The Dittany Blog
The latest floral events and weddings I’ve created along with floral musings, floral announcements, floral events and basically all things flowers from Yorkshire.
Thicket Priory Wedding Flowers: An Immersive Floral Experience
Thicket Priory Wedding full of floral opulence, family and fun. Take a walk through this beautiful wedding, get inspired and start planning your dream wedding day. This blog is full of floral wedding inspiration, tips and design to elevate your day. Bespoke wedding flowers with abundant floral installations, delicate tablescapes and considered moments.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Floral installation cascading down the staircase at Thicket Priory.
When I was asked to design a bespoke experience for my couple’s Thicket Priory wedding flowers last year, it was a brief that really spoke to my creative soul. The vision was to transform the venue, creating flowing floods of flowers to guide guests through the wedding weekend. Over four days, the grade II listed Victorian house became reminiscent of a living, breathing meadow of blooms, with a fresh colour palette and contemporary styling to complement and elevate its grand historical spaces.
In the name of creating a truly immersive journey through floral art, we left hardly a space untouched at Thicket Priory. My couple’s dream was that the flowers were at one with the venue, seemingly grown where they stood and taking their guests on a visual and physical journey through each day’s events, in much the same way a carefully curated garden lovingly pulls you from place to place.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Wedding flower centerpiece
Arriving on Friday, my team and I gave life to the first installations that would greet my couple and their guests on arrival. We ensured that Thicket Priory was filled with flowers everywhere you looked: on the mantlepieces, climbing from the floor and furniture in the lounge area, standing proudly in urns at the entrances, and dripping down the outdoor staircase. For each event we created new floral designs: the windowsills at breakfast, table arrangements for the Friday welcome meal, vases for outdoor tables and full floral meadows on the external doors.
On Saturday morning we returned in secret to decorate the grand staircase, a real focal point with flowers cascading all the way from the landing at the top. This was a special statement space as my couple chose to replace their ceremony with a ‘first look’ on the stairs, surrounded by beautiful blooms.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Floral staircase Installation
We paid another visit on Sunday morning to give the flowers a refresh and ensure they were still looking at their best for the next couple of days, adding new stems and swapping out any that were damaged or not looking their finest. The ballroom also needed to be transformed for the events the following day, so we changed the table arrangements to create a whole new design with the same essence.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Thicket Priory stair case dressed with abundant luxury flowers
Thicket Priory Wedding Flowers: Design Choices
Every design proposal is made bespoke for each couple, and the colours and types of flowers I use are led by you - your style, aesthetic preferences, favourite blooms, sentimental connections you can read more about adding meaningful touches to your wedding flowers here. In the case of these Thicket Priory wedding flowers, my bride wanted a classic, timeless look with a modern edge - the perfect embodiment of the venue itself. She was a lover of foliage but wanted to incorporate a full, abundant floral look with lots of movement and freedom. I combined these key factors with my vision for a flowing meadow to create the finished design.
The colour palette felt very fresh and light, lifting some of the darker tones and textures found throughout Thicket Priory. Rich green foliage framed tall white delphiniums and soft, romantic cow parsley, and we added depth and warmth with toffee roses and delicate tones of nectarine, terrcaotta and dusty pink. The addition of peonies and garden roses helped bring a country garden opulence to the whole design, with late May and June being the perfect time of year for fluffy peony lovers.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Wedding breakfast inspiration
It was such a joy to create these Thicket Priory wedding flowers, and the creative freedom and trust offered to me by the couple was one of the key factors in our ability to craft a magically immersive end result. This was a perfect example of doing a wedding exactly the way you want it and eschewing the confines of tradition, and I am hugely grateful to my team of 12 freelancers for helping to give life to this wonderland!
After the wedding guests were all given bunches of the florals to take home, and the rest donated to the nuns at Thicket Priory and to St Lenard’s hospital in York, reducing any floral waste from the delightfully decadent weekend.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Floral installation on the beautiful staircase at Thicket Priory.
What next?
Take a look at my galleries from real weddings and editorials to get a feel for what’s possible. When you’re ready to start on your own personal floral design story, just head over to my contact page and send me a hello.
“We used Nichola for our wedding and it was truly spectacular. The flowers also lasted ages, they were still fresh for two weeks after the big day! Very impressive work, and we highly recommend her.”
Sentimental Wedding Flowers: Designed with Love
Sentimental Wedding Flowers: Designed with Love.
Find out how we weave sentimental moments in to you wedding using flowers. Honouring loved ones, cultural traditions or personal beliefs we at Dittany Entwined are here for it all. Weddings are all about feeling and what better way to add deeper connection than sentimental touches. Whether you want these moments to be big or small, just for you or to involve your guests we can work with you to create something beautiful.
Image by Emmylou Kelly: Wedding Floral Backdrop for a beautiful spring marquee wedding.
My couples know that wedding flowers are so much more than just bouquets and blooms - they are living, artistic representations of your roots and can have deep sentimental significance. Creating florals with meaning is one of the things that brings me the most joy, so if you’re looking for ways to have your very own sentimental wedding flowers you’ve come to the right place. Get inspired and find out how we can honour lost loved ones, give a nod to different cultures and countries and invoke the hidden meanings behind different blooms on your wedding day.
Giving specific personal meaning to your flowers is something that is deeply ingrained in my business - and that includes the name itself. The dittany plant is known for its supposed healing properties, which speaks to my background in therapy and the way I find creativity itself so restorative. For all you Potter fans out there, you may know that essence of dittany is named as a healing potion in the books! The second half of the name ‘entwined’ links back to my childhood, and my nana’s magical garden with its cascading willow tree, secret passages and abundant rose bushes. Like something out of a fairytale, it and she encouraged and inspired my creative side, and honouring her with a little nod in my business name felt like the perfect thank you.
With loved ones in mind, we’ll start with our first way to create sentimental wedding flowers…
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Church wedding ceremony in North Yorkshire. Harmonising modern floral design with traditional architecture.
Sentimental Wedding Flowers: Honouring Loved Ones
My couples often come to me asking about different ways we can honour loved ones that are no longer with us, or specific requests from friends and family. There are so many ways your floral artwork can reflect the essence of your nearest and dearest, and I hope you’ll find touching inspiration from some of these stories about my past couples.
For one of my previous brides we used a flurry of sweet peas throughout her bouquet, the urns surrounding them as they said their vows, and on their dinner tables. There was a special connection with sweet peas and the bride’s late nana, as a specific variety of sweet pea had the same name as her. The scent and visual presence of the blooms in significant moments throughout the day helped the bride feel connected to her nana throughout. These kinds of immersive experiences are one of the most emotive ways to create sentimental wedding flowers.
On another occasion I helped my bride make her father, who had passed away and so was unable to give her away, a part of her journey down the aisle. Her bouquet of white roses included one stem that was loosely tied in with a silk ribbon, appearing as part of the creamy, silken whole. As she reached the altar she was able to remove the single rose and lay it down for her father as a way to honour him in that important moment. This, combined with adding her mum’s wedding rings to the bouquet, made for a very beautiful and teary bouquet handover on the morning of the wedding.
Sometimes my couples want to include flowers on specific requests from family members, such as one bride who asked me to add forget me nots grown by a relative to her bouquet. One mother of the bride wanted to include some of the blooms she had worn in her own floral crown on her wedding day in her daughter’s bouquet, but the bride asked that they weren’t too prominent. I individually wired some of the delicate flowers from the crown into the bouquet in a subtle way, and the pure joy on her face was wonderful to see.
Image by Pear & Bear Photography: Bridal Bouquet for a beautiful summer wedding including roses, orchids and pampas grass.
Sentimental Wedding Flowers: Cultures and Countries Combined
Another popular use for sentimental wedding flowers is to merge their different cultures or make reference to specific countries.
In the past I have incorporated some of my couples’ own vases into their designs, used hanging Chinese lanterns or particular patterns, colours and textures to help tell their individual cultural stories. One of my couples had a celebrant ceremony followed by a Korean tea ceremony, and came to me wanting to create two different set ups that were distinct but felt cohesive. Flowers are truly one of the best ways to weave a wonderland of artistic structure that really represents your own journey, verdant in their versatility and with the extraordinary ability to transform a space.
Image by Victoria Baker Weddings: Korean tea ceremony floral design set up.
Sometimes couples want sentimental wedding flowers that simply represent their roots, for example white roses for Yorkshire and thistles for Scotland. Combining them into one beautiful design is where the real magic of your union comes alive.
Of all the meaningful events through a lifetime, weddings and funerals are perhaps the most significant and require the same level of care, attention to detail and personal touch. I mention funerals only to give an example of another way it is possible to entwine your home turf with an important moment, as I did for a beautiful, sentimental brief in the Scottish Hebrides. The community there was involved with growing corn and hay, so the brief for the funeral flowers was based around recreating the look and feel of that landscape. I made a living wreath to be laid on her grave, using the sweetest spring bulbs and grasses, and several meadows of hay, heather, barley, oats and thistles - this way, the coffin was surrounded by the magnificent Scottish Highlands on her final journey back home.
Over a year later I’m still in touch with this lovely lady’s daughter, and the living wreath has recently bloomed again! They have now turned their family home into a beautiful event space on the island, using the meadows we created as decor. Their gratitude at being able to give such a touching send off and keep the treasured arrangements afterward is testament to the enduring sentimentality of flowers.
Whatever the occasion, enhancing some of the most special moments in people’s lives is one of the most magical things it’s possible to do with flowers.
Image by Emma Ryan Photographer: Floral installation on the beautiful staircase at Thicket Priory.
Sentimental Wedding Flowers: Representations
Sometimes my couples come to me wanting sentimental wedding flowers or deeper meaning, but are struggling to find a connection to something. In these cases we’ll spend time talking around different types of flowers and what they mean (I have a lovely little book about this!) until something resonates. Good examples for weddings are freesias, which represent unconditional love, and different colours of roses with different connotations.
Unless this is important to my couple I won’t try to add meaning where there is none, since the creation of your wedding flowers is a deeply personal journey. It culminates in a day immersed in the different scents, sights and styling that we have chosen to inject you into every element.
Image Monkeymole Photography: Wedding couple surrounded by floral meadow of white flowers and lush foliage at Oakwood at Ryther.
Beyond The Wedding
For me, the sentimental value of flowers extends beyond the wedding day itself. The design lives on in your images and in the seasonal moments that return every year as a reminder, but also in what you choose to do with your florals afterwards.
I always have a conversation with my couples at their ‘final details’ meeting to find out what they want to do with the flowers after the wedding - as standard I will either bunch up the flowers to be given away to guests, or let them choose to donate them to a charity, hospice, care home etc. that has meaning for them. Many of my brides also choose to preserve their bouquets, which is something I will be adding to my offering in the future.
Something that often surprises my couples is how long the flowers last after the wedding day, however. Proper conditioning of the blooms pre-wedding, along with the way I construct the installations and arrangements, means they survive well past the day itself. I have had couples tell me their flowers lasted 4 weeks beyond the wedding! Taking these extra steps to ensure the longevity of your carefully crafted, sentimental wedding flowers is a part of the process I hold very dear.
If you’ve seen something you like or want to explore other ways to add a sentimental touch to your wedding flowers, I can’t wait to hear from you. Together we’ll design a creative, cohesive design that delivers on vision, style and sentiment. Get in touch to get started.
“Giving specific personal meaning to your flowers is something that is deeply ingrained in my business and that includes the name itself”