Organic, Lively Wedding at Hawthorn Estates

I love weddings I’m hired for full scale event design, I love working at Hawthorn Estates, and I really love working with couples from out of town. Truly, Liz and Dan’s wedding was pretty perfect for me and I looked forward to it for a long time.

When I’m working on an event design plan, I often find myself focusing on colour and texture, the floor plan, and rentals options. I want to create an event that has the perfect atmosphere for you (for this, fun and lively atmosphere!), and is a combination of elevated and realistic.

I’m excited to share Liz and Dan’s organic, lively wedding at Hawthorn Estates!

Photos by Izabela Rachwal

Don’t these bouquets perfectly set off the bridesmaid dresses? My favourite wedding parties are always those that are dressed in the palette, rather than all matching exactly.

Colour is always where I start when I design a wedding. Putting together the perfect palette makes me so excited and gets my head in gear for the rest of the design elements. Liz really wanted soft, romantic tones, and I wanted to add in some mauve and brown tones for depth. As you can see from my palette above, we ended up with soft sage greens, blushes and peaches, light pink, mauve, and moving into taupes and browns.

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: So much locally grown! Lisianthus, foxglove, zinnias, cosmos, dianthus, with ranunculus, roses and garden spray roses, and olive foliage.

The church (like most churches!) has a lot going on. The stage and altar are quite wide, giving us lots of space to work with.

I knew we’d be fighting against the red tones, but that’s just the nature of the church! The back wall is really quite beautiful, and the angled architecture brings the natural focus to the front, so I simply aimed to bring in brightness and colour through the florals.

Ground-based floral pieces lined the front of the altar, incorporating the full colour palette and similar flowers to the bouquets, while adding in more height and fullness.

Guests were welcomed into cocktail hour in the solarium at Hawthorn, greeted with a polaroid guest book along with custom cocktails (featuring locally grown floral garnish!) and oyster bar.

Inside at the reception, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with the design. Hawthorn is a warm space, but too often styled in exactly the same way. I wanted to use more saturation, punches of feminine colour, a great floor plan, and a few focal moments to make the wedding design more interesting, leading to a more engaging atmosphere. Situating the dance floor in front of the head table made for a perfect space for the party to get going!

First up on my to-do list, was minimize the “rustic” vibe that people often play to at Hawthorn, and create a welcoming, elegant Italian-inspired atmosphere instead. I focused my attention to the floor plan, allowing the fireplace and the stone to have its moment.

The fireplace is the natural focal point in the room — when you walk into Hawthorn, the first thing anyone sees is this very large, very gorgeous fireplace. Why on earth it’s ever relegated to the side of the floor plan is beyond me, but most people choose to not use it as a design focal point.

So, I knew I wanted to place our head table in front of it, and created a large floral piece on the mantle.

Guest tables alternated between two long feasting tables perpendicular to the head table, and round tables around the exterior of the room.

The tablescape base focused on natural, organic textures of linen and velvet. I added in fluttery florals and warm candlelight, with stone table numbers and handmade paper place cards.

I loved the combination of taupe and mauve linens, combined with the mahogany chairs. The depth that the mauve brings brought the elegant elevation that Liz was after, and created a really luscious base for the fluttery pink florals. I added in sandstone candles in fluted glass hurricanes, ribbed stem vases and soft pink ceramic compotes, and vintage floral inspired table lamps.

A few little touches that I loved adding — this funky little floral base around the heart shaped cake, and the calligraphy seating chart on linen hung with pink silk ribbon.

Handing your bridal bouquet to you is one of my favourite parts of the day — Liz was SO excited, so joyful, and so ready for their wedding. And she sure loved the bouquet, which was everything I could have wanted!

Liz and Dan live in the US, so we planned everything long distance. Thank goodness for Google Meet! But it really went so smoothly — once the design plan is put together and approved, I take the reigns on getting all the quotes and proposals we need from other vendors, and then tie up all the design details so that on the wedding day, the couple has nothing to worry about!

If you’re interested in more about my event design services and if it’s the right option for your wedding, check out my services here.

Izabela Rachwal Photography ~ Stone House Creative ~ Hawthorn Estates ~ Studio Lavender Design ~ Kind REgards Calligraphy ~ Planned Perfectly ~ Collective Event Rentals ~ Jenna Rae Cakes ~ Union Table ~ Wave Sound & Lighting

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LOOKING FOR A WEDDING FLORAL AND EVENT DESIGNER IN WINNIPEG?

No matter where you’re hosting your wedding, we’re up for it! We love working on private properties, restaurants, and traditional venues, creating magic in your special place. Reach out to inquire about your date availability!

Whether you already have a specific vision or want me to dream up something custom just for you, reach out to find out how we can create the perfect ambiance for your wedding.

Chic Minimalist Wedding at The White Poplar

Tara and James’ wedding is the perfect exhibit of total trust within artistic collaboration — she is an incredible stationery designer and paper maker, and had a chic vision for the wedding. I was so thrilled to bring it to life.

The vision was an airy, clean, natural feeling design with minimal yet elevated details. I chose limited floral ingredients, and Tara requested chic, unfussy arrangements. The overall vibe was structured yet unstructured, and it was idyllic.

Photos by Nicole Plett

Oh my gosh, how much did I LOVE THIS BOUQUET!! I knew that the best way to accomplish Tara’s vision was with limited floral varieties. This creates a more elevated, chic look and given the shape of her dress and the petite bouquet size she wanted, I chose to keep it simple but organic.

Bridal bouquet ingredients: locally grown bleeding hearts (totally the star of the show!!), tulips, freesia, and hellebore.

There’s definitely an art to selecting the perfect mis-matching bridesmaid dresses, and this group did an amazing job. The textures, tones, and subtle touches of pattern combined beautifully. And HELLO, can we talk about Tara’s dress?! Custom-made by Cathy Wiebe, it was literally divine. The sleeve length, the drape of the shoulder, the flow of the skirt…I’ve never seen anything like it.

Tara and James chose to orient their ceremony towards the back of where The White Poplar normally does it, and I thought it looked beautiful! The two oak trees were really important to them, and Tara actually used them as part of the letter-pressed line sketch in their wedding invitations (Oh! Did I mention that Tara is an incredibly talented paper artist and wedding invitation designer? You’re going to want to check out her work here).

For the ceremony floral, we wanted to create floral pieces that really blended into the setting, bringing an organic softness. There wasn’t a lot of spatial depth for us to work with, so instead of the typical curved ground arch, I went for two large, overgrown-inspired ground-based pieces that were positioned straight along the edge of the ceremony site.

This reception design was one of my very favourites of the entire year. It felt like an elevated take on an organic, simple design and the ambiance was just perfect. Tara carefully chose such beautiful elements to bring it all together: the king’s table for the wedding party, her stunning stationery, and each rental piece was curated so perfectly to bring the right texture and chic feel.

The florals fit right in. Tara and I chose these bowls (so glad she wanted them, as I’ve used them so many times since then!), and I designed several different centrepiece styles to bring movement and organic texture down the length of the tables. I primarily used tulips, hellebore, and Queen Anne’s Lace, tucking in some locally grown pansies and bleeding heart to finish it off.

We repurposed some of the ceremony floral to the base of the king’s table, and more of it to the entrance and seating chart.

If this look is what you dream of, here are some tips to creating the right vibe:

-Elevated rentals are key. Touches of textured glassware, this gorgeous bar from Collective, and the perfect textured linens elevate an empty space.

-Floral ingredients should be minimized. I chose a few things and used them en masse and in repetition to create the look I was going for.

-Aim for some outdoor space! They were able to have their ceremony, cocktail hour, and dancing under the stars and it was perfect (while still making sure their guests were comfortable indoors for the dinner).

Nicole Plett Photography ~ The White Poplar ~ Idyll Paper ~ Planned Perfectly ~ Feast & Festivities ~ Collective Event Rentals ~ Union Table ~ Simply Beautiful Decor ~ Myuz Artistry ~ Cathy Wiebe Clothes ~ Lineage House ~ Brides Eye View

Getting Married at the White poplar?

I might be a bit biased…but I happen to do a really great job of creating unique floral designs that are perfect in their space.

Reach out to inquire about your date availability, and find out how we can create the perfect ambiance for your wedding.

Garden Meets Classic: A Destination Wedding at Clear Lake

There’s a few things that you can do to immediately get me on board with your wedding: plan for a great location (hello to the natural beauty of Clear Lake!), ask for some stellar florals (an over the top ceremony design? yes, please!), and throw in the challenge of logistics to get me excited (more on that below!).

Alex and Travis’s destination wedding at Elkhorn Manor (Clear Lake) was the perfect combination of all of the above.

Let’s get into it!

Photos by Brittany Mahood Photography

Logistics aren’t sexy. They just aren’t. But when you’re planning a destination or semi-destination wedding, at a venue that is a few hours away from any major city and requires your vendors to travel in, logistics are the name of the game. You absolutely cannot hire someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Not to toot my own horn, but this is where I absolutely thrive.

Over the last few years, Stone House Creative has become known for the work we do on larger-scale weddings, and I’m incredibly proud of that. Alex and Travis’ wedding was both large, and logistically challenging due to being in Clear Lake. I don’t feel like I can possibly shout this from the rooftop enough: if you’re envisioning a larger, floral-focused design, or your venue necessitates a lot of logistical difficulty, you must absolutely hire a floral design team that understands what truly needs to happen to make your wedding come together without issue.

From the start of my earliest conversation with their planner, Tricia Bachewich Events, I laid out some of the special considerations that their chosen florist would need to be able to have solutions ready for:

-Staffing, and the size of team that we would need to have.
-Delivery logistics. Travel time to Clear Lake is ~ 3 hours, not including all the time needed to load the vehicles; with the amount of installations needed on-site and the set up time we would need, it was clear we would not be able to drive up the same morning as the wedding and still be able to accomplish everything.
-This naturally progressed into needing hotel rooms, which aren’t typically able to booked at Elkhorn until January of that calendar year, along with increased staffing costs due to additional time and per diems.
-Arriving the day before also would mean that we would need a cool holding space at the resort. The ceremony/reception location does not have any air conditioning, so the hotel would need to have an option for us.
-With the size of floral order and guest count, I knew that a single Uhaul would not be sufficient, nor would I be comfortable with the flowers driving for 3 hours in an un-air-conditioned Uhaul. We were heading up to a remote location with not even a regular flower shop nearby; if any of our flowers crapped out while we were driving, there wouldn’t be anything nearby for us to replace it with.
-The requested ceremony arch would require a custom structure build in order to create the scale they desired.
-Additionally, while the couple are originally from the Clear Lake/Brandon areas, they currently live in the USA as the groom is a hockey player in the NHL. They didn’t have the time to dedicate to planning their wedding, and needed a vendor team that could progress without needing their input.

While I normally go for a lot of colour, I have to say that this white and green palette (with touches of taupey blush) looks really good at Elkhorn Manor! The bridesmaid dresses were the perfect colour, especially through Brittany’s lense.

Alex’s Galia Lahav dress is stunning — the floral appliqued details almost feels like tiny floral confetti floating throughout the gown. I chose to design her bouquet in a classic-meets-garden way, making sure that there was some movement and nothing too stiff.

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: playa blanca roses, quicksand roses, white ruffled lisianthus, sweet pea, dahlias, ranunculus, and jasmine vine.

Oh baby, I loved this ceremony design! Mid-way through the planning, they chose to add the clear top tent as insurance against the rain. While we didn’t end up needing it on August 3 because the weather was perfect, it actually did POUR that night. You can never be too careful with an outdoor wedding!

To create more of a natural feeling, we softened the tent ceiling with strands of vining smilax. It took a fair bit of time to maneuver our scaffold around on the grass to get me up high enough to do this, but it turned out beautifully.

Then, the piece de resistance: the arch. As many pro athletes are, Travis is pretty tall. And once I saw Alex’s inspiration image for the ceremony arch, I knew that the scale of the arch (height, width, and fullness of the floral!) was going to be really important to nail in order to create the look she wanted. I collaborated with Creating a Scene to custom-manufacture the wood boxes that we then attached the arch structure to — and the devil is in the detail! The box trim on the boxes matched that on their bar, and of course, I made sure to appropriately counter-weight the metal arch structure that I had custom-made to fit on the boxes so that no disasters were possible.

The aisle was fully lined with floral to create a garden effect, and we repurposed most of these pieces throughout the reception design, as well.

Along with the logistical mindset needed to accomplish this destination wedding at Clear Lake, any wedding at an out-of-town venue requires serious flexibility. For months, I was mentally preparing myself for anything that could possibly go wrong.

Here’s a quick run-down of things we had to address the week and day of the wedding: the reefer truck we reserved had an issue and they cancelled our reservation so we needed to figure something else out; the ceremony tent size changed at the last minute so we had to adjust how we hung the ceiling greenery; a chandelier was hung in the ceremony tent literally right where the arch was supposed to go, so we had to take that down; the grids for the hanging installation over the head table were installed incorrectly so we needed to adjust how we designed the florals (and note, we did indeed solve all of these problems. They all took a lot of time, though, so the team came in clutch to make it all happen on time!).

The cocktail hour details were so cute — one of these living wall features to serve specialty cocktails (guests had to ring a bell under whichever cocktail they chose, and a gloved hand would appear with drink ready!). The seating chart was added to the wall, and I added some floral and greenery touches to tie it all together.

They also rented a cute phone booth / photo booth, to which we added more smilax, coordinating floral pieces, and a tall delphinium arrangement to the attached guest book table.

The reception tent featured a central king table for the wedding party, set under a hanging floral piece, and round guest tables interspersed with faux olive trees elevated on white pedestals with box trim. A primarily white palette was warmed up with natural cane-back chairs, taupe candles, and slight touches of blush in the florals.

For the head table, I opted for 20x mixed size clear glass vases that each featured a single variety arrangement, allowing for a delightful garden-inspired smattering of florals and textures down the length of the table.

I’m not always huge on the marquee letters, but this was pretty epic! Set up on the hill, above the tent, it looked so good and was such a fun backdrop to their dance party.

It’s not every wedding when the couple flies in a multi CCMA and Juno award winning country music star to play their first dance — but Alex and Travis brought in Brett Kissel to play a set for their reception! This must have been SUCH a fun party. I would have loved to have been a guest!

I have to give an enormous thank you to the crew that was part of making this wedding happening! Emily and Deanna who helped to design everything leading up to the wedding, Jason and Chad who came along to help us set up, clean up, and drive, and Kayla, Andrea, and Amanda who each drove up to Clear Lake for the day to help us design and install everything. A solid team is crucial, and this crew was AMAZING.

Brittany Mahood Photography ~ Tricia Bachewich Events ~ Elkhorn Manor, Clear Lake ~ Paper & Palm ~ Union Table ~ Special Event Rentals ~ Dream Day Decor ~ Creating a Scene ~ House of Silk ~ 4 Square Foto ~ Trident Films ~ Ginger Snips Salon ~ Oak & Ivy Salon

Looking for a Floral Designer for your large scale wedding in Winnipeg?

Large scale weddings come with a lot of logistics, and require both creativity and a detailed mindset to pull it off. Stone House Creative specializes in this!

Whether you already have a specific vision or want me to dream up something custom just for you, reach out to find out how we can create the perfect ambiance for your wedding.

Modern Garden Wedding at The White Poplar

I absolutely LOVE working at The White Poplar and I will shout it from the rooftops! So when Tori and Ian inquired about their wedding (more than a year and a half in advance!) I was already pumped. Then they brought on the best vendor team, and a gorgeous design plan, and I was in wedding design heaven.

Tori has a really classic style, and we wanted to meet it with modern sensibility — so a crisp palette of black and white was chosen, with warm taupes and mixed greens added.

Photos by Brittany Mahood Photography

“Lauren, I cannot thank you enough for your beautiful work. It was truly better than I could have imagined! I spent so much time on the dance floor just staring at the arch, it was insane!! Thank you thank you thank you 💕”

— Tori and Ian

There’s something about the shape of Tori’s beautiful gown that reminds me of Maria from The Sound of Music. It is so refined! Her pearl-dotted hair and veil were the perfect finishing touches. And isn’t the green tone they bridesmaids chose gorgeous? This was a September wedding, so we definitely didn’t have “fall” leaves yet but the richness of the green was very seasonally appropriate.

Tori requested a classic cascading bouquet, and I initially made it WAY too big because the flowers were just so lush and divine. Late summer is the perfect time for locally grown flowers, and we had them in abundance for Tori.

If you’ve been around here a while, you know that I’m a lover of lots of colour. That’s just my personal preference, but part of that is also because a lot of white weddings look the same. Designers tend to gravitate toward their few favourite ingredients, so it’s tricky to see how to pull through the client’s individual style along with the designer’s style.

I actually designed quite a lot of white weddings this year, and I made it a mission to make them each unique. My secret weapon: locally grown flowers. Tori’s wedding had SO many.

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: white lisianthus, roses, dahlias, anemones, sweet pea, and snowberry combined with olive and stephanotis vines.

One of many reasons why The Poplar is an incredible place to get married: the photo ops! The natural setting is really stunning.

This ceremony because such a beautiful focal point for the day! Their service was personal and relaxed, and of course, I loved the florals. When your backdrop is a wall of trees, we need to be careful with a green and white palette, so that the arch you’re investing money into doesn’t get blend right into the scenery.

The couple loved the idea of an asymmetrical 2 piece arch, with full white and green coverage. Gorgeous — but also, very easy to end up looking like every other white and green wedding. It’s always a priority for me to make each wedding look unique, so I decided to focus on selecting ingredients that would feel fresh.

For any white wedding, I almost always use playa blanca roses. They open up HUGE and have such a gorgeous shape. But again, even though they’re the perfect rose, I needed to add something that would be unique. So, I cut and dried locally grown green hydrangea — they dry exactly like they look fresh, so I didn’t have to worry about a water source. We clustered these in different groupings along the arch structure, and then focused on lots of white lisianthus (locally grown, whenever I can get them!), the roses, white delphinium for a few fluttery touches, and some clustered white ball dahlias.

We added 2 large arrangements at the back of the aisle to tie the entire space together.

Reception time! The building at The White Poplar is so great — those large front doors, the patio leading to the ceremony site, and all those clear walls make for a great blank space.

The first thing guests saw when they entered was this beautiful seating chart, where we repurposed the aisle flowers. The tables flowed from there, with long tables lining the centre of the room and round tables along the outsides. A sweetheart table was positioned in front of the fireplace.

Soiree Event Planning chose the perfect matte black flatware to accent the industrial black chairs, and a gorgeous dark olive napkin. For the long tables, we clustered petite arrangements in black and grey smoke glass vases (all white, mostly locally grown florals!), and added in ribbed grey smoke glass votives along with soft green taper candles.

The round tables featured a fuller floral arrangement in a matte black vase, complimented by assorted sizes and styles of candles for a more collected but still modern look.

Tip for weddings at The White Poplar: affix your place cards to your menus, and tuck them into your napkins. It can be very windy out there!

Tori and Ian literally told me that flowers weren’t a huge priority for them, but what was a priority was the overall design, and making sure that everything was the appropriate scale and just “felt right.” We went through a few revisions of the floral plan to make sure that we had it right, and I think it came together pretty perfectly between the simpler but still interesting floral centrepieces and the way we repurposed the ceremony florals.

Brittany Mahood Photography ~ Soiree Event Planning ~ The White Poplar ~ Planned Perfectly ~ Collective Event Rentals ~ Union Table ~ Karta House ~ Myuz Artistry ~ Blush & Blonde ~ Sugar & Salt Bakeshoppe ~ Urban Prairie Cuisine

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Looking for a Wedding Floral Designer in Winnipeg?

Planning a wedding at The White Poplar? I’ve got a list of design dreams I cannot wait to make a reality. I’d love to be your designer!

Flowers are the best way to make a statement at your wedding. Reach out to Stone House Creative for stunning bridal bouquets, truly unique ceremony backdrops, and beautiful floral centrepieces to create the perfect ambiance for your wedding! 

Modern Architectural Inspired Wedding at the Leaf

It’s finally time to share SO MUCH DETAIL from this architecturally-inspired editorial I designed at The Leaf!

My vision was something chic, sculptural, and heavily influenced by the use of a single type of flower (in this case, white lilies). The slatted wood wall in the mezzanine area of The Leaf was absolute perfect backdrop for the strong lines I wanted to create.

I’m going to start with a very quick visual overview of the design elements, and then get down into some nitty gritty of the pricing for you!

Photos by Keila Marie Photography

Aren’t these details just perfection! I’m so grateful to all of the wedding professionals who helped me bring this to life. It takes a team, friends!

The tabletop was a labour of love to design. Pretty early on, I decided that I wanted to use Planned Perfectly’s toffee linen and Union Table’s matte black flatware with ribbed glassware, but I hemmed and hawed over the place settings. I’m so glad I chose the speckled plates because they add such fun!

Multiple sculptural floral centrepieces are featured down the table, accented with ribbed olive green candles, black trays with fresh fruit, and chains of hyacinth blooms, which added some really fun, modern whimsy.

How much do you think this bridal bouquet costs?

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients:

Freesia
Tweedia
Hellebore
Mini Cymbidium Orchids
Allium
Looped Hyacinth Chains
And finished with hand died silk ribbon from Tono and Co

BRIDAL BOUQUET COST: $435

This bouquet was a bit of a trial for me — because it wasn’t at all what I had planned on. Almost none of the flowers that I ordered for it actually came in! I envisioned a bouquet that was on the smaller side, with a chic, highly textured design, with these hyacinth chains as a major focal point. That’s basically the only element that came together the way I had originally intended.

That being said, sometimes we have to roll with what we can, especially when we’re working with live, perishable product! The lime cymbidium orchids were perfect for tying through that bright chartreuse tone I needed, and while I didn’t plan on using the white freesia, I loved the warm yellow in the centre and the linear stem shape.

Most of my bridal bouquets aren’t this high cost, but the ingredients I used are mostly premium product and that comes with a higher price tag.

I love wandering around the Tropical Biome at the Leaf, but I didn’t want Erika’s portraits to feel too “wedding photos at the Leaf.” Keila took my vision of clean, bright, fine art meets tropical and played up the atmosphere and the way it supported Erika’s modern column gown, rather than going too typical and obvious.

This is the Aesling Sagrada gown. It’s chic, minimal lines paired with the dramatic (detachable!) cape is what drew me to it. It was perfect for this architectural vision!

Get the Look

The arch was my personal focal point; I wanted something strong, something modern, and choosing to focus on just one ingredient type is not at all common, but forcing myself to stick to just one element allowed me to really play up the star shaped flower.

I tucked in a few double lilies for a softer texture here and there, which were absolutely divine.

Add in a set of minimal black chivari chairs, and you’ve got quite a cool ambiance thanks to that slatted wall and lily arch combo! If there’s a piece of architectural interest at your venue, consider how you can play it up.

THIS CAKE. Jenna did an amazing job, as always!! This wafer paper design feels feminine, structural, and really strong all at the same time. I honestly cringe at the thought of how long this must have taken her to make! The vertically applied wafer paper is reminiscent of that slatted wood wall I took so much inspiration from, and I love the way she curved it around the cake, and added some delicate movement to it. Cake perfection.

I remember gasping when I opened up the stationery suite from Rae + Dot. They used a speciality printing technique called blind debossing to add a three-dimensional ribbed texture to the paper, again perfectly hearkening back to the slatted wood wall that I love so much. I had requested a patterned envelope liner, and suggested that an architectural take on a lily bloom would be cool. The line drawing with the warm toffee paper was AMAZING.

Isn’t Erika absolutely gorgeous? She ALWAYS is, by the way. It’s kind of irritating how beautiful she is. Jessica Kmiec went pink and glowy on her, and Bailey pulled her hair back with these striking pearl hair pins. Chic, modern, goddess. Yeah baby.

Erika also helped me set the table and helped me clean up, and I’m so grateful to you 😘

Keila Marie Photography ~ Stone House Creative ~ The Leaf ~ Planned Perfectly ~ Union Table ~ Jenna Rae Cakes ~ Rae and Dot Studio ~ Love note Bride ~ Jessica Kmiec Artistry ~ Bailey VanderVeen

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Hire a Talented Wedding Floral and Event Designer in Winnipeg

Not to toot my own horn (too much), but I happen to be really good at this. I’d be thrilled to design an incredible atmosphere and accompanying florals for your wedding.