You might be working with one of the country’s best planners and secured one of the best photographers out there, but your ceremony, tablescapes, and bouquet should be thoughtful–and conceptualized by a five-star floral designer.
We tapped the expertise of our favorite florists for tips on how to make your wedding the best it can be, which trends excite them, tales of their best work, and which flowers they’d prefer you never ask them to work with. Below, our hit list for those who know their blooms (and the many species of them), are masters of working with (and without) color and dare to think outside the box.
Home Base: Brooklyn, NY and The Hudson Valley
Describe Your Aesthetic: Natural yet elegant. Our work strives to find the delicate balance of being natural, wild and organic–while also feeling elegant and classic.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We once created an oversized floral backdrop for a ceremony in Hudson. The building was an old warehouse, so we really wanted to bring the outdoors in. We used a beautiful flowing dark blue silk for the base and suspended vines and flowers to give an overgrown feeling.
Current Inspiration: I’ve been working on a collection of still life floral photographs, so I find that when making arrangements for a an event, I pay a lot of attention to shape, line, and negative space. I work to give the flowers an almost painterly feel.
Least Favorite Bloom: None! I can’t think of a single one. At the New York City flower market the selection is so incredible that I’ve even come to love carnations and chrysanthemums. We get these incredible multi-toned carnations from Holland and golden chrysanthemums, so I certainly wouldn’t want to see either of those go away!
Current Favorite Bloom: Irises. There are so many varieties and I’d love to have access to the many different types.
Be in Touch: We offer consultations in person or over the phone and can be reached at [email protected] and on @arieldearieflowers.
Home Base: New York City
Describe Your Aesthetic: Romantic, Lush, and Whimsical
Favorite Wedding Décor: One of our favorite weddings last year was at the Parrish Art Museum. We used bountiful garden roses, cream dahlias, and delicate wild flowers in black ceramic bowls to pair the sleek venue with the surrounding landscape. For the tables, we also created custom dip dye indigo linens that gave such rich texture and visual interest.
Favorite Wedding Trend: So many couples are starting to embrace color, which is a trend we are very excited about, so much so that we recently wrote a book dedicated to it. We love all palettes, but nothing beats a space filled with bold adventurous combinations. Our current personal favorites are coral & gold or violet & yellow. Florals should be fun, creative and impactful – color is a perfect way to achieve this!
Current Inspiration: We get inspired by so much around us, but most recently, travel. From the pastel high-rises of Hong Kong to the rich interiors of Italy’s Cathedrals, travel opens our minds to new ideas, color palettes, and compositions.
Least Favorite Bloom: Fluorescent roses of any color.
Current Favorite Bloom: Local varieties from Hautau & Sons – some of the most beautiful product in the market.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @putnamflowers.
Home Base: The Berkshires and New York City
Describe Your Aesthetic: Lush and natural.
Favorite Wedding Décor: One of my favorite weddings was on the Big Island of Hawaii and incorporated tropical fruit and foliage. I love using local elements–especially when they are so tasty and beautiful.
Favorite Wedding Trend: I love seeing all the light and airy arrangements brides are gravitating towards, they have so much movement and softness. I find it totally refreshing and delightful.
Least Favorite Bloom: Crespedia
Current Favorite Bloom: Carnations, because the new varieties are truly stunning.
Be in touch: Go to ariellaflowers.com and follow @ariellachezardesign.
Home Base: Roman and Williams Guild at 53 Howard Street in New York City
Describe Your Aesthetic: Flowers with teeth. We work with the most interesting materials we can find–championing local, foraged, and rare specimens, most especially thorny brambles.
Favorite Wedding Décor: For a recent bride, we made a psychedelic floral volcano.
Least Favorite Bloom: There are no bad flowers. However, I have little affection for Gerbera daisies.
Current Favorite Bloom: There are so many, but I love the magnificent autumn (or Japanese anemone) which is very hard to get here.
Be in Touch: Call 212-882-1384, email [email protected], and follow @emilythompsonflowers.
Home Base: Santa Barbara, California
Describe Your Aesthetic: Timeless, natural, and harmonious. We try to steer clear of what is trendy and when it comes to movement and design, we always let the flowers speak for themselves. I love florals to have a well designed, classic look–yet still natural in composition. We create with more than flowers, since we are heavily involved with the event design, the entire space really is our final product.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We once designed a wedding where I knew product would be difficult to acquire. We had planned on designing with local elements given the isolated location; it was endless fun working with locals foraging for mushrooms, fruits, lichen, stones, clovers, and feathers. There really wasn’t much floral involved, yet the tones and colors were so beautiful and naturally fitting to the setting. We found the most amazing sheets of moss that we were able to use under an elevated glass tabletop. This amazing forest growth held little surprises that caused the guests to take notice. The best thing was, it all went back into the forest–it was all native and nothing was foreign.
Favorite Wedding Trend: We are excited to say that a lush, more traditional design is working it’s way back into the wedding mainstream. Beautiful, full floral has become something that we have worked into most of our upcoming events. Where garden roses and tulips once were, we are now using masses of Gomphrena or Pagoda Lagoon—the finished look is lush and classic yet with an unexpected wild side!
Current Inspiration: I have been intrigued by textiles with interesting prints and patterns. I have always had a love of fabric and I feel the pairing the two, (floral and fabrics) tend to be the driving force when it comes down to the event design.
Be in Touch: Visit mindyrice.com or follow @mindyricedesign.
Home Base: Salt Lake City, Utah
Describe Your Aesthetic: Collected, uninhibited and natural. A lot of my work is inspired by my immediate surroundings, and I feel that my arrangements reflect the environment they were created in.
I like that nature does what it wants, there is no stopping it, so I try to embrace the unique and sometimes imperfect qualities that each piece I am using has, and highlight them in my final product. I like things to look effortless and natural. My arrangements have this almost undone look; I don’t want anything to ever look forced.
Current Favorite Bloom: I am a sucker for any bell-shaped bloom. They are mostly in season in the spring, and in general, have a pretty short availability. A few favorites are campanula, foxglove, fritillaria, and lily of the valley. I love how delicate and feminine these types of blooms are–they seem to have such a charming personality, like a fairy may come crawling out of them.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @sarah_winward.
Home Base: Dallas, Texas
Describe Your Aesthetic: Garden-esque; our florals are romantic and mimic nature. We source locally and are inspired by our surroundings. We have a background in studio art with an emphasis in painting and we always recall our fine art background when creating floral arrangements.
Favorite Wedding Décor: A recent wedding set on the beach in Thailand is definitely one of our favorites. We used local florals including rare orchids, lotus flower, and jasmine. We strung jasmine with a group of Thai women to create traditional garlands and tassels of floral. These jasmine strands were placed on the ceremony arch and throughout the reception space creating dripping floral and a light, sweet smell.
Favorite Wedding Trend: Destination weddings. We love working with a new environment and culture. Choosing native floral and vessels from the local markets influences our design.
Current Inspiration: The painters Henri Rousseau and Georgia O’Keefe for their subjects and color use and the desert mountains of New Mexico and jungles of Tulum inspire us.
Current Favorite Bloom: Japanese anemone and hollyhock. These can be difficult to source but are amazing and make the arrangement rare and unique.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected], call 214-828-2697, and follow @bowsandarrowsflowers.
Home Base: After 10 years in Brooklyn we moved to Dobbs Ferry, NY last year.
Describe Your Aesthetic: Our aesthetic is inspired by an organic, loose, garden style. We use lots of textures and floral varieties to create movement and explore more complex, unexpected palettes.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We love pairing garden-inspired florals with more modern elements for a tablescape. Most recently we designed a table with dusty rose-hued linens, black cross-back chairs, modern black plates, and garden-inspired flowers.
Favorite Wedding Trend: We love floral installations at weddings. This has been growing in popularity over the last few years and we get very excited about designing large scale, site-specific floral installations for our clients.
Current inspiration: We’re inspired by the change of seasons. Each season has its own special elements and we always try to let the seasonality of flowers drive our color palettes and design concepts.
Least Favorite Bloom: The first thing we can think of is dusty miller. It had its day, and at this point feels a little over-used.
Current Favorite Bloom: We would love to see a few more unique varieties that smaller farms grow. Cupcake cosmos, brown lisianthus, chocolate sunflowers, and heirloom mums come to mind.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected], call 347.915.3739, and follow @poppiesandposies.
Home Base: Brooklyn, NY
Describe Your Aesthetic: Lush, effusive, romantic florals evocative of the natural garden.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Creating a secret garden indoors.
Favorite Wedding Trend: Couples have been more open to bringing in color as opposed to more traditional blush/white or white/green weddings. I’m particularly excited about colors like golden yellows and rich ochre tones.
Current Inspiration: I’ve been enjoying the paintings of Cedric Morris, and always a walk through a garden either wild or formal gives me endless inspiration.
Current Favorite Bloom: Bearded Iris
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] or follow @nicamille.
Home Base: New York City
Describe Your Aesthetic: Adventurous, intuitive, and poetic. I’m passionate about finding the perfect balance between dynamic compositions and the natural effortlessness of flowers and foliage. In the end, it’s always an unexpected mix of the familiar and the exotic.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Making choices which aren’t typically associated with weddings and using them in romantic ways. I like the idea of flipping the standard wedding script, like focusing on foliage over flowers to create a fresh but rich base of green with the flowers and fruits as accents.
Favorite Wedding Trend: Saturated, fun colors for flowers and decor.
Current inspiration: Morocco, Henri Rousseau, and trips to tropical places.
Least Favorite Bloom: There are no bad flowers for me, but there are bad combinations: white hydrangea and roses in a tight round arrangement or spray painted flowers and leaves come to mind. I like to let the flowers breath and dance!
Current Favorite Bloom: Lady Slipper Orchids!
Be in Touch: 646-704-7959, [email protected], and www.jenyaflowers.com
Home Base: Washington DC
Describe Your Aesthetic: Seasonal, abundant and lush. I source the best available blooms from near and far, often directly from growers who grow specific flowers and foliage for me for specific events. I grow as many impossible to purchase floral elements in my small city garden as I can: a branch with persimmons, an heirloom geranium, or even a bit of chocolate vine. I also forage heavily from the alleys in my neighborhood. Once I collect everything I try to be gentle with design and let the individual ingredients shine.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Impossible to say. My most recent favorite was an escort card table that later turned into a dessert table. It was filled with antique silver containers planted with annuals dotted with some pieces of old mercury glass that belonged to the brides mother.
Favorite Wedding Trend: I am not sure if it is a trend but my favorite weddings incorporate very personal elements. I did florals for two women and after much discussion we settled on personal flowers where wore a floral sash over her custom made tuxedo and the other a bouquet to compliment her Vera Wang dress.
Be in Touch: Visit us at sidraforman.com. Follow us @sidraforman, or call us 202 285 5541.
Home Base: We are located in Los Angeles but welcome opportunities to travel.
Describe Your Aesthetic: Romantic, wild, and poetic. I try to find the natural beauty of the flowers I use and arrange them to feel free and composed in a poetic style.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We just did the florals for a woodland wedding and I loved creating tablescapes of mossy logs, ferns, paper white bulbs, and lady slipper orchids–it felt as though the tables were overgrowing with forest floor florals.
Favorite Wedding Trend: We are finding more and more tabletop designs straying away from formality. I love a tablescape that isn’t full of unnecessary flatware or glassware. Any opportunity that allows my flowers to breath on the table is exciting.
Current Inspiration: I have always been inspired by color and texture, but this year those two things have been my driving force. Unexpected combinations that don’t feel jarring, and look as if the combinations were always meant to be.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @mooncanyon.
Home Base: San Francisco, CA
Describe Your Aesthetic: Dancerly and lyrical, elegant with an edge, rich and romantic.
Favorite Wedding Décor: This summer we flew to Wyoming to make flowers for a dear friend’s wedding. We collected a lot of our ingredients from her family’s magical property: towering river birch trees tied to the main poles of the dinner tent, a suspended cloud of old willow branches and twiggy sage bushes, ornamental grasses and wildflowers. The mother of the bride carried a single, giant dandelion tied with silk ribbon down the aisle; by time she got to the altar, all the seed heads had been whisked away.
Favorite Wedding Trend: Setting a color palette for guests’ wedding fashion so that their looks complement the overall look and feel of the day.
Current Inspiration: Chinese ink paintings, Harry Styles’ fashion choices, the coffee shop culture of Japan, Beychella, Architectural Digest.
Current Favorite Bloom: Pansies.
Be in Touch: Follow @lambertfloralstudio and email [email protected].
Home Base: Twin Cities, Minnesota
Describe Your Aesthetic: Natural, colorful, and organic.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Anytime we hear a client or wedding planner say “do whatever you want,” we do a happy dance. Our best designs always happen when we have complete creative control to choose whatever looks best and freshest on the week of the wedding. We’re not beholden to scavenging the globe for something that’s not really in season. We talk to our farmers and we talk to our growers–and we get the best product available at that exact moment. It’s heaven.
Least Favorite Bloom: Gerbera daisies. We never use them. But anytime I see them, I cringe a little. Somehow they seem unnatural with their flat shape and overly saturated hues.
Current Favorite Bloom: “Filler” flowers (tiny blossomed flowers) like limonium, heather, and sedum. En mass, these simple, sweet (and affordable) blooms look stunning.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @munsterrose.
Home Base: Brooklyn, NY
Describe Your Aesthetic: Simply put, I love flowers. I love their variety of color, texture, shape and expression. I try to use the same approach with flowers as I would with food, using fresh, seasonal elements to create a thoughtful design that captures each bloom’s unique charm, grace, romance, and beauty.
Favorite Wedding Trend: I am not really a follower of trends— beautiful flowers are classic and timeless.
Current Inspiration: As a first-generation American with Caribbean parents, I am always inspired by color, water, travel, simplicity yet lushness and the creativity of the African diaspora. I am also a native New Yorker so naturally art, music, and design informs my aesthetic. I love fashion; Valentino’s bold use of color in their most recent haute couture collection was a yes for me.
Be in Touch: Call 917.208.9355, email [email protected], and follow @katflower
Home Base: Dallas, TX; but we travel domestic and internationally for events.
Describe Your Aesthetic: Organic yet elegant. I love to see flowers as they are growing in nature, giving each bloom their own space to shine. Incorporating locally grown greenery is a must to achieve a natural, garden aesthetic. For our brides that like a more classical look, we keep the movement contained. For those who are more adventurous, I love unexpected, yet mature color combinations that use unique and rare variations of blooms.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Any event where I can build floral installations instantly becomes a favorite, as they reinforce our organic aesthetic. This year we created a lush ceremony backdrop with “growing” blooms from the ground up a giant willow tree, overlooking a vineyard with the Pacific Ocean below. The blooms followed the natural lines of the tree branches, but stood out in bold berry tones.
Favorite Wedding Trend: There have been so many neutral palettes over the last few years, which are gorgeous, but I’m ready to get back to playing with color.
Current Inspiration: I’m fascinated by the combinations of colors in new landscapes and cities. From the terra cotta tiled roofs of Dubrovnik, to the lavender fields of Provence, to the bold hues of Mexico City, the juxtaposition of bright and muted shades sparks my creativity.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] or follow us @maxowensdesign.
Home Base: San Francisco, California and Newport, Rhode Island
Describe Your Aesthetic: Thoughtful, unexpected, and gestural. Letting materials do their thing and giving each element room to shine–whether it be a tulip with an amazing bending arc or an almost-bare plum branch with a few spectacular lingering leaves. Our color and texture combinations make each one of our bouquets unique, we love to give our clients a design that has never walked down an aisle before!
Favorite Wedding Décor: We once did a massive 360-degree chuppah installation at a wedding in Healdsburg, CA. The bride was amazing and let us go crazy with our creativity. We foraged naturally felled manzanita, oak,and eucalyptus branches for a base layer on the chuppah frame and wove in some showstopper areas with three types of fresh rose branches and peonies. The structure truly looked like it had been picked right from the nearby landscape and created a dreamy focal point for their ceremony.
Favorite Wedding Trend: We have been working with more and more couples who want to include flowers from local farms into their designs. This allows us to be more creative with our selections and give each couple something totally unique rather than trying to replicate an image.
Current Inspiration: We have been seeking out more fruiting branches, herbs, and veggies to incorporate unexpected touches into our designs. One special sprig of blueberry or a sprawling tomato branch can change the whole feel of an arrangement.
Be in Touch: Visit studiochoo.com and follow @studiochoo and @studiochooeast.
Home Base: Our new retail location in New York City at 265 Canal Street!
Describe Your Aesthetic: Structural, airy, and juxtaposed. We always consider form first when making anything, and like to be able to see the flowers in our arrangements. We use different elements that may not necessarily “go” together, but the juxtaposition of something that is very seasonal with something that has no season creates a look that feels new and interesting. We always aim to do things for our clients that they haven’t seen before.
Favorite Wedding Décor: My favorite pieces are always changing. I really loved these huge arrangements I made with massive bismarck fronds this past fall. They were like fireworks!
Current Favorite Bloom: I wish people would understand and appreciate how amazing carnations really are.
Be in Touch: Visit foxfodderfarm.com or email [email protected] and follow @foxfodderfarm.
Home Base: Philadelphia, PA
Describe Your Aesthetic: Fashion-forward, nuanced, and textural. My main influence is fashion–that’s where I look for color, trend, and historical influence on shape, style and atmosphere. I then draw my own nuanced color stories and compositions, adding unexpected touches of color like a painter would to make the work feel lively and to add lots of texture–either in unusual elements or wildly varied foliage to prevent designs from feeling flat or monotone. I want my work to draw you in to look closer.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Each wedding or design project becomes a current favorite and each client requires a new approach to design something that helps bring their imagination to life. If we make the client cry tears of joy then the work we’ve just completed is always my favorite–that’s the best feeling.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @sullivan_owen and @sullivanowenstudio.
Home Base: New York (Hudson Valley) and San Francisco
Describe Your Aesthetic: “Painting with flowers.” My arrangements have a bold, colorful, unstructured look, even though they are meticulously designed. There is a deep artfulness in my approach to floral design, yielding individual, bespoke creations.
Favorite Wedding Décor: I had a wedding earlier this year at the Ojai Valley Inn in California where the bride wanted to recreate the town’s famed “pink moment,” where the sun drops below the nearby mountains producing a short-lived, gorgeous pink hue, pictured here. We decorated a natural wisteria pergola with thousands of hand-died pink gypsophilia, peonies, and other blooms to create something absolutely magical. It was two solid days of work, and it was so worth it.
Favorite Wedding Trend: Brides who embrace color, as opposed to solely neutrals, whites, and greens.
Current Inspiration: Music constantly inspires me. I love classical music, and Glenn Gould (pianist) is always a joy for me to listen to. I have been enjoying jazz recently, especially Miles Davis. I travel frequently for work all over the world, and get myriad inspiration and energy from the people and cultures that I immerse myself in.
Be in Touch: Email: [email protected] and follow @tulipinadesign.
Home Base: Berkeley, California
Describe Your Aesthetic: Botanical, abundant, and intentional.
Favorite Wedding Décor: The on-site statement piece at the very first wedding I did professionally. I was incredibly nervous, but what I loved about it was the sense of discovery. It was a fall wedding, and the arrangement was huge and on a mantle–I composed it on a ladder. But it was simple in that it was only three elements: hawthorn branches loaded with peachy orange berries with very little foliage, terra cotta orange dinner plate dahlias, and clematis vines from the garden. This was well before I had all the experience I’ve developed over the last 15 years in business.
Least Favorite Bloom: This is hard for me to say because I feel as if they all have their time and place, but I’m not a huge fan of the stargazer lily.
Be in Touch: Email [email protected] and follow @maxgilldesign.
Home Base: Seattle, WA
Describe Your Aesthetic: Inspired by nature, our design philosophy combines an organic sensibility with an editorial eye to create wildly romantic, unique floral collections and installations.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We recently did a wedding where the ceremony incorporated a lot of overgrown and wild arrangements going down the aisle. Artfully crafted, the arrangements appeared as though they were exploding out of the ground. The crescendo came at the altar where we created a stunning floral arch that looked as though it was blooming in a celebration of my clients’ special day.
Favorite Wedding Trend: The most exciting wedding trend right now is a return to simplicity. A few years ago there was a huge awakening in the floral world where designs incorporated as many varieties of flowers into a single arrangement. Now, I am seeing a focus on clarity of design, where shapes and movement speak as much for the arrangement as the flowers do.
Current Inspiration: I pull inspiration from a lot of random places. Right now I am into Iris van Herpen, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Michael Matti, Renzo Piano, Ruven Afanador, John Galliano, Nick Knight, Jane Monheit, Audra McDonald and my queen, Whitney Houston.
Be in Touch: Follow @wildbloomfloral or email [email protected].
Home Base: We’re based in Los Angeles but are known for our destination work all over the world. We’ve created environments in Napa, Santa Barbara, Aspen, Telluride, Charleston, New York, Florence italy, Lake Como, Italy, Cork Ireland. and more.
Describe Your Aesthetic: Reflective of the environment. The goal in all our floral design is to honor the natural environment. I’m often borrowing themes from places outside the event world.
Favorite Wedding Décor: We recently produced an event in Aspen with Easton Events and it was a thrilling mix of nature and refined textural elements. We built huge garden beds of bloom into the tent, so the guests were embraced by floral on all sides. Dining amongst dense swaths of meadow blooms, with a pared back sparse tabletop floral. The idea was to create a space of warmth and intimacy with the floral rather than have it separate the guests.
Favorite Wedding Trend: I loathe trends. Always looking for the next idea and trying to push design past our clients’ expectations.
Current Favorite Bloom: I love delicate flowers and wish I could get my hands on blooms like autumn clematis with more regularity; it is more whimsical and graceful. But honestly, I’m more of a lover of leafy bits, greens, vines–all the various shapes and bends that make an arrangement come alive.
Be in Touch: Visit our contact page and fill in the form. But, we are most often booked through one of our planner colleagues.
Home Base: We are nestled in the beautiful foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado, but are always available for travel.
Describe Your Aesthetic: Yonder House is a yummy curation of quirk and textural integrity.
Favorite Wedding Décor: Our favorite wedding is actually approaching this weekend. The client’s amazing planner, Ashley Nicole Events, knew that this nearly 400 person wedding needed to feel unique and expressive in every single detail. Our designs really focused on the importance of unique statement floral installations paired with thoughtful table designs, accented with organically lush florals throughout the cocktail hour and after dinner celebrations.
Favorite Wedding Trend: The trend of unstructured, organically lush bridal bouquets will never not be our jam. It just frames the bride so beautifully in photographs and to see the bouquet move and shake down the aisle is so romantic.
Current Inspiration: Fashion and home decor color combinations really drive our design esthetic. Our curated rental inventory of tableware, lounge furniture, and large decor influences our color palettes.
Least Favorite Bloom: We really dig most any flower in the right setting and structure, but would love for the trend of greenery garlands to flicker out.
Be in Touch: Call us at 720.550.7101, email [email protected], or follow us at @yonder_house.
Home Base: Chinatown, New York City
Describe Your Aesthetic: Abstract, minimal, and structural. My designs can range between being simple, minimal and Mapplethorpe-inspired to abstract sculpture-like arrangements. It all depends on the client and season and it’s interesting for me to create in either extreme.
Favorite Wedding Décor: I recently did a wedding and used only green-monster and bismarck. It was fun to work within a monochromatic palette to create lush sculptures.
Current Favorite Bloom: White King Proteas are one of my favorites–but they are scarcely available and very expensive. They are stunning, impressive in size and are named after the Greek God, Proteus, who could change his form at will.
Be in Touch: Visit metafloranyc.com and follow @metafloranyc.
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