Since the 50’s, the floral industry has been vastly changing behind the scenes. With growing knowledge on how to create different cut flower varieties through crossbreeding, this brought in even more beautiful colours and availability (just like the trendy stargazer variety for lilies).
With all the new additions to flowers, this helped encourage trends for cut flowers that started to appear in wedding designs. Everyone loves to gravitate to something new, causing a trend!
Flower selection and trends aren't the only thing that has vastly changed throughout the decades, wedding trends in general have as well. Looking back through the years, there has been some otherwise very large trends. Think about your parents wedding photos, what did the wedding dress and bouquets look like? Perhaps your moms bouquet was cascading with lilies and ivy, and her dress had puffy sleeves and long trains like the photos below:
Some trends withstand the test of time and continue to stay popular. However, most trends end or take a break for a decade or two, and then possibly make an appearance again.
When it comes to decor for your wedding, flowers can be one of the most important decorative elements, and very trendy. Eucalyptus really made its debut in the floral world internationally this past decade. Laying eucalyptus on the tables as a flat lay, or as a garland, went viral on Pinterest. Which then in return, went viral in real life at weddings.
Bridal bouquets also branched out from the traditional round shape, to more contemporary style and shape with loose and flowing greenery. Breaking the trend of compact and round bridal bouquets from the decade prior.
Now for the early 2020's, dried flowers, palm leaves and pampas grass are all the rage. Making its way into everything from bridal bouquets, to arches and even hanging installations, you will notice trendy weddings on Pinterest right now filled with pampas grass and other dried or bleached flowers in anything and everything.
Don't get us wrong, we love to keep up with the latest wedding trends and chat with brides about their vision that may be on the trendy side. However, at our consultations we do mention our honest thoughts when it comes to trendy wedding floral designs. We think that weddings should be 80% classic and 20% trend, especially when it comes to floral design.
This is a tip that we learned from one of our favourite floral designers (and everything wedding related), Sinclair and Moore. The first time we heard this percentage breakdown 5 years ago, we added that principle to our designs right away!
To any bride that may contact us with their vision full of pampas grass for their wedding design, we would ask what they think about only using small touches of pampas in select designs like the bridal bouquet and arbour arrangement. Because when choosing a statement element, like pampas, less is more! It will make a bigger impact having it as an accent element paired with flowers naturally, compared to using it in absolutely everything. This will ensure you keep up to date with what's in style, but keep it classic and refined enough that your photos will age gracefully through the decades. This way, your children don’t look back and ask "what you were thinking?" ;)
Sincerely Lindsey <3