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.