Unusual Wedding Flowers to Give the Finishing Touch to Your Reception

The bride’s bouquet and floral arrangements at the church or venue are of course essential to making your big day. However, unusual wedding flowers can also make an amazing impact in so many other ways.

At Tolly’s Flowers, based in Newmarket, we specialise in stunning floral displays for every aspect of weddings in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. This includes spectacular reception flowers, complete with finishing touches which are designed to add a wow factor.

Reception Flowers

Tolly’s creates wedding flower displays at reception venues of all sizes and types. These range from some of the largest and most prestigious hotels and stately homes in the region to garden marquees and outdoor receptions.

We can create arrangements to suit the particular space and to fit your own tastes and the colours or themes you have chosen for your wedding, whether you prefer traditional white bouquets, wildly romantic rustic arrangements or more contemporary and unusual wedding flowers. We work closely with both couples and venues to create imaginative floral designs.

Table displays can be as creative and as daring as you choose. Our displays pictured above are bursting with vivid colour, including bright oranges and reds, together with contrasting green and bluish foliage. White candles in the candelabras match the white roses and emphasise the height of the room, while rosebuds and colourful leaves dotted around the table give an unexpected and quirky added touch.

Floral displays can be placed in all kinds of different places at your reception venue, and also in all kinds of containers.  Threshold displays, arches and all kinds of other indoor and outdoor decorations can also be provided as required. We can even use chair-backs into display flowers, as in the photo above.

Wedding Cake Flowers

The wedding cake is traditionally an important part of a reception, and choosing to decorate it with fresh flowers will make it even more special. We can suggest flowers which will perfectly enhance the look, whether you choose a traditional white iced cake, a layered chocolate confection or another option.

Tolly’s can work flowers into the design of your cake or, alternatively, we can provide them as an added decoration if preferred. The cake flowers can also be chosen to tone in with other flowers at the reception, as in the photo above, where the white roses and green leaves of the cake go well with the white and green arrangement alongside.

Pictured above left is an original arrangement, dominated by greens, which gives a different look to a chocolate cake. Above right is a cake with four layers, both dark and light, featuring contrasting flowers on each tier.

Wedding Car Flowers

Wedding cars are typically decorated with ribbons, but flowers will make your vehicle even more special and romantic. 

At Tolly’s we are experienced in supplying wedding car flowers, and will talk to you about your wishes before creating a design with blooms and colours to enhance your vehicle. For instance, the design above uses pinks and purples to complement the red of the wedding car. 

If you want to find out more about stunning, quirky and fun wedding flowers for your reception and ceremony, click the link to contact Tolly’s Flowers.

Our Amazing Creations Feature in an Award Winning Blog

Tolly’s amazing wedding flowers recently featured in the award-winning blog ‘Love My Dress’, which is read by thousands of people across the globe.

Our beautiful wedding flower arrangements captured the imagination of the ‘Love My Dress’ blog after we decorated a church and marquee for a military wedding in the heart of the East Anglian countryside.

The Tolly’s Flowers design team are known for creating magnificent and enchanting floral displays that provide the perfect backdrop to a dream wedding.

Our brief was to create simple, elegant white and green arrangements to enhance the beauty of the country-based reception venue and the 14^th-century village church, where the nuptials were held.

We decorated the Grade II listed St Andrew’s Church in Helions Bumpstead, on the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border, with dramatic pedestal and font arrangements. After exchanging rings and vows the happy couple, Sophie and Todd, exited through the church’s ancient gateway which was adorned with flowers. 

At the reception, we hung a gorgeous flower ball that defied gravity from the centre of the marquee to create a spectacular focal point; each of the dining tables, including the head table, were fashioned with pretty runners of green foliage interspersed with large white flowers. 

Our decorations followed the brief to the letter and were the perfect blend of modern and traditional.

At Tolly’s Flowers we pride ourselves on attention to detail and even the shiny, polished open top military truck, which transported the bridesmaids to and from the church, was decked out with garlands of white flowers to create a wonderful canopy.

The romantic occasion was captured in its full glory by photographer Nick Tucker, who is known for his documentary editorial style. His journalistic photos, which included pictures of our stunning wedding flowers, appeared on Love My Dress’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google + and Pinterest pages, and these each have a following of between 2,500 to 621,000 readers.

For the couple’s special day, in June this year, Sophie wore a gorgeous white off the shoulder Amanda Wakeley dress, featuring a chic architectural neckline, and carried a classic green and white bouquet, while Todd wore military uniform. The bridesmaids had flowing dresses with individual necklines and paired their champagne coloured gowns with simple flat sandals and modern, minimalist white bouquets.

The cake was decorated with green foliage, which the couple cut with the groom’s ceremonial sword, much to the delight of the guests.

Sophie and Todd had enlisted the services of wedding planner Claire Clarke Weddings, to ensure the entire day went smoothly from start to finish; it was a fantastic occasion and even the weather was perfect for the special day. Big congratulations to Sophie and Todd from all of us at Tolly’s Flowers!

Tolly’s Flowers – Follow the link to see more of our amazing wedding flowers, including ceremony, bouquet and reception flowers. 

Church Ceremony Flowers

At Tolly's Flowers we create stunning ceremony flowers for couples in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire, for all types of venue, from registry offices to country hotels and, of course, parish churches.

Getting married in church has had a resurgence in popularity in recent years helped, it is believed, by Prince William and Kate's lavish nuptials in 2011. The Church of England reported a 6.2% increase in wedding services in 2012 and the trend stayed strong right through to 2016.

Of course, East Anglia is particularly blessed in terms of the number of charming parish churches to be found in towns and villages throughout the region. These historic buildings – many of which are hundreds of years old – make delightful settings for a traditional family wedding.

There are many ways of decorating a church for a wedding, both inside and out, to help create an atmosphere of romance and celebration. Here we showcase just a few examples of the ceremony flowers that Tolly's Flowers have created especially for churches.

Gates and Doorways

Church gates and doorways are places where your friends and family will gather before the wedding, so decorating them with flowers is a lovely way to welcome your guests. They are also very often the backdrop against which many of the formal wedding photographs will be taken.

At this church gateway we have enhanced the wonderful wrought iron archway with profuse spray arrangements, combining traditional white roses and English wild flowers such as larkspur, setting a celebratory tone for the ceremony to come.

For this ancient church doorway we have worked sympathetically with the stonework and the iron grille above the door, using a mixture of large and small blooms to create a delightful effect.

Interiors

Inside a church, there are a multitude of opportunities to place ceremony flowers, using the architecture and furnishings of the church itself, including fonts, pew ends, rood screens and pulpits, as well as the altar.

Here we have made use of the stone font as a giant vase to create a fountain of flowers and foliage, symbolising joy and abundance.

Alternatively, freestanding arrangements can be easily placed anywhere – such as this stunning globe of cream roses and hydrangeas with candles, on a tall brass stand. Freestanding displays have the additional advantage that they can be easily removed and taken to the reception venue where they can continue to be enjoyed by your wedding party. Removable displays are also useful if there are time constraints around access to the church prior to or after the ceremony.

As you can see from these examples, at Tolly's Flowers we not only put together beautiful flower displays, but we also have the creativity and practical know-how to work with your venue's features, in order to achieve a stunning result for your special day.

Ceremony Flowers Norfolk – Please take a look at more examples of our wedding flowers for ceremonies and receptions.

Just One of Our Happy Clients

Below is a recent letter from one of our customers, showing just what a positive impact our services can have on a wedding. The flowers for their special day are pictured above and below.

Dear Tolly,

I just wanted to drop you a note to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for the absolutely incredible flowers for our wedding. Every single guest there commented on how amazing they looked. I don't think they could quite get over them! The bouquets were utterly perfect and the marquee looked stunning. The ones in the church were phenomenal and we were so thrilled with all of them! Also, you were so completely reassuring throughout the process. I had got terribly stressed out about the flowers until we found you!...I cannot thank you enough!

Also a huge thank you to all of your team, they were all fantastic. I wish we could do it all again!

(Customer name withheld for privacy reasons)

We were delighted to hear how happy our customers were, as this is how we aim to make all our couples feel on their special day.

Wedding Florists Essex – View more of our creations here.

Beautiful Flowers by Tolly's Professional Wedding Florists

Experienced wedding florists, Tolly's Flowers of Newmarket, have been creating beautiful and memorable wedding flowers for couples across Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire for more than 20 years. But there's one important element of our service which is often overlooked – and that is our ability to help make the big day run smoothly.

There are a lot of elements to be thought about and arranged in the lead up to the big day – the dress, the cake, bridesmaids and page outfits, venue booking, guest invitations, catering, the ceremony, photography – as well as the wedding flowers of course. All these elements have to come together on one day, and it all has to be right first time – no second chances. So, how can you make sure everything runs perfectly?

One answer is to hire professionals that you can trust – and at Tolly's Flowers that is exactly what you get. We not only have the creative talent to design stunning displays, but the professionalism and experience to deliver on the big day. We regularly produce flower arrangements for large, public corporate events – and we've even created flower displays for royalty – so we know how to make sure everything is exactly as it should be on the big day.

Here are a few of the weddings we have designed for, demonstrating our ability to create impressive displays for wedding ceremonies and receptions, however small or large, or however challenging the venue.

The art of the possible – Professional wedding florists can, quite simply, achieve effects that the less experienced would not even attempt. To take just one example, the above is a huge gravity defying display we created for a local wedding reception.

Attention to detail – Part of being a professional wedding florist is the ability to make sure that everything is just so, as in this black and cream themed reception above. To match the dark grey chiffon chair tie-backs, we used matching black glass in the tall table centrepieces and the smaller top-table displays, to create a unified look for the whole room.

Making it work – Part of being a professional florist is the ability to think beyond the basics and work imaginatively with the venue to create something original. In this outdoor wedding we made a feature of the support poles by entwining foliage and flowers to striking effect.

Less is more – In the table displays above, the flowers have been carefully arranged and pre-tied in order to achieve an effect which looks completely effortless, creating the informal and relaxed atmosphere the couple were looking for.

Wedding Florists Essex - Click to find out more about our range of flower arrangements for your ceremony and reception.

Outdoor Wedding Flowers

Most traditional wedding flower arrangements are designed to be displayed indoors – for instance, on tables, pedestals and perhaps pew ends. However, there may be occasions where a couple wish to have outdoor floral displays, either at the ceremony location or at the reception venue. In such cases, using vases and floor stands is not practical or even possible, but requires imagination and a different set of skills.

Outdoor wedding ceremonies are becoming increasingly popular with couples as a way of making their ceremony unique. This is partly because it has become easier to achieve in the past few years, as the rules around granting venues licences to hold civil wedding ceremonies have become more relaxed. Many traditional wedding venues – such as hotels or country clubs – now offer the possibility of an outdoor ceremony (with the useful option of retreating inside should the British weather not be obliging on the day), often providing pavilions or gazebos overlooking gardens, lakes or other attractive, natural scenes. Such structures lend themselves perfectly to being adorned with ceremony flowers.

At Tolly's Flowers we have been meeting this challenge for many years and have developed the expertise to create attractive displays almost anywhere, including outdoor locations across Norfolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Here we show just some of the innovative outdoor wedding flowers we have designed, to help inspire you when thinking about your own forthcoming celebrations.

Outdoor Ceremonies

In the charming gazebo above, Tolly's Flowers has designed sumptuous wedding flowers to hang either side of the ceremonial area, as well as a traditional altar table decoration to match, creating the perfect stage for the ceremony to come.

Church Gates and Doorways

Flowers can be a beautiful way to mark a lychgate or church doorway as being a "threshold" into a new stage of life. But they are also very often the place where the main wedding photographs are taken – so your doorway decorations are likely to be part of your memories of the day for many years to come.

Depending on the design of the doorway and your preferences, you can choose between overhead displays or column displays, as pictured above.

Reception Venues

However, you don't have to have a church wedding to make use of doorway displays, either at the ceremony or reception venue. A threshold display can be used in any building, ancient or modern, whether it is a country hotel or a local village hall, to add a real sense of occasion and create a warm welcome for your guests – such as this arched display shown above.

Reception Grounds

Whether you are holding your reception in a marquee or a hotel, a summer wedding offers guests the chance for romantic walks around the grounds. So why not add some outdoor floral decorations to help create an extra special atmosphere for the event?

In the example above we decorated both ends of a large "walk through" pergola with a profuse display of summer flowers, providing an enchanting way to access the marquee area. The pergola was also fitted with a net of fairy lights, which helped to illuminate the flowers after nightfall, as well as provide visibility for night strollers.

So, however unusual your ceremony or reception venue, Tolly’s Flowers can devise decorations which will be both stunning and practical. If we've inspired you to think about using outdoor wedding flowers for your Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire or Norfolk wedding, please do get in touch.

Wedding Flowers Suffolk – Click here to view more of our arrangements for wedding receptions, both indoors and out.

Make Your Wedding Special with Unique Wedding Flowers

When couples come to us for their wedding flowers they may have very different ideas about colours, themes and styles, but they all, without exception, have one thing in common. They want their wedding to feel special and unique to them – and they want their flower arrangements to be highly distinctive and original.

At Tolly's Flowers, this is exactly what we provide for our customers – a highly personalised service to create something completely different for your special day. Pictured here are examples of the unique and beautiful wedding flowers we have designed for some of our clients.

Unique Wedding Bouquets

To us, the bride's bouquet is one of the most important aspects of wedding flowers, since it is carried by the bride both before and after the ceremony, making it a very personal item. As well as being stunning in its own right, a bouquet has to work as an accessory to the bride's outfit. In addition, we also bear in mind that it will appear in most, if not all, the wedding photos.

There are many ways to achieve a distinctive look, while still keeping to the basic ‘posy’ design, including colour combination, innovative use of foliage and use of unusual flower species.

In the example above, our designers created a stunning mixed bouquet in pastel colours. We used a mix of English country flowers enhanced with greenery and tied together very simply, to avoid detracting from the colour scheme. The beautiful arrangement and the sheer profusion of flowers makes this an eye-catching and unforgettable bouquet.

You don't have to choose unusual colours or species to achieve a stunning bouquet.

In the picture above, the bride wanted a very simple white bouquet to go with a classic cut wedding dress. We chose jasmine flowers, using a mixture of pale green buds and full white blooms to create a striking effect. Adding large splayed leaves around the base was the final creative touch needed to turn this classic bouquet into something exceptional.

Unique Wedding Table Arrangements

Designing table centrepieces that will be both visually impressive and small enough to occupy a table, is virtually an art form in itself. But it's an art form that our designers particularly enjoy.

As well as the choice of flowers, we have access to a huge variety of vases and accessories to create interesting effects, depending on the overall atmosphere the couple is looking for.

In the above arrangement, a clear round vase on a mirrored base is filled with cream and orange roses, and takes up very little space on the table top. By using relatively few flowers, but a lot of creativity, including the use of metal wiring and seashells, we were able to achieve a highly original display.

Want something more modern? Here we have combined the simplest of flowers – cream roses – with sculptural flower holders, to create an effect which wouldn't look out of place in a modern art gallery.

We hope we've inspired you with the sheer variety of designs that we are capable of creating. So, if you have been wondering how to achieve wedding flowers which are both beautiful and unique, please give us a call – we'll be happy to help turn your dreams into reality.

Unique Wedding Flowers East Anglia – Click here to find out more about what we can offer.