Human Flower Project

Matchmaking on the Wedding Day


Georgia Silvera Seamans and other family members of a lucky bride and groom take on a human flower project the morning of a summer wedding.


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For a Pittsburgh wedding the bride’s mother, a professional florist, guided the other women-relatives in making bouquets for the whole wedding party

Photo: Joe Seamans

By Georgia Silvera Seamans

I had watched my mother make bouquets for my brother’s wedding and even helped to wrap the stems, but I had never constructed a wedding bouquet on my own.

This gap in my resume was filled at the wedding of a cousin-in-law this August.  A cousin of my husband’s was marrying the daughter of a floral designer. Not only is the bride’s mother a working florist, she’s a great teacher.  She and the mother of the groom organized a bouquet-making class for the women relatives to take place the morning of the wedding.  (Prior days’ activities had included cookie making and Bollywood dancing lessons at the bride’s mehndi—though the bride is not of Indian descent).

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For the bouquets, friends of the couple’s families donated flowers, many from

their own summer gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

The mother of the bride created her daughter’s bouquet, naturally, while the rest of us designed bouquets for the bridesmaids and other women in the bridal party.  We met on the back patio on the groom’s parents’ house in Pittsburgh surrounded by buckets of cut flowers, ribbons, scissors, and floral foam.  The flowers had been collected from the yards of friends of both families.  We watched and listened as the mother of the bride arranged her daughter’s bouquet.  In one hand she held a foam-cylinder, placing flowers in the foam with the other hand.  The first flower tucked into the foam was the largest bloom in the bouquet.  Smaller flowers and leaves were selected to surround this central blossom. After arranging the flowers, she wrapped the foam with ribbon.  Voila!  We were in awe of the simplicity of the process but very impressed by the beauty of her bouquet, for the bride.  Our only other instruction was to design bouquets to our liking.  Each member of the bridal party would be wearing a different colored dress so the bouquets did not have to follow a specific color palette.

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The author chose eucalyptus foliage and white flowers to make a bouquet

like the one she carried on her own wedding day

Photo: Joe Seamans

I selected small, white flowers and eucalyptus-colored foliage for my bouquet— a simple bouquet which one of my husband’s sisters pointed out matched my personality.  (Later I realized that the bouquet I designed resembled my own bridal bouquet.)  Not only did the bouquets match the personalities of their makers, but each turned out to match the style of the bridal-party member who chose it.

We all had a great time.  We were a group of ladies (a young man joined us to make boutonnières) out of doors, among lots of sweet-smelling and colorful flowers.

imageThe bridesmaids enter: each bouquet different, specially made and selected

Photo: Georgia Silvera Seamans

The wedding procession was all the more exciting, to me, because we would see who had selected our bouquets.  The bridesmaids and flower girls and bride came and went but I did not see my bouquet.  Although I liked my bouquet very much, I realized that its muted colors might not fit with the exuberant colors of the dresses.  So, imagine my surprise when I saw a member of the bridal party carrying my bouquet.  At the family photo session, I was introduced to the bride’s grandmother.  We talked about her/ my bouquet; when she chose it, one of her daughters told her it matched her outfit beautifully.



Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/07 at 10:22 PM

Comments

What a great way to get together and get to know each other!
I love all the colors you used.
The colorful bouquet matched the dress imo.
Thanks for the post

Posted by Toronto Florist on 10/09 at 07:34 AM
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