A Springtime Floral Dream ~ Reverdie Workshop

Earlier this spring, before wedding season kicked off, I travelled about an hour outside of Montreal to attend Reverdie, a floral design workshop. Hosted by Trille Floral (a Canadian designer) and Winsome Floral (an American designer), the experience was quite amazing.

I’ve always believed that hands-on floral design education, and inspiration, is of utmost importance. It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to attend a workshop, and it was worth every penny and every moment. Let me tell you about it.

Photos by Grace & Ardor Co

When I started working in flowers, I was quite apprehensive about actually designing. In fact, it was quite a long time before I was “allowed” to design. Despite that, I received some really wonderful hands-on design training and solid basics and mechanics from several of my colleagues, who I still consider to be some of the best designers in Canada. When I left that retail shop, and then eventually started Stone House Creative, I made it a priority to continue investing in hands-on and online design training. It’s really cost me quite a lot of money, but I don’t regret it at all.

A strong sense of basics, design elements, colour theory, and flower care are all of high importance in floral design. Without these, you can’t figure out your own style or create pieces that both look good and hold up. So to all of you who may be interested in floral design, please don’t hesitate to receive hands-on training. Yes, it’s an investment. But just as I wouldn’t trust a dentist who hasn’t gone to dental school, I wouldn’t be comfortable with a floral designer charging for their work without investing in any actual training (and yes, obviously I understand that there’s an enormous difference between a medical professional and floral design).

Reverdie was a 4 day experience, set at a beautiful European-inspired chateau and vineyard where we all were able to stay on-site. The first afternoon, we met and got to know each other, and then sat down for a welcome dinner that was absolutely incredible.

We sat at the long table above, with a simplistic and inspiring design of simple spirea arrangements and warm toned candles and linens.

On day 2, we sat for 2 design training sessions before letting loose into the flowers: centrepiece arrangements, and bouquet design.

Above is the arrangement I created. Trille and Winsome have a slightly different process for designing arrangements than I do, so it was cool to give that a shot and see the final product. The tulips were absolutely incredible, so I wanted to make them the real focal point and let them do their thing. I love the wonky lines that tulip stems create, and this cinnamon-and-butter palette was so lovely for spring.

Love these table designs? Let's talk about what makes them amazing.

1: Repetition of Elements

The overall tablescapes here are quite straightforward: a pairing of candles, a floral moment // A pairing of candles, a floral moment // A pairing of candles, a floral moment...you get the drill. If you're unsure how to design a great tablescape, keep it simple!

2: Florals en Masse

Our first two dinners had striking floral centrepieces, and possibly what's most striking is that we have just one ingredient, en masse. This is a design tactic that always feels clean and elevated to me. If this is something you're drawn to, be sure to tell your designer as most of us don't expect that you're wanting this.

3: Curated Colour Palette

You know I love colour -- and hopefully you've also heard me say that you don't need to go super vibrant to indulge in colour. Each of these dinners features a different palette, and different accent colours, and we can take inspiration from all of them: whites with warm neutrals, vibrant pink with complimentary mint tones, and saturated yellows. Take a look and decide what draws you in most: monochromatic, highly saturated, or complimentary tones!

On day 3, we took part in 2 different group installations: one outdoors at a chapel, and one indoors to create an incredible meadow.

Obviously I cannot choose a favourite, but I will say that the high volume of yellow forsythia branches that we use has me completely inspired. Clustering in pockets of varied pinks and creating height and depth made this feature come to life.

For our final dinner, we used each of our centrepieces down the length of the table, again paired with taper candles and also with the most exquisite handmade plates by Kels in the Studio, a New Brunswick potter. It was a really full table, making it slightly less practical but I’ll tell you what, it was SO nice to be able to be a guest at our own table instead of always setting it for someone else! We also repurposed many of the forsythia pieces that we used alongside the chapel into the window sills, as well as around the base of the cake table. This is the kind of oomph that goes a long way in creating an environment, rather than just designing pretty floral centrepieces, and if there’s opportunity to repurpose florals (read: there must be enough time to make it happen), then this is definitely a way to do it!

I’m so grateful to Courtney and Cara for this beautiful experience. It was restful, inspiring, and so peaceful. Many of us students were also moms of young kids, so the group was in need of some rest. It was such a wonderful respite! If you’re a floral designer looking for a workshop to attend, definitely consider Reverdie (or their annual fall workshop, Autumn in New York). It was magical.

Workshop Hosts: trille floral & winsome floral ~ grace and ardor ~ elegant productions ~ chateau ste agnes ~ pearle by katrina tuttle ~ kels in the studio~ paper chain stationery ~ scribble and script ~ ana capbatut ~ alexis burkhardt Hair ~ victoria roggio beauty ~ just iced custom cakes ~ glow the event store ~ the studio house~ native ribbon co

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LOOKING FOR A WEDDING FLORAL AND EVENT DESIGNER IN WINNIPEG?

We can design a beautiful, unique wedding environment for you. Find out more about our floral services by inquiring below!

Call me biased, but flowers are the best way to make a statement at your wedding. Whether you already have a specific vision or want me to dream up something custom just for you, 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! 

Bright, Cheerful Lakeside Wedding Near Kenora

I LOVE a good lakefront wedding, and I love a good logistical challenge (every once in a while). So when Sam and Joel first reached out to me (from Calgary!), about their wedding taking place at her family’s property near Kenora, I knew I wanted to be involved.

3 provinces and 2 lakefront locations. Moving pieces back and forth between the ceremony and reception properties and a lot of little things that could be easily missed. With a wedding like this, you’ll want to make sure that you have an excellent team of professionals on board, and we certainly did for Sam and Joel!

Photos by Keila Marie Photography

Cheerful, colourful, romantic, clean…we had a lot of great theme words for this design.

I started my day by driving out to Kenora, with all of the florals, the arch pieces, and supplies loaded carefully into my van. There’s always a bit of stress that everything won’t fit in, but especially with an out of town wedding, it’s simply got to work! When I arrived, the first thing I did was hand off Sam’s bouquets and get a glimpse at their colourful invitation suite (how adorable, right?!).

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: all the floaty bits! And almost entirely locally grown in Manitoba! Lisianthus, ranunculus, cosmos, scabiosa, feverfew, sweet pea, and forget me nots.

We then got to work right away on designing the ceremony flowers. We set up the arch right in front of the water, and the view was obviously immaculate. It was a bit windy (just can’t seem to get away from that stinking wind!) so we had to counter-weight the arch in the front (normally we only need to weight the back, to counter-balance the weight of the florals in the front).

I didn’t want the florals to be too polka-dotty, so I started with an all-over base of greenery and peach statice, and then started clustering in pockets of colour. The pink expression roses are a personal favourite of mine, and they really showed off in this arch. We added touches of light blue delphinium and some super fun and frilly orange and peach zinnias to finish it off.

In my opinion, a polka-dotty design is a clear indication of a designer who doesn’t actually have much of a design sense…they might know a ton about flowers and care and how to arrange, but if they don’t have a design eye, then what’s the point? When you’re looking for a florist, pay attention to the overall design: are all the flowers smushed together? Is it polka-dotty? Is the texture off-putting to you? (everyone has their preferences and these are certainly mine…and I will die on all of these hills).

Aren’t their aisle shots AMAZING? If you’re ever a guest at a wedding and they give you confetti or rose petals to toss at the end of the ceremony, please GO FOR IT. That makes for such an incredible moment for the newlyweds, and in a time when it already feels like you’re walking on air, the confetti creates so much magic.

Next came time for the tent reception! The tent was actually situated on a different private property (a family friend’s home, on a different lake about 15 minutes away) and it was completely perfect. The lawn was large and flat, with the tent running lengthwise along the shoreline.

Alli designed a crisp white and blue tent, and we looked to the flowers and a few other elements to bring all the colour. The centrepieces alternated between low floral arrangements on the round tables and loose greenery on the long tables (I love an interesting floor plan!).

With repurposing a ceremony arch, there are a few things to be aware of.

First, it doesn’t always work. Please just trust your floral designer if they tell you it’s not going to work. It might not physically fit (out of where it is, or into a vehicle, or into where you want it to go), it might be too heavy, there might not be enough time to do, if we have to drag it through your entire crowd of guests to get it where it needs to go that doesn’t look good…just know that some pieces are meant to accomplish just what they are intended for.

Second, it’s never going to look as good in its second position as it did in its first. Flowers will break or wilt, things will have shifted, the scale might be off in the second position, and so on. I always keep these things in mind and usually reserve replacement flowers to freshen up the arch, and I definitely keep a focus on scale and placement when we’re designing in the first place.

In this case, the scale was perfect to place around the sweetheart table but the arch had been sitting in the full sun for several hours and then moved into the van for a bumpy drive, so we needed to replace some flowers and give it an overall freshening up. This freshening took us about 30 minutes, which took place during cocktail hour so guests didn’t notice us. Keep this in mind if you aim to repurpose pieces from the ceremony to the reception — there needs to be time to actually make it happen!

We planned for 2 focal points in the reception space: the overhanging greenery and basket installation above the dance floor, and the sweetheart table with repurposed ceremony arch.

The baskets were pre-hung (though I reinforced a few that were a little precarious), and then started adding smilax around the support wire. I ended up having lots of extra, so I added smilax to the vertical tent poles on either side of the dance floor to tie it all together and make them look a little nicer and try to hide some of the black tape used by the tent company. Side note, can we all just agree to use tape that blends in?

For our wedding on private property in Kenora, we wanted a statement floral arch that would really make our wedding stand out. We asked Lauren to move the intricate arch between our two rural venues. From the moment we met her, we knew she could deliver everything we were dreaming of and more. We had full confidence in her from day one and she really delivered!

All the floral pieces Lauren created for us were beautiful and blew us and our guests away. The arch was a showstopper. Many of our guests could not believe the detailed floral work and it was one of the most photographed pieces at our wedding. Lauren also helped to create a hanging vine and basket chandelier installation over our dance floor which beautifully framed the space. All the florals were incredibly beautiful and perfectly matched the look and feel we were going for.

We are so glad we trusted Stone House Creative with our wedding florals. We can’t recommend them enough. Lauren is amazing and we would choose her and her team all over again!

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Looking for a Wedding Floral Designer in Winnipeg?

The logistics of a lake wedding are a bit more detailed than you might expect. We happen to be really, really good at that part.

Whether you’re planning an intimate dinner on the dock, or a tented lakeside celebration the likes of which have never been seen before, Stone House Creative specializes in create the perfect ambiance for your wedding! 

Keila Marie Photography ~ Alli Mae Events ~ Best Way Rentals ~ Planned Perfectly ~ Collective Event Rentals ~ Beyond the Lounge ~ Trend Decor ~ The Gates on Roblin ~ Sugar & Salt ~ Twofold Paper Co ~ Prep Hair ~ Something Borrowed Wedding Rentals

Summer Tent Wedding at Breezy Bend

An early summer tent wedding at a golf course, a feminine but punchy colour palette, and a totally in love pair of newlyweds — say hello to all the ingredients needed for a completely lovely wedding!

Marina first reached out to me about a year and a half before their wedding, with no set date and with a baby on the way. They were tossing around multiple locations, and the idea of a summer or a winter wedding, so obviously there was a lot to nail down. Luckily, we had a ton of time! She then brought on Soiree Event Planning, and it all came together in a relatively short time span.

Photos by Izabela Rachwal Photography

Hot dang, I loved Marina’s bridal bouquet. It was juicy, fresh, and totally feminine. We kept the bridesmaids’ bouquets in the lavender and blush tones, leaving the brighter orange just for Marina. It all tied together beautifully with the blush and champagne bridesmaid dresses.

Bridal bouquet ingredients: peonies, ranunculus (several varieties, some of which were locally grown!), sweet pea, quicksand roses, and stock with touches of Italian ruscus.

Marina and Nik decided to have an intimate ceremony the week prior, which they did at the lake with just their family (including their ADORABLE son). On wedding 2.0, we’ll call it, they re-spoke their vows in front of all their guests out at Breezy Bend. We kept the florals simple here, just adding 2 pretty arrangements in large black urns.

While most weddings at Breezy are in the ballroom, Marina actually fell in love with how they did tented weddings on the property during Covid. So, a clear top tent was brought in (and it JUST fit, between sprinkler lines under the grass!) and everything was all taken care of — it was a lot of work, mind you (as all tent weddings are), and it was absolutely beautiful.

I loved this colour palette. As a floral designer, it’s always fun determining the colour palette (in this case, created by the amazing team at Soiree!) and how exactly we’re going to use it. Obviously, the florals tend to carry a lot of the weight when it comes to the colours.

Marina wasn’t afraid of colour, but she didn’t want to go overly bright so as to keep things a little more classic. The base palette was soft lavenders, blushes, and greys, and then brought to life with small accents of peach and orange. I’ll often describe a palette by using percentages — if you’re hesitant to go too bold, like Marina, I’ll suggest that we use just a 5 or 10% pop of the brighter tone (in this case, we did about a 10% pop of bright orange) and that helps to calm people’s colour nerves.

The floor plan featured mostly rectangular tables along the outsides of the tent, with a few round tables in the middle in front of the head table. On the rectangular tables, we didn’t have a ton of space for florals so we chose bud vases with petite floral accents, but we made them a little more interesting with a mix of light pink and clear glass vessels. We added gold-rimmed candle holders with delicate mauve pillar and votive candles, to compliment the gold flatware, mauve taper candles, and a few loose roses scattered down the tables to add a little more subtle colour.

The round tables offered a fuller floral arrangement, where we were able to tuck in a little more of the orange and peach tones. My favourite floral element was the delicious locally grown peach parrot tulips! They were at the very end of their season, so my local grower cut them early and held them over for me, and it worked perfectly. I’m so grateful to have cultivated such excellent relationships with amazing local flower farmers!

Above the dance floor, we designed a hanging canopy of greenery. I loved seeing their first dance images, with them swaying under this large piece. I don’t notice a lot of scent anymore, and we didn’t use scented foliage here, but the sheer quantity we used, combined with the chill from rain in the air, meant that the tent had a really fresh foliage scent that was quite lovely!

Izabela Rachwal Photography ~ Soiree Event Planning ~ Breezy Bend Golf Course ~ Planned Perfectly ~ D’Lite Tent Rentals ~ Collective Event Rentals ~ Union Table ~ Myuz Artistry ~ Club Create ~ Event Light

LOOKING FOR A WEDDING FLORAL AND EVENT DESIGNER IN WINNIPEG?

Whether your vision is all about a tent wedding or a classic ballroom, creating magic in your special place is our specialty. Reach out to inquire about your date availability!

Reach out to find out how we can create the perfect ambiance for your wedding.

My Favourite Wedding Bar Moments

One of my favourite details at a wedding often is the bar.

Photo Credit

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One of my favourite details at a wedding is often the bar floral moment. The bar is one of the busiest places at your wedding, and with lines forming, it makes sense to add some kind of floral or styling touch to tie through your design elements or personalize in some way, in a place where guests will actually take notice and interact with it.

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First things first: don’t feel that you need to go huge or super creative to create a beautiful moment at your bar! As these images I had saved on Pinterest show you, there’s a huge range of what can be done. Yes, we can go allllll out with the florals and line the entire bottom of the bar with them, but a small arrangement coupled with your bar menu or a single-ingredient arrangement can also do some seriously heavy lifting!

Photo Credits from Left to Right: 1: The Goodsmiths, 2: Mulberry & Moss, 3: Candice Edinger, 4: Jenny Quicksall / Tularosa Flowers

Below you’ll find a few of my personal favourites of Stone House Creative designs, along with some details on why I thought it worked!

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Incorporating Signage

The bar moment that made me a little famous on Instagram! It seemed like every florist in North America wanted to know how I designed this (foam-free!) and I’m hoping I can replicate this at a wedding because it was SO fun. From the bold colours, to the way the florals wrapped around the absurdly cute menu sign, it all worked so well. Special shout-out to the two-toned carnations for doing so much work here!

Event designed by Kayla Lagos Events

Aimee de la Lande Photography

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Joel & Justyna Photography / See it all here

Personalized and Fun

Soiree Event Planning designed this super fun bar front with Two Fold Paper Co, and I loved the personalized feel. We went heavy on the florals, lining the entire top shelf of the bar backs with stem vases and small arrangements. The joyful burst of colour was the perfect compliment to this rock-n-roll meets rainbow wedding.

Lush Florals with Bar Menu

The bar at the Pavilion is HUGE so we can really do a full, dramatic moment like this one. For this wedding, Alana gave me free reign to create something lush and full, with the only request being to incorporate her bar sign and its cute copper stand. I love that the floral surround works to draw attention to the menu, and not compete with it. After all, we all know why your guests are at the bar — give them the info they need in an aesthetically pleasing menu, and make a statement with the flowers alongside it!

Brittany Mahood Photography / See it all here

Simple and Textural

For this wedding at the Assiniboine Park Pavilion, we simply wanted a beautiful arrangement. It didn’t need to be huge, it didn’t need to be a major statement — just something really pretty. I chose the terracotta vase for its shape (so chic and fun!) as well as the colour, because it complimented the warm tones in the flowers SO well. As with the rest of the flowers for the wedding, I used a lot of texture, with berries, trumpet-shaped calla lilies, fuzzy kangaroo paw, and a few coral dahlias.

Ariana Tennyson Photography / See it all here

Go For Height

Sometimes it’s nice to go up! This taller arrangement (featuring the most beautiful locally grown hydrangea, dahlias, and amaranthus) didn’t compete with the bar menu, but rather worked with it. The only bummer was the bartender who kept pushing it all off to the side…don’t they know the aesthetics are important?! 😜 (and yes, they actually had a ton of space for working, I’m not that impractical…all the time lol).

Brittany Mahood Photography / See more here

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Brittany Mahood Photography / See it all here

WHABAM

Now this bar really had its moment…and it was all repurposed from the ceremony! We designed a floral nest for the ceremony, so we had a lot of pieces to work with. When I walked into the room, I immediately felt like the scale of the bar was off — the pretty rounded bar front and the black bar backs just felt too small underneath the large truss structure with hanging chandeliers. We didn’t have a specific plan for how we would repurpose the ceremony florals, and with Harlow Events’ blessing to do whatever the heck I wanted, I started by placing 3 large floral pieces across the top of the bar backs. Amazing. We added another piece to the centre of the bar, to help the bar menu (and later, the wedding cake) stand out a bit more, and then flanked the sides of the bar with more pieces. It was pretty amazing, if I do say so myself!

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Cutie Bar Meadows

This was another bar piece fully repurposed from the ceremony! I love the scalloped trim on the bar sign (playfully named after the couple’s dog) and the whimsical, wildflower inspired arrangements added to the charm.

Casey Nolin Photography / See it all here

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Kass Donaldson / See it all HERE

Florals + Drapery = Win

For this cocktail style wedding reception, Soiree Event Planning created a great floor plan with variation and movement throughout the room. There was an immediate desire to create a focal point in the room with the bar, so Planned Perfectly was brought in to create a cool drapery moment on the ceiling (which was pretty tricky to do in this room!). I loved that the drapery brought a lot of attention to the bar.

We went pretty simple with the flowers on the bar top itself, clustering a couple of smaller arrangements on either end of the bar. That freed us up to go a little more dramatic above the bar, creating a floral cloud that hung above. It smelled soooo good and a hanging element is always a cool element to incorporate into a design!

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Kass Donaldson / See it all HERE

Put a Name On It

While the floral arrangement here is modern and fun, the bar itself is a major focalpoint. The family handmade it, giving it an adorable small town dive bar name and feel. It doesn’t hurt that this bride is one half of Rae & Dot and sure knows what she’s doing when it comes to branding and modern design.

The florals were paired with a duo of sandstone pillar candles, which was a simple way to round out the overall look.

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Picture & Poet / See it all here

Multi Coloured Maximalism

This colourful wedding featured a large horseshoe shaped bar, which gave us lots of opportunity to create focal floral moments. This was just one of them, a modern design style featuring soft pink and lavender contrasted with bright orange and yellow, with some cute fruit styling tucked in. One of my favourite elements was the carnation chain on the left.

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Rachwal Photography / See it all here

Mega Bar

We affectionally called this “mega bar” during our planning meetings with Soiree Event Planning, and the name stuck. There are so many great things about this design!

This wedding was during covid, so there was a desire to keep the lines moving and as short as possible — so, three separate bars it was! I love the floral wrap on two outside the bar fronts (which, of course, matched their dance floor decal and the couple’s wedding invitations by Robin Egg Blue Design), with the bar menu decaled onto the middle bar front.

And then, of course, the floral moments! We separated the bars with these clear plinths, which added such a great design element. We added arrangements in gold urns on top of both plinths, as well as floral arrangements INSIDE the plinths, which tied back to the seating chart which also featured florals on and in plinths.

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Brittany Mahood Photography / See it all here

The Aperol Spritz Truck

This one is sort of an honourable mention, because the truck wasn’t the bar itself — but how stinking CUTE is this!? Of course we added a little moment inside the truck, on a very narrow shelf (it’s always important to know what kind of space you’re working with). This cute truck was from Mottola Grocery.

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looking for a wedding floral and event designer in winnipeg?

We can design a beautiful wedding for you, with no detail forgotten about.
Whether it’s an intimate wedding for 30 or a celebration the likes of which have never been seen before, 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! 

Need help with your full event design? I’ll guide you through your colour palette selection, floor plan creation, and collaborate on all the design elements that will make your wedding YOURS. Full and partial event design services available.

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Colourful Elopement in Assiniboine Park

I’ve known Vanessa for a very long time. We first “officially” met on set a photoshoot when I worked for a bridal magazine and Vanessa was modelling for us…except I found out she was only like 15 and somehow was modelling as a bride. Excuse me? But then we got to talking and it turned out we went to the same elementary school, and I think my mom was her teacher.

Fast-forward a few years, and Vanessa was interested in working with flowers. She interned for me one summer, learning some of the basics of wedding flowers and starting a cool friendship.

I was so honoured when she asked me to design for her elopement to Richard.

Photos by Kass Donaldson

“As a florist, flowers played a huge role in our wedding. And no could have pulled through on my vision better than Lauren. 

I’ve known Lauren since I was 16 and I told her she was going to do my wedding flowers when I was 19. Lauren is the reason I became a florist myself!

Our colour palette was very intentional. Touches of red to honour ‘Red’decopp. Touches of lilac to honour my childhood obsession with purple. Pinks and oranges to harmonize with our gingery complexions. Lauren was also able to include feverfew daisies to honour our daughter, Daisy. And of course, it all stood out so well against the dark green fluffy forest backdrop. 

They were perfect in every way.”

- Vanessa

I wanted to use a lot of locally grown flowers for Vanessa, which I often find is the best way to blend a vibrant colour palette.

Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: Locally grown lisianthus, dahlias, cosmos, scabiosa, feverfew, sweet pea, and zinnias, with a few imported ranunculus and I think 1 single rose.

I am so enticed by a true elopement, and I think it’s incredible when a couple truly honours what they dream of for their wedding. Vanessa and Richard really dreamed of just a few of their closest friends to be there with them — there were literally just 2 witnesses and 1 officiant/friend (my darling Erika, who’s getting married next year!!).

That didn’t stop them from going for it. Vanessa had a custom-made gown from Cathy Wiebe, they hired their favourite photographer (Kass Donaldson), and found the perfect spot in Assiniboine Park to tuck themselves away in. After they exchanged their vows, they all shared dinner at a favourite restaurant.

We decided to design 1 ground-based floral piece for their ceremony — we obviously didn’t have a need to go over the top in any way, but their elopement was in mid-September and you can never be sure what will still be growing in Assiniboine Park at that time! The jolt of colour the flowers brought in were just so perfect for Vanessa. She’s a colour-lover, just like me :)

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Kassandra Donaldson ~ Cathy Wiebe Clothes ~ Jessica Kmiec Artistry ~ Tori Lynn Hair

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Looking for a Wedding Floral and Event Designer in Winnipeg?

We love working on weddings of all sizes, creating magic just for you. 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.