Rittners School Of Floral Design
In Boston Presents....

How To Make A Contemporary Bouquet

Wow!!! Isn't this bouquet an unusual one???

When you think of wedding bouquets you'd normally think of far more traditional ideas wouldn't you? But Wedding bouquets can be stylized to suit just about any desired visual effect.

If you want a bouquet that appears dainty, elegant, exotic or far out, your florist can help you achieve those effect though careful selection of materials and design technques chosen.....

In this presentation we have a great example of a very contemporary bouquet.

This is obviously not for every bride, but for someone looking for a bold, unusual statement, this certainly provides a great starting point.

As with all bouquets shown our Floral Education Center we believe that on your wedding day you have more than enough to deal with in terms of your guests and details of your bridal party. We do not recommend doing your bouquets yourself.....or leaving them to any amateurs......You don't need the extra pressure on that special day. Leave the construction of your wedding designs to your florist. S/he will stylize something special for you that will meet your every need. Wedding bouquets really do require skill, and ability, not do-it-yourself attempts.....

We are showing you these steps so that you'll appreciate the skills provided by your florist and the labor required to do these designs.......

Contents of This Design

This design is stylized in a foam bouquet base, (a fairly good sized one to accomodate all of the materials.) Extra picks may be added to the bottoms of the stems to help prevent flower loss.

What really defines this design as a contemporary one is the choice of materials. We normally don't think in terms of a combination of dried and live materials in a wedding bouquet, but why not? It's quite interesting....

We start by placing two cut palmettos into the base. The live palmetto leaf itself is a very large one. When it dries, most of the shriveled ends are cut off and the leaves are dyed a variety of colors. In this case a rich gold provides a very warm and opulent effect......

Two lotus pods are placed as shown in the photograph. Lotus pods are one of the most popular dried materials used in American floral design. Although American floral designers today import a wide range of dried materials from all over the world, lotus pods have always been a traditional favorite. As with the palmetto leaves they have been tinted gold.

A dramatic slash of ming fern starts at the upper left and curves down towards the lower right.....This both covers the mechanics of the design and also creates a cascading shape.....

Roses are one of the most popular flowers in our country, and have long been admired throughout the world for their beauty and fragrance. Let's add three of them in the upper left hand side of the design.

The rose in the center looks a little more open then the others. It has been deliberately chosen for that effect. If we didn't have one that was open, we could easily open one.

Curly ting ting, imported from Asia, has been painted gold and sprinkled with glitter. It is placed to the left side of the design, for added interest.

Three more roses are placed into the design, extended to the right.

More curly ting ting is placed as shown in the photograph.

This design could be considered finished at this point...Yet notice, it only has six roses in addition to the dried materials.......

To add a little contrast to the design, we could add some sort of filler here.

Small clusters of sweet william are placed as shown in the photograph.

A lovely design.....An unusual wedding bouquet......And we hope that you enjoyed it.

We hope that you really enjoyed this contemporary bouquet. At Rittners Floral School in Boston we provide floral design instruction that includes a wide range of different styles and techniques. Please come and take one of our hands-on workshop programs!!