Get The Look: Pippa Middleton
An English country wedding to inspire and swoon about. Pippa and James’ wedding ceremony was adorned with blooms in soft pinks, whites and greenery. Peony, Sweet Pea, Astilbe, Freesia, Waxflower, Greenbell and Alchemilla Mollis featured in Pippa’s bouquet. Alongside those flowers, we see large soft pink English Roses in the lavish floral arrangements that garnished the church’s entry.
It’s a timeless and elegant look, here’s our tips for achieving this style for your own wedding day:
Pippa’s bouquet
Pippa’s bouquet is a textured modern take on the Tussie Mussie in a beautiful small teardrop shape. A Tussie Mussie—once used to describe a silver cone to carry your bouquet in—is now best described as an alternate to the stemmed bouquet, with it’s blooms and stems wired into a small handle or cone to carry. If you’re budget conscience consider opting for the natural stem as the Tussie Mussie requires much more intricate floral wiring and will help your blooms last longer.
Contrasting textures are what give this bouquet it’s feel. You can get this look by pairing softer shapes with sharper blooms; Pippa’s bouquet does this with soft Peonies and Sweet Pea (Lisianthus would also suit) paired with sharper shapes of Freesia (and Freesia buds) with touches of wax flowers and sprigs of pink Astilbe.
For a touch more pink, Waxflowers also bloom in a beautiful soft pink and would compliment this style elegantly.
Another thing to note, Peonies tend only bloom in parts of November and December in Australia. Consider David Austin Roses—a dainty Peony shaped bloom that is about a third of the size— or other Peony alternates to compliment the look and size of this bouquet.
Buttonholes
From the Groom himself to Pippa’s brother James, the men adorned a classic buttonhole sharply worn on their blazer’s lapels. Keeping to the beautiful textured theme, we see the buttonholes feature a small soft white rose embellished with a white Waxflower and sprigs of Greenbell. This look is easy to achieve by mixing a larger bloom with small or dainty flowers, Gypsophila or Lily of the Valley are great substitutes for Waxflower.
The Little Ones
They were almost too adorable for words. The page-boys carried baskets of white rose petals to scatter down the path after the ceremony ahead of Pippa and James. If you have your own baskets, ask your florist for a quote for petals by the bag to fill them with.
Similar to her big-sister, the Duchess of Cambridge Kate’s wedding, Pippa’s flower-girls looked especially cute wearing floral circlets on their heads. The circlets were made with gorgeous white Waxflowers andGypsophila, like the heart-shaped pomanders they each carried. For a touch of pink you could consider pink Waxflower.
To get a quote for floral circlets/crowns, use a string to measure the diameter of where you want the crown to sit and provide that to your florist. Circlets can be made onto headbands, to tie with ribbon, sit under the hairstyle and be adjustable, or completely covered and round to sit on the head like a crown.
Floral Arrangements
The glamorous floral instalments where created with plenty of greenery and clusters of white and soft pink flowers. Peonies, English Roses and Garden Roses paired with touches of pink Astilbe and clustered Sweet Pea and Waxflower. At the entry gate you have two beautiful lush instalments with trailing greenery and covering the archway of the churches entry a floral garland with larger blooms more prominent in the piece.
Depending on the location, installations are not always possible. It’s best to liaise with your venue about whether floral installations can be hung and what mounting options are available. An experienced florist will be able to create the installation to suit venue requirements. However, if an installation isn’t possible or is outside of your budget there are alternate options. Recreating a floral archway using a freestanding arch means you can position it anywhere and is often more budget-friendly than an installation that requires mounting. Another popular option are floral walls which can be positioned as a backdrop. Larger flowers, silk-flowers, greenery only or smaller arrangement sizes are also worth looking at if you have a smaller floral budget.
Inside the ceremony
We imagine pews lined with beautiful dainty posies and beautiful large feature arrangements that match the installations at the front. The UK florist Lavender Green Flowers did a spectacular job. We can’t wait to find out what the reception flowers looked like, with a wedding budget of £700,000 ($1.2+ million AUD) we expect it will be equally lavish.