Petalena: Creative Designs for Weddings and Special Events

Petalena in Print!

Apryl and I were completely psyched when a freelance style editor working on the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine’s  “Weddings” issue (set to release on Sunday, January 14th!) asked to us contribute a bouquet for a style feature!

The article will feature three different bouquets at three different price points, we were asked to do a modest bouquet for $75 – a bit below our normal price range so we did a precious small little posie bouquet seen below:

Darling Bouquet for Boston Globe Magazine

About the Flowers & Color Palette:
Peach and apricot tones work gorgeously with the silver tones. This kind of color mood is really perfect for January through June wedding especially with all the wonderful flowers are available as the season progresses like amaryllis in winter, fragrant sweet peas in late winter through spring, and the classic spring flowers – tulips and narcissus.

Our bouquet features two of our favorite flowers – ranunculas (the gorgeous petal-y flower that looks like a more luxurious version of a rose) and peach parrot tulips. Apryl and I both stricken a modern-day version of  ‘Tulip Mania” so thank goodness we don’t live in Holland back in the 1600s!

The Tulip by Anna Pavord

If you’re struck by a love of tulips too, check out the wonderful writer Anna Pavord. She wrote a fantastic book back in 2000 The Tulip, which as her publisher says “is not a garden book” but the story of how the tulip arrived in Turkey and made its way to Western Europe. A bit botanical history, a bit cultural voyage, it’s a fascinating read.

Apryl and I LOVE the days we get photos from the professional wedding photographers from the weddings we work! It’s sort of like, well, Christmas!

So, happy to share some of the beautiful photos by Mara Broad Photographs, thanks Mara!:

The Perfect Photo - Photo by Mara Broad

I just adore, adore, adore this photo of the bride and groom, and of course how the bridal bouquet is perfectly highlighted too!

Bridesmaids and Bride laughing - Photo by Mara Broad

Another one of my favorite photographs, formals are lovely but this is so natural and fun and really captures the sense of being with your girls! Love the light and how it picks up the colors of the dresses and bouquets so beautifully.

More Laughter - Photo by Mara Broad

Bridesmaid with Bouquet - Photo by Mara Broad

We did a lot of trailing ribbons on the bouquet handles for this wedding (a nice detail above), something we’re always hoping a bride will want to do – it adds such a pretty and romantic touch to bouquets without looking too foo-foo bow-ish!

Thanks again Mara for sharing and to our dear friends Bridget and Phil – it was so much fun to do your wedding!

For more photos of some of the other wedding details, you can see this earlier post which has a lot of the table arrangements.

Photos by Mara Broad

Floral Design by Petalena

I was going through our photos today and realized we hadn’t finished posting a few of our bouquets from the bridal show. One of our faves was one Apryl did that we decided to call “City Cool” – something about it is just so unusual and elegant, surely something a stylie city girl would love!:

Bouquet with Maidenhair Fern, Calla Lilies, and Begonia

About the Flowers and Design:

A bit more abstract and unusual – this bouquet features those darling uber-mini calla lilies in a deep dark purple, surrounded by begonia leaves (a new obsession of ours!), and maiden hair fern.
The bouquet is also amazingly light because it only has a few essential things and the fern and begonia leaves are especially light.

Here is a detail of how we treated the handle of the bouquet – with some espresso brown crinkle silk and silver embroidered ribbon for accent:

Detail of bouquet handle and foliage

All photos and design by Petalena