Mayesh Design Star: Garden Style Bridal Bouquet

Thanks for watching this edition of the Mayesh Design Star. I'm Christy Holtzy and today I'm here to talk about bouquets. Asymmetrical garden style bouquets for a bride who's focused on meaning and intention and likes the flowers from the garden. The first thing that I do when I'm actually building my bouquet is create what I call is a skeleton. In my skeleton, I like to use some sort of flower that has a stick. I'll tell Kelly, does it have a stick in it? Does it have a bone in it? Russian olive is great to use. Camellia also has a nice firm bone in the back of it that you can use. This is going to be the backbone of the bouquet. I like to create an X and then put one straight up in the middle. We strip the leaves down to the bottom and I just keep layering kind of similar to the compotes but layering the greenery one on top of the other. The one thing I think is important whenever you're making your bouquets too is to take your time. I may be more hurried today because I'm showing you how but I really encourage people to not be restricted by time on the bouquet and even if you get in a creative slump or maybe you've made it and you just don't care for it, it's okay to take it apart and to start over again. If it's easier for you, if your hand strength isn't that strong or you're just getting started making these bouquets, you can go ahead and take a rubber band to secure your skeleton and hold it in place. I think that I'm going to put, I really tend to gravitate towards greenery that is, I guess what I call silvery. So you can kind of think out of the norm or we call it out of the vase and look at leaves on the back side. A lot of leaves have two colors. If I do it on one side, I do also do it on the other side and I also do it on the back so that I have a nice skeleton going. So I feel like this is probably good enough greenery and has some good bones on it. Don't stress out about it too much, just think to yourself, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful and also just remind yourself you can always start over. Now that we have our skeleton for our bouquet, you've layered your greenery, I like to start with the focal flowers. I usually find one that is just I'm mesmerized by or maybe it's your bride's favorite flower or something. I think that it'll tell the story of the bride. And also sometimes I start with something to sort of anchor the bouquet. I'm going to swap that and I'll tell you why. I do like portia a lot. The only thing that I don't like is sometimes there is a black center and the black center creates a focal point and since it's such a big flower, I don't want that to be our story. So I have him and then I think that these are just absolutely beautiful. These are the white o'haras from Rosa Prima Roses. Rosa Prima flowers are grown in Ecuador and we have found, I'm not paid by Mayesh or Rosa Prima, this is all true stories. We found their farm or their brand a couple of years ago and they were just consistently amazing flowers and we felt like that was what we needed. We didn't have the time or money to go through pricing cheaper flowers or flowers that might come in not correct so we just, when we call the wholesaler, we just ask for Rosa Prima Roses. Today, this bouquet that I'm making, I'm going to make him the focal flower and I have these going out wide because the mood board asked for a large bouquet. Don't be afraid to go out wide like that. I do still like to work in threes and fives, not always but a lot of times. The roses that we have, I like to put them sort of lower in the arrangement so that the flowers that are going to flutter and dance and move are up higher. These Juliettes are really pretty. These are also from Rosa Prima. I'm going around this bouquet. A lot of times I cluster two but again, I'm using three. If the stems are too long while you're working with them, just trim them off and don't rush. The only thing in our shop that doesn't have a recipe, anything else could have a recipe but is the bridal bouquet. We don't want the designer to be restricted to a recipe on the bridal bouquet because I believe that it's the most important item in the whole wedding. We like to use a little bit from the reception, from the ceremony, I like to use a little bit of everything in the bridal bouquet. This is the Cafe Latte and I'm clustering them over there together. I felt like they matched the color palette over here a little bit better. This is a nice interesting piece that I think I'm just going to go around with three of those. This is Explosion Grass. It's something that I didn't ask for in my recipe or in my poll from Kelly. It's something that she just put in there, one of those unexpected items that she forged from her cooler in L.A. And I'm putting it right under those other greens that I had there. Spray roses are another really pretty item to include in your bridal bouquets. And I usually try to color block or make it ombre, I just think that it's a little more natural to place the white flowers close to the white flowers, the pink flowers closest to the pink flowers. I think it's important to have something unexpected and kind of keep things tonal as possible. I prefer to work in one tone, like all yellow or all white or all red and just have variations of different flowers in those tones. I also like to use carnations. Somewhere along the road they got a bad reputation, but they offer amazing color and they are not very expensive, so you can add them in. A lot of people say, oh, I don't like carnations, but they just don't know that they really do. To me, it's more about the color story and it adds color to have them. And again, I'm doing it in, if I have one, then I always have three. I don't twist my bouquets around. You'll see that really common and I admire people that do, but I'm afraid that they wouldn't be asymmetrical. I'm afraid that when I do that, that they become more uniform and they become less imperfect. The cafe au lait, I'm going to put him up here where he's got room to breathe. That's another trick that's important to a garden style arrangement that has lots of movement, is things have to have room to open up. Ranunculus are one of my favorite flowers because they're so hardy. I try to avoid using wires at all costs, but sometimes you just have to. And ranunculus are one of those flowers that sometimes we wire. I did three tulips again. Tulips are the only flowers that I know of that grow in water. And they also stand up straight and go towards the sun. So when I use them, I have to be careful and tuck them in pretty low. What else should we put in there? Maybe some scaviosa pods? These are the little flowers that flutter. This is a scaviosa and I'm putting them up. It may feel funny to you that they're up so tall, but if you can see, they're a good inch above the round flowers. I just added two peonies in. And this is to widen it out for this style of bouquet. This was the bouquet that was on the mood board, this style of bouquet. And then I think that we're really about done. I might add some roses around because I want this to be the story. Maybe we should do the O'Hare scents. We're a Georgia florist and these flowers have come all the way from Ecuador through Mayesh to me and to us. This is Caitlyn Baxter. She is, I hate to call her my assistant because she's really the ringleader. But she has been working weddings with Cone House Flowers for many years now. Hi Caitlyn. Hi. What's your favorite flower? Probably a Juliet rose. Oh yeah. She's a crazy about the rose of Primus too. So I'm going to give her this bouquet. This is what we always do. Of course we would do it lower, but I like my stems short, which is, this is a trick because some people like their stems long. I prefer them to be short. If a bride really wants them long, we'll do them long. But the reason is because I like for there to be no question about how to hold the bouquet and in the pictures it looks like a sea of flowers because, I'll demonstrate it myself in just a second, but I like it really straight on the bottom. I just think it looks flush all together. But if these are shorter, and you can keep going until you get it exactly straight, but if it's short like this, then there's no option except to hold it. It also doesn't get the bride's dress wet. It doesn't get mud on it or anything. And there's just no, any way that you turn this flower arrangement, it's going to be pretty and it's going to have lots of flowers. Where if it's got the longer stems, the stems become part of the whole visual. So that's my secret. The zip tie, I attached two together. We probably could have gotten away with just one. But this helps you give it that loose, airy feel. A couple final things about the bouquet is on our proposal, it is the very first item. It is very important to us. To me, it is the most important thing in the entire wedding. And one thing that we do with them is we offer our brides the chance, and we like for them to use it as a centerpiece, especially on a sweetheart table. It goes perfect on a sweetheart table. It's right there, or either on a head table. This is called the Gatsby from Accent Decor, and we use them for the bridesmaids and also the bridal bouquet. And they serve as a bouquet and a centerpiece. Thank you for watching this episode of Mayesh Design Star. And remember, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.