What do these things have in common? Cable wire, small sledge hammer, tin snips, staple gun, ferrules, nuts and bolts, zip ties, chicken wire and a scissor lift. You guessed it! Those are all things I used to make Josie and John’s wedding floral dreams come true. And flowers. Lots of flowers.
When I first talked with Josie and her mom about her May 14 wedding at Clover Cliff Ranch, I took notes about the things most important to Josie. Sustainable, locally sourced, boho, vintage, whimsical, hanging flowers. The first few were easy for me! But hanging flowers? I made Josie a promise that I would figure it out and then the work began.
So here is Part One of Josie’s Flower Dream and all the work that happened behind the scenes. When I get the professional photos to share (from LifeLeak Visuals) I will write Part Two.
The process for me started after Josie and I finalized the plan. The hanging flowers she really wanted would be three floral chandeliers with two floral garlands hanging between them. The beam this would all hang from is 16 feet high so we would need a scissor lift and a guy named Jake. We honestly couldn’t have done this without Jake!
I created the chandeliers with 3 foot wreath frames, a cable wire kit including ferrules (I had to google how to pronounce these), and a sledge hammer to smash the ferrules. Not my typical floral work. These circles were then covered with ivy, asparagus fern and italian ruscus.
I should mention here that I had an amazing team working with me during wedding week- Gay Clark, Sam Kidd, and Stephanie Graham. We started Wednesday and put in about 75 labor hours between all of us. The only way to pull off these florals was to have a very clear plan and do all the detail work ahead of time.
For the chandeliers, we knew we couldn’t travel with the flowers already connected so we used Christmas ornament hooks to pre-hook 200 flower stems. We also precut greenery and flowers for the reception tables, and finished all the bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres. The meadow arrangements for the ceremony were mostly finished ahead, but we covered the chicken wire onsite just because they were easier to transport that way.
Saturday was a beautiful day for a wedding! We loaded three large vehicles with everything we needed to set up the wedding and the four of us headed to Chase County Kansas. The scissor lift was ready and waiting with Jake to help us with the ceiling install. As you can see from these photos, it takes quite a few florists to correctly hang a chandelier!
Normally I try to keep my floral recipes pretty simple, but Josie wanted color and I had so much fun with my choices. We used delphinium, Larkspur, button mums, roses, spray roses, ranunculus, feverfew, carnations, wax flower, and craspedia in a rainbow of colors, and eight types of greenery. I always “try on” the bride’s bouquet as I’m making it to make sure it will look perfect in photos, and I take a picture of every bouquet I make on the same stone step at my studio. Sometimes I have to edit out my foot!
This photo was taken right before we walked away. The tables were set. The chandeliers and garland were hung. And we were tired and hungry! We were really proud of our work and I just knew Josie and John were going to love it! Stay tuned for Part Two: Josie and John’s Magical Wedding Day.