Who doesn’t love a wedding?… Joy, happiness, love, family, friendships, flowers, food, Champagne, music and entertainment!

Thankfully I’m only responsible for the flowers; surrounding the bride and her bridesmaids with soft, natural, pale coloured flower and foliage enhancing everything from the bride’s dress, complexion, hair and make-up to the wedding breakfast tables, reception, staircase and ceremony room… AND to be honest that’s quite enough responsibility on what’s likely to be the BIGGEST DAY of someone’s LIFE!

Today’s wedding, yes you heard right TODAY’s wedding, a SUNDAY was our first wedding of the year. We had a few Christmas weddings which were all rich reds, warm golds and deep purples, but this was our first wedding of 2019, an early February wedding in the gorgeous setting of Amberley Castle nestled directly beneath the South Downs and with this week’s weather warnings it’s been touch and go.

We started preparing for this wedding months ago, after discussions with the bride about flower choices, bouquets and room designs. Amberley Castle is a venue we work closely with, we know what works and what looks most stunning, but the overall style was the bride’s choice and she chose a gorgeous wintery, white and soft coloured floral design.

This wedding was a BIG one for us, in addition to the bridal bouquets, there were huge table decorations, floral candelabras, wall hangings and the most amazing staircase garland worthy of a scene in ‘Gone with the Wind‘

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Once all the designs and floral choices were confirmed an order was placed with the wholesaler. It was a huge order, but to ensure we got the ‘Flower‘ in perfect condition it needed to arrive ‘just-in-time‘ early enough for us to get all the arrangements done, but not so early that the flowers reach their best while sitting in the shop.

PANIC set in earlier this week when all the weather reports were of SNOW, ICE and BLIZZARD conditions. Any delay to the flower delivery would be disastrous, there was no way we could make do with what we had in stock. The night of the expected snow storm, I sat in the window watching for the whiteout which was to descend upon Pulborough. I watched until almost midnight with a childish sense of disappointment that NO SNOW had arrived, mixed with a grown-up fear that I would wake to several feet of snow blocking the traffic and most importantly MY flower delivery from arriving!

I opened the curtains the next morning with apprehension and with a huge sense of RELIEF and DISAPPOINTMENT there was just a tiny amount of wet sludge sitting against the wall.

I won’t go into what could have happened if the Flower lorry didn’t turn up but it did and we’ve been busy preparing for today since Thursday.

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This morning I was up bright and early and John, Becks and I arrived at Amberley castle late enough as not to disturb the guests’ breakfast but early enough to get everything done. We felt like a SWAT team sent in to flower up the whole venue without being noticed and I think we did a great job, with the help of Amberley Castle’s fabulous team and DEAN the Events organiser for today.

The weather came up trumps too, with the most glorious blue sky you have ever seen, making the setting and the venue absolutely STUNNING! Even John’s bum didn’t eclipse the sun, although mine probably would.