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Floral Sketches: Art Becomes Life

An eco-friendly way to dial in the details for your wedding.

If you could preview what your wedding bouquet or centerpiece will look like, without having it made ahead of time, and in a way that would produce a beautiful keepsake, would you be interested? Bloom Magic Weddings uses designer sketches to try out and fine tune the most important elements of your special day.

What are the sketches for, and how do you use them with clients?

The designer sketch is a large drawing with color, along with notes about flowers to be used, that also bears the couple’s name and their date and venue at the top. Somewhat like a blueprint, the sketch is created by the BMW designer and shared with the client to depict colors, shapes, and design details, like matching embroidery on a dress or evoking a theme like Chinese red heritage. The sketch is a personalized, frame worthy document that charts the floral journey, and the day itself.
Previewing flowers can present challenges. Often times, inspirational images from Pinterest and the like, are straying from what’s really achievable, because of the seasonal nature of flowers (more on this later), and because of the liberties that are taken in producing these “inspo” images, such as unusual lighting, or manipulating flowers with paints or dyes, or even incorporating artificial flowers. Of course, much of Pinterest is also aspirational, and some ideas need to be tamed down to keep the aesthetic and the budget in balance. When we do sketches as part of the design process, we show our clients exactly what to expect.

Focusing on the wedding season, even when the calendar doesn’t line up.

One of the things we do best at Bloom Magic Weddings, is drawing on nature as our inspiration, and using what is seasonally abundant when we plan events. While there is a good core list of blooms that can be sourced year round, and we utilize American flower farms every month of the year, it is sometime impossible to preview the actual flowers several months in advance. This is especially true for spring weddings, when flowers burst into availability on a sometimes varied schedule. Our sketches can work around this, and forecast a look or color palette ahead of time.

Why is sketching important to BMW?

First, the sketching process usually flows right into the flower order for the event, as we consider key elements like bouquets, centerpieces, or a statement piece like a chuppah or hanging installation. We want to make sure there is continuity and also special emphasis as we look across all the elements of a wedding.

Second, and if you take nothing else from this, is the tremendous act of sustainability we are practicing. In looking through last year’s wedding bouquets, I see that the ingredients, if we were to do a “mock up” or sample, carry significant costs for the ingredients and time to produce, and there is A LOT of leftovers. These are usually artfully woven into other aspects of the wedding. In the case a live flower preview, it can mean 50, 75 or even over 120 stems of leftovers as we pluck a few key blooms for the bouquet! As florists who care fiercely about reducing waste, we need all the flowers we bring into our studio to be used. The cost of making a bouquet outside a wedding is generally something we discourage. We use what we grow and buy, and when we can show samples because they happen to be in the cooler for another event, we are happy to do it.

chinese wedding couple city loft

Let us sketch your dreams.

So if you like our work, and you like the idea of having a sketch to take to a shower, or present to a parent who helps pay for your celebration, or keep for yourself to remember the special time when you made plans to get married, we would love meet with you.

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas

We can’t show you the flowers before the wedding, but we can learn enough about you to help you see the art, and we know you’ll be blown away when the picture comes to life. And there’s nothing sketchy about that. 🙂

– Kirsten Gordon

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