Insider's Guide to wedding flowers

How do you decide on the flowers for your wedding and where do you start?

You first key to your flowers comes from your dress. Have a good look at the design – is it straight lines and strong accents? Then frilly flowers like carnations, roses and babies breath will not work. Better options may be strong lined flowers such as orchids or lilies.

The opposite is true as well. If your dress is a romantic soft creation, strong and textured flowers may not work as well as masses of roses with lots of ferns and other fine flowers between them would complement your look.

Your dress also sets the colour palette of your flowers. There are mainly two options as far as colour is concerned. You can opt for cold arrangements or warm arrangements. Cold arrangements contain all the blues, greens and whites of the spectrum whereas warm flowers are the oranges, reds and yellows.

A dress that has cold undertones like brilliant white or anything in the blue colour sector will not work with warm flower arrangements and the opposite is true as well.

The time of day also plays a role when you select your colour pallet. Bright cold colours work great during daytime weddings where they simply pop in the light.

Prepare well before you approach a florist. They will be asking you a lot of questions, so have the answers ready. Questions like the dress design will be pertinent in their quest for your perfect flowers so be ready with a picture of your dress or even a sketch will do. Also show them some cuttings from your dress materials as well as the linen you will be using at your reception.

Florists will also need to know way in advance if you want out of season flowers. Note that almost any flower is available in any season, but you need to book in advance and be prepared to pay top dollar for imported flowers.

Best advice is to ask what is in season round your wedding day and use those flowers where possible.

Finally, florists can do a mock-up of wedding arrangements for you to see. Arrange the items for your table setting and bring them to this mock-up session, also set your table with the flowers on it. If you can, get your photographer to come to this session too!

Never guess that it will be ok if you do not have the exact coloured items with you – in most cases your green and the green you thought it was are never the same and looks out of place. The rule of thumb is that perfect practice makes perfect!