Wildestyle real wedding - natural, elegant faux florals at Barnett Hill Hotel
Wildestyle real wedding – natural, elegant faux florals at Barnett Hill Hotel
Here at Wildestyle, we love reading about real weddings just as much as you do. So, we thought what better way to start off the New Year than by sharing one of the weddings we worked on in 2020!
This one is certainly a beauty. Jennifer and Rob’s wedding took place in September last year at a gorgeous hotel venue in Surrey, and they took their floral vision to the next level by opting for faux wedding flowers.
Jennifer has been kind enough to share with you a little bit about their big day and why they decided to choose faux over traditional fresh wedding flowers. So, without further ado - over to Jennifer!
Tell us a little bit about you and your big day?
Rob and I met through mutual friends on a night out back in 2011 and have been inseparable ever since. We moved in together in 2017, and Rob popped the question a year later!
We knew we didn’t want to wait too long to get married, so we set the date for 19th September 2020. Venue hunting was such fun, and we eventually settled on the beautiful Barnett Hill Hotel near Guildford.
Set in the heart of the Surrey Hills, this dreamy mansion had everything we were looking for – a romantic ceremony room, acres of stunning gardens and plenty of accommodation for our wedding party.
How high up were flowers on your list of wedding priorities?
Because there are so many different elements to focus on when planning your big day, we knew that we’d have to prioritise some things over others.
Luckily, our venue covered many of the big-ticket items such as ceremony room, accommodation, catering etc, which gave us the freedom to put a bit more planning time into our wedding flowers.
As the planning process went on, we found ourselves more and more excited about the prospect of adorning our venue with a wash of flowers, so it ended up quite high on our list!
What made you look for faux wedding flowers over fresh?
In our initial planning stages we had come across some larger flower displays on Pinterest which we simply had to include in our day, however there was an issue with the price. Large floral arrangements are expensive, but we really had our hearts set on a certain look that included a lot of flowers.
We set about thinking of alternative ideas, but still found ourselves swooning over the large displays we had seen. I decided there must be a way we could achieve this look within our budget, so I did some more research and eventually stumbled across the idea of faux flowers.
Faux flowers meant we could get the larger arrangements but do it in a far more cost-effective way compared to fresh. We were also interested in keeping the bouquets and buttonholes which of course would not have been possible with real flowers. It was then that we knew faux was the way forwards!
What made you choose Wildestyle as your Surrey wedding florist?
We came across Wildestyle thanks to a recommendation from our brilliant wedding photographer. Sally invited us for an initial meeting to discuss our ideas and to see if we were a good fit for each other. She took the time to get to know us, what we liked and disliked and listened intently to our vision for the big day.
We were very impressed with the examples of previous work she showed us, and it was great to hear her speak so passionately about her many wonderful designs! Sally is extremely knowledgeable about faux florals, and was enthusiastic about pushing our ideas forward - we were sold!
We have to say that throughout the process right up to our wedding day, Sally was nothing short of fantastic. After the initial meeting we left our flowers in her capable hands, but she constantly reassured us throughout. Sally was often in contact to run ideas about particular flowers and types of arrangements past us and let us be as involved as we wanted to be. Equally, she was always considerate of the other aspects of the wedding we needed to arrange.
The only direction that we really gave Sally was that we knew we didn’t want lilies. Beyond that anything worked for us, so we left the finer details down to Sally’s expert eye.
On the day, our wedding flowers looked better than we had ever imagined, and this was all thanks to Sally!
What would you say the main advantages of using faux flowers at your wedding were?
There are many reasons why we are so pleased we decided to go with faux wedding flowers!
One of the main advantages for us was simply how cost effective faux flowers are. Because you are hiring the arrangements, all of the flowers and other elements can be used again. This drives the price down in comparison with fresh flowers that are obviously single use. For us, it meant we could achieve far more for our money and get the exact look we wanted.
Another reason why faux wedding flowers are so great is because you don’t have to worry about your favourite bloom being in season or not. In fact, you can have whatever type of flower you want at any time of year! This meant at our September wedding, we could have a spring/summer flower selection with no issues.
Opting for faux florals also meant we didn’t have to worry about them wilting during the day, which is something that I had seen happen at weddings before. Surely there is nothing worse that spending your wedding budget on gorgeous arrangements only for them to start to droop before you even make it down the aisle? With faux, that’s not something we had to think about.
Finally, the flowers were so realistic that none of our family or friends even noticed that the floral displays weren’t fresh! In fact, we had so many lovely comments from our guests about how gorgeous the arrangements were – clearly a testament to how high-quality the faux wedding flowers from Wildestyle are.
Would you recommend faux flowers from Wildestyle to other couples planning their wedding?
Absolutely! We are so happy that we came across Wildestyle and the idea of faux wedding flowers and are even more thrilled with how Sally was able to turn our vision in to a reality.
The whole process was super easy and a pleasure from start to finish - we cannot thank Sally enough for helping give us our perfect wedding day.
Are you considering following in our couple Jennifer and Rob’s footsteps and choosing faux flowers for your big day? We would love to hear all about your plans and see how we can help you achieve your floral dreams in faux, so why not get in touch
image credits: photography@charlottecooke.co.uk