Bountiful Bridal Bouquets

Love is in the air, and wedding flowers are on brides’ minds

By Amanda McCracken

Colorado weddings are gorgeous in any season, but spring is when we turn our eye toward planning. There are so many details—the dress, the venue, the photos and more—but the flowers can really set a colorful (or monochromatic) tone for the wedding palette. Here, local experts weigh in on the top trends in wedding flowers. Oh, wait, you’re not getting married? These ideas will look just as amazing in tabletop arrangements for your home!

Forget scrolling through thousands of Pinterest pics. Consider wandering through a flower farm, filling a bucket with flowers that match your dream wedding vision. You can do that at Helen Skiba’s Artemis Flower Farm (recently known as Farmette Flowers), an ecology-focused flower farm in Longmont. Skiba concentrates on growing unusual, delicate flowers that can’t be shipped, like cosmos, dahlias and zinnias. She tends to see brides looking for locally grown, organic flowers and a local designer committed to sustainability and waste-free practices.

Sabia Magurn, owner and lead designer at Longmont’s Painted Primrose, echoes the dried-flower trend and adds that Italian bleached products are increasingly popular. Terracotta palettes—burnt oranges, neutrals, rusts—are big. For that palette, Magurn tends to use cappuccino garden roses, bronze amaranthus and coffee-break roses. A blush and burgundy palette is still a popular choice, she says.

Wildflower styles are always in demand among Colorado brides, but Magurn often reminds brides that it’s illegal to cut columbine and Indian paintbrush.

Skiba encourages her clients to pick a place, a piece of art or a person who really inspires them to be the basis for a color palette or a theme. Some of the most memorable themes she’s designed floral arrangements around include a national parks theme and a Midsummer Night’s Dream theme.

Boho and lush garden style themes are still popular, Magurn says. As for unusual combinations, she’s seeing a resurgence of reflexed roses paired with orchids, a combination popular in the ’80s.

Both florists agree you can be as creative as you want with table arrangements in water (unless they’re baking in the sun for hours). It’s the bridal bouquet you have to carefully consider. Roses and carnations are durable staples Magurn turns to for bouquets.

But for brides who fall in love with Pinterest flower arrangements, she warns them: “That flower had to stay alive for three minutes for a styled shoot, not for a six-hour event.” If they really love a flower she knows is not going to hold up in a bouquet, she tells them, “It’s going to look great in photos for the first hour or two, and then it’s going to die.”

Some florists will even insist on brides ordering two bouquets, one for the first half and one for the second half of the day, depending on the length of time between photos, the ceremony and when you’ll throw the bouquet. For local flowers that hold up well in a bouquet, Skiba recommends dahlias, lisianthus, coxcomb, raspberry greens and sunflowers.