Top tips on wedding flowers for day and evening, as well as what goes best with your hair colour. Includes lists of seasonal flowers and inspiring ideas.

Whether you choose fresh flowers or silk, if you keep them seasonal, the colours will be more harmonious. Choose softer colours and shapes for daytime weddings and keep the dramatic blooms for late afternoon or evenings.

Match Your Colouring to Your Bridal Flowers

Blonde brides look good with blue, purple and pink wedding flowers. Red, orange and bronze flowers look best for brunettes; whilst redheads look stunning with plenty of foliage, green flowers and small touches of colour. For darker skinned brides, the more vivid colours work well, and white flowers look perfect.

Selecting a simple colour palette will create impact and style. Brides wearing white or ivory should match the colour with ribbons or accents of white or ivory in the wedding bouquet flowers. Corsages and buttonholes should stay within the palette of colours. White or ivory corsages for mothers look right against any outfit.

Size Matters with Wedding BouquetsWhen choosing flowers for the bride and bridesmaids, think of the appropriate size wedding bouquet or posy. A petite bride could carry a delicate posy of small flowers whilst a taller bride might have a regal calla lily bouquet trailing ivy. The same goes for bridesmaids of all ages. Smaller girls carry smaller flowers.

Spring Wedding Flowers

For a spring wedding choose pretty flowers that remind you of new beginnings, hope and love. For a daytime wedding consider

• Delicate lily of the valley, hand tied with light green and white ribbon
• Pale golden jonquils (miniature daffodils)
• Blue wedding flowers such as nigella (Love-in-a-mist) with its dainty blue flowers and delicate greenery make a good contrast against an ivory dress

For an evening wedding, be be more dramatic with

• Irises. Simply select three or four stems and tie with white beaded ribbon for impact
• Exotic phalaenopsis orchid with cerise centres in white petals, tied with silver ribbon

Summer Wedding Flowers

For a summer wedding the floral colours can be more vivid. Choose flowers that remind you of romance, late mornings and lazy afternoons such as

• Lavender in all the shades of blue, pink and violet tied with gauzy purple ribbon
• Deep pink or red gerberas tied with matching ribbon
• Miniature sunflowers with wheat grass and fatsia leaves

For an evening wedding go for exotic

• Gloriosa lilies with their beautiful vibrant red and yellow
• Dark pink heavenly scented stargazer lilies (remove the pollen-filled stamens before they stain clothes and fingers)

Autumn or Fall Wedding Flowers

Look for flowers in the glorious shades of bronze, burgundy and terracotta representing the season of ripeness and fullness

For a daytime wedding think of

• Miniature gladioli in bronze and peachy colours
• Asiatic lilies (snip the stamens to avoid the pollen staining clothes)
• Amaryllis Belladona, which has dramatic striped flowers in rust and cream and go well with small alstromeria

For the evening

• Orange calla lilies with bear grass and hosta leaves
• Shiny red Hypericum berries bunched together with plenty of green leaves. Tie with a green ribbon

Winter Wedding Flowers

Look for interesting flowers than have texture and fragrance. Although white wedding flowers are well suited to winter, consider

• Mixed pink and white camellias
• Winter jasmine
• Green and white hellebores (Christmas Rose) with ivy threaded through the bridal bouquet

For the evening

• Cymbidium Mont Millais is a striking burgundy coloured orchid with a white edge

See also: Beautiful Bridesmaid Dresses

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