Our New Year's Wedding Resolution: Make All Bridal Bouquets Beautiful

Pink, ivory, and green form this perfect pale bouquet

Not every wedding has a big budget for massive flower displays. If you're studying Wedding & Event Planning with Sheffield School, then you know that a huge flower budget isn't vital to creating an overall memorable event.

A rustic countryside wedding fits this simple pink peony bouquet to perfection

Flowers, like any other element of the decor, need to be appropriate to the venue, add beauty to the event, carry out and continue the overall color scheme and theme of the event, and relate personally to the happy couple.

Deep pink and fuschia are great color bursts for this bouquet

The most intimate of the flower arrangements is the bridal bouquet, and we'd love to see the New Year filled with weddings where bridal bouquets are all a beautiful reflection of the happy day. Click on each photograph to learn more about the weddings behind each of these fantastic bridal bouquets. Which one is your favorite?

Striking combinations in this bouquet of mauve and feathers

This do-it-yourself bridal bouquet is a dynamic combination of wildflowers

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding and event inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding and event planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

 Sheffield School began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

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We Love Brides and Grooms Personalizing Their Wedding Decor

  

I'm excited about the wedding trend I'm seeing to have the bride and groom (or groom and groom/bride and bride) extend their personalities into the event decor. The decor isn't the usual impersonal decorating done by florists and planners; there's been a careful coordination with the happy couple to make sure the setting tells a more personal story. Here are two examples I found in the exceptional Real Life Weddings posted on one of our favorite wedding and event blogs, 100 Layer Cake.

 Here's how Britt and Bryan talked about the decor and how it related to their tastes (see top two photos and next two photos for decor details; click on all photos for their complete wedding story).

We wanted an eclectic look, with diverse textures, the sort of mishmash of shapes and colors you might find when combing a beach. And so we used weathered brass containers, antique brass candle sticks, and sea glass colored bottles for our centerpieces. All of our flowers were grown locally and organically on our florist’s farm. She provided gorgeous protea, air plants, succulents, ruffled pink roses, perfect dahlias, fresh eucalyptus and all sorts of native spiny and textured wild plants to decorate our table. We collected feathers (the way you might when walking a beach) which were then loosely tucked into arrangements and hung from a wood beam in our reception space.

And here's another example of personalized decor from Sophie and Gareth in the UK. They threw a vintage picnic wedding, and here's what they said about their special day and the work that they put into the details, from vintage mismatched china and huge table doilies to a vintage typewriter in lieu of a guestbook.

Try to keep it as personal as you can – it’s your day and your guests will appreciate the little personal touches. Everyone commented on how ‘us’ the wedding was. It is the biggest party you will ever organize, and in our case probably the only time we would have all of our loved ones in the same place together so we wanted to create a laid back feel to encourage everyone to relax and interact – it totally worked. So plan, plan, and then do more planning – the only way you will be able to relax yourselves on the day is to know every detail has been thought about and covered. Make sure

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Wedding Video - The Essentials of Planning a Great Event

It's abundantly evident from the following video by Virginia photographer, videographer Josh Gooden that he covered a wonderful event. First off, Gooden's eye for framing, pacing, composition, and storytelling produced a lovely wedding video keepsake that Sara and George, the happy couple, will cherish for a lifetime. Second, the event is at a spectacular natural setting, River Farm, and between breaktaking wild flowers and lovely event spaces, it was an excellent venue choice. Earlier in the video, we see beautiful wedding invitations and wedding printing, there are table settings for the reception that tie in the wildflower theme from the outdoors ceremony, the venue is decorated beautifully, the processional flowers are delightful, the food is presented in a chic way - in short, the key elements that a good wedding planner should take care of are evident in this particular wedding.

Interested in learning more about planning a picture-perfect wedding for yourself or clients? Explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

5 Favorite Summer Wedding Finishing Touches, from Cakes to Decor

If you're thinking of great wedding and event planning inspiration for this summer or early fall, look no further than 100 Layer Cake - one of our favorite wedding and event blogs. They cover a variety of weddings and feature top wedding vendors, from the best photographers to the best florists. The folks at "the Cake" are serious about covering the latest inspirational trends in weddings, and we've picked out 5 of our favorite summer finishing touches. After all, it's those little details that make weddings so special.

Our first favorite is this amazing garden-inspired wedding cake. The pink ruffles frosting and floral accents are stunning, and the colorful cake stand conveys a high-spirited, yet relaxed summer gathering to us.

Number 2: This DIY wedding wreath is fabulous! It's made of elements that can be echoed throughout the decor, in centerpieces, boutineers, and the bridal bouquet: magnolia leaves, artichoke foliage, peony, tulips, lilies, and fern.

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Our Favorite Quirky Wedding Flowers and Funky Arrangements

If you're thinking of great wedding inspiration for the coming spring/summer season, look no further than 100 Layer Cake - one of our favorite wedding blogs. They cover a variety of weddings and feature top wedding vendors, from the best photographers to the best florists. At Sheffield, we have some pretty picky wedding planning folks on the team, and we wanted to share with you some pretty quirky and fun flower arrangements and bride-and-groom flowers that tickled our fancies. Click on a photo to check out the rest of the wedding details.

Adam and Dave's Wedding

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