The task of making a bridal bouquet may be one of the most challenging jobs for a floral designer. In doing so, he/she has actually taken over the task, which was designated to the bridegroom in ancient times. Originally, on the wedding day, the bridegroom selected and picked flowers from the field, bundled them up and brought them to his bride to celebrate their “best day of life”. Without a doubt, the bride would be delighted with this special gift and carried the bouquet with her for the rest of the day.

Many bridal bouquets today are made without much regard to the origin of this custom. The gathering of flowers and the final composition of the bouquet are left to the florists. Unfortunately, there are occasions when the bouquet is a creation of wire and glue, rather than a bunch made up with spontaneous adoration and appreciation of fresh flowers.

Hand tied bridal bouquets
When we speak about spontaneity in terms of making floral bouquets, hand tied bouquet is the best example. The technique employed in the construction remains authentic to the origin of bundling flowers together.

By using the binding technique, the possibility of combining different floral material together could be endless, but in the mean time, this also depends on the skill of the floral designer. It might be interesting to note that in Dutch, floral designers are also known as “flower binder”. This given title underlines the authenticity of this form of design and its significance in the European floral design history.

For the actual composition of the bouquet, one has to give consideration to the shape of the bridal gown. Experience tells us that almost 80% of the bridal design inclines toward a more classic style. It appears that this design style has been very popular with brides throughout the past decades because it depicts romance, solemnity and more importantly, a sincere respect to the matrimonial rituals.

According to the length of the bridal dress, we could choose a round-shaped bridal bouquet (biedermeier form) or a longer form such as the drop shaped bouquet.

Cascade
At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, majority of the bridal bouquets were made of roses or standard carnations. These bouquets were mostly hand tied as well. Long vines of Asparagus setaceus “Plumosus” were added to give the bouquet an elongated look and thus a more elegant form. These kinds of designs were made to be carried on the arm of the bride; flowing like waterfall, cascading over her arm.

However, the later bridal bouquets became much stiffer and lost the flowing effect, one good example from this period is the stylized drop form.

Around 1980, the waterfall bouquet retuned to popularity again very much due to the huge bridal bouquet carried by Princess Diana at her wedding. This bouquet had a classical ambience, which matched well with the bridal gown. The sumptuous size of the bouquet with the flowing material went very well with the long veil worn by the bride.

We have to give credit to the German floral designers also for the revival of the cascade bouquet. Most of them prefer the significant natural flowing movement; in addition the characteristic forms of flowers were well respected. As a result, this mixture of qualities, a new form of cascade bouquet was born.

Importance of making the right choice of material
In order to create the flowing movement in the design, several technical possibilities may be employed. The best way is to select material with flexible stems; the term flexibility here does not equate itself with weak stems. Weak stems means mostly droopy flowers and easily breakable stems but in this context, we needed to find stems with flowers hanging downwards naturally. Unfortunately, floral material, which befit such description are not easy to come by!

Nowadays, growers are proud to be able to produce flowers with stiff strong stems and weak stems are regarded as inferior quality; the fact is, we hardly see cut flowers with hanging stems at all. Growers inclined to grow flowers with upright stems instead of hanging stems because it is simply more convenient to grow them

Although rare, we are still able to find a few climbing flowers, such as the Gloriosa lilies and the Lathyrus (sweet pea), they both exhibit qualities of climbing nature. Some greenery also possesses climbing form and they are great choices for making cascade design. A good example is the Asparagus setaceus “Plumosus”. Potted plants provide a good source of climbing material, we are able utilize cuttings from the more popular plant of Stephanotis, Jasminum officinalis and Ivy etc. These climbing vines provides good hanging material for cascade designs.

A second way to achieve the flowing form is to use material with bowed stems, the more commonly used material from this category are Euphorbia fulgens and bear grass. It is not difficult to use them to create an elegant downward movement.

The third way is to use wire to achieve the downward movement, this technique gives us the freedom to control the angle and manipulate the form according to the design. However, the right kind of hanging material will always give the cascade design a better and more natural expression.

Modern mix
Classic cascade bouquets are made of a collection of a single type of flowers while the modern version consists of a nice mix of flowers and leaf material. It is very effective to construct layers of flowers and combine them together to form the bouquet.

Firstly, we take some long, slim and hanging material and lay them on top of the basic layer, which is made by shorter and more compact looking flowers. Subsequently, we place more long, flexible and lighter material on top, repeating this layer after layer until we achieve the bouquet that we set out to make. It is a great idea to introduce transparent floral materials like Gypsophylla and Asparagus setaceus “Plumosus” .

By doing so, we are able to create more depth within the different layers in the bouquet. This makes the bouquet more spatial and provides interesting details. It is challenging to be able to weave all these ingredients together. The finished work resembles some kind of a brocade-like structure with shimmering colours. The special colour effect is a result of covering natural colours with a transparent layer of another colour, giving us a subtle mixture of natural colours.

Source: http://www.idartflor.com

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