Sea Holly thistle for its vibrant blue color. Mother Nature doesn’t have a lot of flowers that come in true blue. But this thistle really is true blue while adding subtle texture.

Astilbe

If you have a bride’s bouquet or arrangement that is heavy with large flowers, astilbe might be the perfect addition. This airy flower comes in all different colors from whites and pastels to deep hued burgundies. Astilbe is perfect for adding texture and breaking up blocks of heavier flowers such as roses and dahlias.

Queen Anne’s Lace

While baby’s breath is still a wedding standard, we’ve had fun this year using Queen Anne’s Lace instead. I usually think of Queen Anne’s Lace as the wildflower that I see when I run through the Manassas battlefields. It is that wildflower. When used in a bride’s bouquet or reception centerpieces, it lends that soft delicate quality that brides often look for.

One of the fun things about living in Virginia is experiencing the wonders of each of the four seasons. I get excited when I wake up to crisp chilly mornings and the sound of wind blowing through drying leaves. The advent of fall is also exciting for florists as we get to play with the new colors and textures of our favorite flowers…right now.

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Hitting Home

A long-time childhood friend of my sons is supposed to get married in September. I received a message from his bride letting us know that they are trying to figure out whether, how, or when to move forward with their wedding. I could hear the crushing disappointment as well as the angst of trying to make the perfect decision in her voice.

While I have watched customers wrestle with these hard decisions, hearing this young lady’s voice put a lump in my throat. Not only are we providing the flowers for her wedding, we’re also attending the wedding, and my sons are in the wedding party. This one really hits home because the decisions she’s facing are ones she’s trying to make on behalf of families that she loves, including my own.

So this letter is to her and to all the 2020 Brides out there.

Dear 2020 Bride,

Breathe… you are loved and cherished and appreciated.

Whatever you decide will be just perfect! This is your day, and the start of your new life together as a married couple. It’s the beginning of your family. What is right for some families might not be right for your family, and vice versa, and that’s OK!

While this pandemic affects everyone, the way it affects everyone is different. Some need to be totally isolated, others are comfortable venturing out with masks and social distancing. You won’t be able to accommodate everyone’s needs, but everyone will understand. Take that pressure off and just focus on what brings both of you the most peace and joy. Whatever brings you peace and joy will also bless everyone else that you love.

Love is what brought you to this moment. Love is what will get you through this moment–love for each other, love for family and friends, love from family and friends. As you look back on this day from some vantage point in the future, memories of being a 2020 Bride will be truly special ones.

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It’s been a bit since I’ve written. I guess I haven’t had an ideas tugging at my sleeve lately. Today a gentleman walked in. Even with his mask on, I could see he was smiling broadly! “I need birthday flowers!” he announced animatedly. People like this just make my day. On top of that, it’s Friday! TGIF!

We have a lot to be thankful for, besides the fact that it’s Friday!

Since the lockdown, our doors have remained opened. Adjustments needed to be made, but the shop has never closed.

Customers are starting to walk back in. After having so many weeks of just Trevor and I in the shop, walk-ins are a breath of fresh air! We don’t carry what we call cooler arrangements right now–arrangements that are pre-made and sit in the cooler for people to choose from. There were no walk-ins to buy cooler arrangements. Customers understand and are willing to wait or come back. It’s a win/win situation! Customers get exactly what they want in the price range they prefer, and we don’t have to throw away arrangements.

Weddings are coming back. One of our favorite things is working with happy couples as they plan one of the most special days of their lives. We’ve missed that! About two months ago we got our first of many orders for just a bouquet and boutonniere for the bride and groom getting married in their living room. Then the orders were for a bouquet, boutonniere, and small arrangements for tables as home weddings grew in size. Next weekend we’ll be providing the full array of flowers for our first off-site wedding since the pandemic started. Definitely something to be thankful for!

Our long-time customers continue to support us. I love catching up on birthdays and anniversaries! During the last several months, we’ve met so many new customers that have became regular customers. The lockdown brought them to us because they couldn’t celebrate Mother’s Day of Grandma’s birthday in person, but now that they’ve found us, they plan on coming back. Our Fantasy Floral family continues to grow, and that is definitely something to be thankful for!

So TGIF, and we hope you and your family have lots to be thankful for as well!

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Peony

Brides especially love to have peonies in their bridal bouquets. If you have your heart set on peonies in your bouquet, you’ll want to get married in late spring or early summer. That’s when this gorgeous flower is in season. During the rest of the year, peonies are prohibitively expensive. During Mother’s Day, we always get a lot of requests for peonies. Fortunately Mother’s Day falls right at the beginning of peony season so we are able to honor most requests without blowing the budget.

Dahlia

If Mother Nature used a spirograph to create a flower, she would come up with the dahlia. Their concentric circles of petals fascinate me. There is a dahlia for every color palate imaginable. There are delicate looking white or light pink dahlias. For something more bright and bold you can choose from yellows and oranges. If you need a darker palate there are deep burgundies and dark purples. I found these fun dahlias to plant in my yard this year. Each bloom has the same two-toned combination of yellow and pinky/purple, but the mix of the two colors is different in each bloom. I love them!

Zinnia

When I first started working at the shop, I had a hard time telling the difference between a dahlia and a zinnia. Both are from the sunflower family so the construction of each of these flowers is similar. There are not as many varieties of zinnias as there are dahlias, but zinnias also come in a  fun array of colors. Easily grown from seed, zinnias are a great flower to plant in your garden. You’ll have loads of colorful flowers to cut throughout the summer for your own arrangements.

Gladiola

I love gladiolas in arrangements because they add wonderful height and texture. I planted gladiola tubers for the first time in my yard this year, and they are just starting to emerge. I am hoping they’ll come back next summer. Stay tuned! In addition to arrangements, gladiolas also make great corsages and boutonnieres. We had a customer that wanted a corsage made out of an unusual flower, not the typical rose or carnation. We had just gotten some gladiolas in so our designer used them. The corsage was beautiful and elegant!

Iris

There is a house that I walk by in my neighborhood that has the most beautiful bearded irises planted around their mailbox. They display their stunning purple for a couple of weeks. This morning when I walked by, the blooms were finally spent. With such a unique shape, irises are a favorite flower right now in arrangements. Their vibrant purple color is unmistakable. It pairs beautifully with hot pink roses or happy yellow tulips. Our “Colleen” arrangement is very popular, but because of the seasonality of irises, it’s only available during the spring and summer.

While these are our favorite flowers right now, in a couple of months we’ll be stocking our coolers with fall colors. As the days get shorter, and the nights get cooler, Mother Nature provides us with another batch of flowers and foliage that will be inspiring us. Check back with us then!

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Dried Flower Projects

Drying the Flowers

There are three ways you can dry your flowers, depending on how you want to use them. The easiest way is to hang them upside-down in a well ventilated area. You can hang a single stem or several stems held together by twine or rubber bands.

A second way to dry flowers is to press them between absorbent paper using old books or an actual flower press. There are lots of instructional videos online showing how to do this, including this one from the University of Illinois. The best flowers for this kind of drying method are ones that don’t have a lot of bulk to them and will flatten easily. Daisies, snap dragons, black-eyed Susans, gladiolas, will all press nicely. Flowers like roses or carnations that have a bulky base do not press well.

A third way to dry flowers is using silica gel. This is a great method if you want the dried flowers to essentially look the same as the fresh flower version. You can get silica gel at any local craft store or through Amazon. Again, there are a lot of instructional videos online, including this one from MonkeySee.

Projects Using Dried Flowers

Epoxy Resin

A.K. Art & Creations

One of my good friends is a jewelry maker and just started experimenting with resin. Epoxy resin can be purchased at any local craft store or through Amazon. She has come up with gorgeous pieces from pendants to earrings. She has also created some beautiful serving trays and bowls. The resin allows her to embed different objects such as metallics, shells, and flowers.

A.K. Art & Creations

What to do when stuck at home with your children? Take a walk around the neighborhood and collect wildflowers. There are a lot of apps you can download to your phone that will identify the flower for you. Wildflowers are intrinsic to our pollinators so it’s a great opportunity to help children understand the roll pollinators play. Some wildflowers are a source of energy for hummingbirds, some food for caterpillars, and some, like milkweed, are the sole provider of shelter and a place to lay eggs for the monarch butterfly. It’s amazing what flowers you will see once you start looking for them to collect.

Preserving Bride’s Bouquets and Corsages

A lot of brides want to preserve their wedding bouquets. The two best methods for this are the hang and dry method for a vintage look or the silica gel method if you want the bouquet to look similar to the way it did on your wedding day. The stems of a bouquet are wrapped very tightly. While air and silica gel will be able to circulate between the greens and flowers on the outer-most edges of the bouquet. Air and silica gel will not be able to get between the wrapped stems. Over time, moisture at the base of the bouquet and between the stems will cause mold and deterioration.

With both methods, you will need to take the bouquet apart, dry the individual stems, and reconstruct the bouquet. While there are several local companies that preserve bouquets, it’s a fun project to do, especially when stuck at home. Just make sure to take a photo of the bouquet before you take it apart and at various points during deconstruction. These photos will help you put the bouquet back together again once the stems have dried.

You can do the same thing with your corsages from Prom or Homecoming or Daddy-Daughter Dances. If you have purchased your corsage from us, the stems are already individually wrapped with floral tape and should dry well without deconstruction. I still have my corsage from my high school Prom. I hung it upside down from my mirror the night I got home. It’s a bit brittle now so I have it in the original clam shell, but I love the vintage pink color…and of course the memories!

Memories

Another project you do with your children is more long-term. I have several copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I loved exploring nature and “adventuring” as a little girl so this was a well-loved book. One of my copies is a big heavy large print book that became my flower press when I was a little girl. I chose it because it was the heaviest book I had that wasn’t a Bible. Now the choice seems so poetic–wildflowers from my adventuring pressed into a book about adventuring. I included little notes with the flowers indicating where and when I collected them. Now I can flip through the pages of Huck Finn and relive my own adventures.

One of the first arrangements I made at Fantasy Floral included peonies. I wanted to save the peonies as a memory and because they were so full and gorgeous. I just wrapped kitchen twine around the end of the stems and hung them from the curtain rod at our sliding glass door. As the peonies dried, they did lose some color, but that’s what I like about them–the vintage color look. It gives the room a cottage feeling.

Once you have dried your flowers, the projects are endless! You are only limited by your imagination in what to do when stuck at home!

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Pinterest and Instagram are wonderful sources of inspiration for flowers and arrangements, especially for newly engaged couples. We love it when couples share their Pinterest Boards or their Knot’s Wedding Vision. They help us understand the look and feel the couple are striving for, and they help us get to know the couple better. The downside is that sometimes couples fall in love with flowers that won’t be in season for their wedding.

Recently we had a bride show us her Pinterest Board. It was full of peonies, but her wedding was in November. You can imagine her dismay when we told her that we might not even be able to get her peonies, and if we were able, they would be at least $20 per stem. Talk about going over budget!

First Steps

Before you start looking for inspiration, first figure out when your wedding will be, and then find out what flowers will be in season so you can focus on seasonal designs. It also helps if you have a budget for your wedding, including how much you would like to spend on flowers; again, this will ensure that you don’t fall in love with a design that isn’t within your budget.

White roses and baby’s breath courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Gerbera daisies

Dark purple calla lilies courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Year-Round Flowers

There are many flowers that are available year-round, not just for seasonal designs. These are flowers that your florist will be able to get for you without too much trouble or extra cost–even if they are out of the normal growing season.

Year-round flowers include roses, gerbera daisies, and lilies, including calla lilies. You can also get filler flowers such as baby’s breath, purple statice, and alstroemeria, year-round, as well as greens such as eucaplytus or ruscus.

Tulips courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Lilac courtesy of Gardenerdy.com

Pink peonies and white calla lilies courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Irises courtesy of Fantasy Floral

Spring Flowers

In addition to the year-round flowers mentioned above, spring seasonal designs can also include tulips, lilac, daffodil, peonies, pussy willow, forsythia, irises, dahlias, and sweet peas. Some flowers, like irises and dahlias, have longer growing seasons and are also available in the summer.

Gladiola centerpieces courtesy of Fantasy Floral

White hydrangeas

Summer Flowers

Summer seasonal designs, in addition to the flowers already mentioned, can also include delphinium, gladiolas, snapdragons, and hydrangeas.

Liatrus

Red anthurium

Queen Anne’s Lace

Fall Flowers

Fall seasonal designs start to take on fun textures with the flowers that are available. This includes marigolds, liatrus, anthurium, Queen Anne’s lace, solidago, and thistle.

Ranunculus courtesy of fiftyflowers.com

Lisianthus

Lotus seed pods

Winter Flowers

Even though it seems that nothing would grow in winter, there are lots of options for colder weather weddings. Ranunculus, lisianthus, and kangaroo paw are beautiful floral additions. Winter seasonal designs also lend themselves to evergreens such as pine needles or holly leaves, berries such as holly or hypericum, and dried elements such as pine cones or lotus seed pods.

Once you’ve decided on a wedding date, set up a time to talk to your florist. We encourage engaged couples to email us photos and/or links to their vision boards before their appointment so we are prepared with pricing, but it also allows us to come up with creative ideas to share that fit a couple’s vision. Go into your florist appointment with an open mind. We often have ideas that are just perfect for your special day that you haven’t thought of yet…after all, this is what we are passionate about, and we love making your special day as magical as possible!

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