There are certain weddings where the flowers and the setting seem to have been growing toward each other all season, and Hannah and Panayi's June wedding at the Delaware Botanic Gardens was one of them. They married on the longest kind of summer day, the sort where the meadow is at its fullest and the light stretches on well past dinner, and everything we brought down from the farm that morning had been cut just the day before.
Hannah was specific from the start. She wanted seasonal flowers with a garden-gathered look to them, nothing that seemed forced into place, and she wanted the palette held to summer pastels. That is the easiest kind of direction for us to say yes to, because it's exactly what our fields are doing in late June. She took it from there and arranged every piece herself!
The first wedding this garden ever hosted
Here's the part we only found out later: Hannah and Panayi's was the first wedding ever held at this venue! We'd have been honored to be part of it either way, but knowing that the first flowers to come through those doors were grown about an hour up the road makes it better!
Late June gives you the most to work with
If you're getting married in June on the Eastern Shore or in southern Delaware, you're catching the field at one of its most generous stretches. The delphinium and cornflower are standing tall and doing all the blue for you. The sweet peas are still holding on, though only just. The very first dahlias have started, and they're always a little bit of a gift because you're never quite sure they'll make the date. Snapdragons, ammi, cosmos, and feverfew fill in around the edges and give everything that loose, just-picked movement.
That mix is why a pastel palette works so well this time of year. Soft color needs shape and texture to carry it, because it doesn't have saturation doing the work, and late June is when the field offers the widest range of bloom sizes and leaf forms all at once.
Garden-gathered means letting things stay a little uneven
The look Hannah was after is one we get asked about constantly, and the honest answer is that it comes from restraint more than technique. Let the stems sit at different heights. Let something lean. Don't trim everything to the same length or turn every face toward the front. A few wispy things reaching out past the edge will do more for that gathered feeling than anything else you could add.
It also means starting with the right material, which is where seasonal actually matters. Flowers cut the day before out of a field down the road move differently than flowers that have traveled. They're softer, they bend, and they'll do half of the arranging for you.
Planning to arrange your own wedding flowers? Hannah did, and plenty of our couples do. Take a look at how DIY wedding flowers work with us, including buckets by the color palette and bridal bouquet design on its own if there's one piece you'd rather hand off. Or take our quiz and we'll point you toward the service that fits how you want to spend that week.
Vendors:
Florals: Winters Farm Florals
Photography: Stacy Hart Photography
Venue: Delaware Botanic Gardens
