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Writer's pictureCaty Smits

Something Old, Something New: Why Retro Vintage Wedding Flower Trends are Making a Comeback

Updated: Jul 30


a white bridal bouquet with family heirlooms added to the design

Now, I’m not sure about most of y’all, but I’ve always been told I’m an old soul in a young body. It doesn’t always feel that way, (hello, day after roller derby recovery) in fact most days I feel like an old soul in an old body but, I digress.  


As a part of my artistic process (*pushes glasses up my nose, snorting*), I absolutely ADORE looking at retro vintage wedding flower trends. I am always in awe and fully honored to be included in the multi-generational sharing of photos of weddings past, the inclusion of family heirlooms in bridal bouquets, and most of all, I love seeing and studying floral from a bygone era and how it influences our present.


So lets start with the obvious: Babies breath.

my mom and dad's wedding day photo including a bridal bouquet of lavender daisies, babies breath and white carnations

I don’t think babies breath will ever go out of style. I firmly believe babies breath’s enduring presence in the lives of florists is partly due to how economical of a flower it is. Today it’s mostly used as a focal in wedding work. Take the big babies breath “clouds” or the cute babies breath mason jar centerpieces, or the all-babies breath bridesmaid’s bouquets. Back in the 80’s, it’s popularity was due to affordability as well (or so I’ve been told).


As I was working from my mother’s kitchen table (she wrangles my toddler for me when I need to get some work done), the same table I’ve sat at for countless hours doing homework, eating home cooked meals or laughing at a silly joke my dad made, I remembered a photo that used to hang on the staircase at my childhood home. A photo from my parent’s wedding at St. Mary’s Chapel, the two of them grinning ear from ear, and a bouquet with lavender daisies, white carnations and babies breath. When I asked my mom why she chose those flowers she mentioned it was because they were the cheapest at the time (and they still are to this day) but I do think there is something special about  babies breath, carnations and daisy poms. Perhaps it’s because of affordability or maybe it’s because it reminds us of all the people who influenced the life we live and the love we now share with our partners.


 

Little Love Knots:


I remember my first real florist gig, I was so excited to finally be able to work with flowers and get paid to do it. I knew I was at the very least, an “ok” designer as I had taken design classes, tested through the Michigan floral association and placed first in the student category so I was pretty confident in my ability to make an arrangement, but I know I still had a lot to learn. I started as a clerk for a family-owned florist in my college town, making rose arrangements, planters, loose and hand-tied bouquets along with helping customers and taking orders. There were a great deal of things about working for an actual florist that didn’t resonate in our floriculture class so I soaked everything in. True to form, tried to be the absolute best at everything (I later learned this behavior was a trauma response, but it has some benefits in the real world).

my sister and I posing for a photograph with her bridal bouquet that I designed

My favorite thing to make were hand-tied bouquets. They weren’t exactly wedding bouquets, per-say, and they weren’t loose flowers either, but they were still designed, I did have some way to still express my creativity. I was so obsessed with making them as full and round as possible, and I found that you needed to be pretty limber with your hands and fingers to do so. After so many, I realized making these hand-tied bouquets is certainly very similar to making a bridal bouquet. Lucky for me, my sister was about to get married so I offered to make her bridal bouquet- my first ever.

my sister's cascading bridal bouquet with love knots

My sister and I are very similar in our love of anything vintage. She picked out this beautiful, art-deco inspired gown and I just so happed to work for a company well known for it’s history in the floral world so I was able to look back at some of their past work, specifically from the late 30’s, early 40’s to seek inspiration for the design. I picked some gorgeous white mini- calla lilies, spray roses, stephanotis and variegated bear grass for the design, with the addition of something called “love-knots” or basically long strands of ribbon that had petite blooms tied cascading down the ribbon tails.

my sister's cascading bridal bouquet with love knots

I am such a sucker for a good vintage bow. Ask any florist who has designed for over 40 years and they will tell you back in the day EVERYTHING had a bow. Making a bow had it’s own chapter in our design class, it was that important. Now-a-days bows have fallen out of fashion, in favor of a sleeker design but I still have a soft-spot in my heart for a good cascading bow. The right size ribbon loop could add scores of drama and nostalgia to a look. So that’s exactly what I did. I went for a cascading design and included several little love knots to the ribbon. I couldn’t have been more thrilled by the turnout and my sister was super impressed.


The amount of pride I had in creating that bouquet for my sister is one of the main reasons I still do wedding work to this day. Though most of my inspiration comes more from fanciful French renaissance designs or Victorian garden looks, I know those dang bows will make a comeback sooner or later and I am fully here (clap) for (clap) it (clap).

 







And while we’re chatting about cascading bouquets:


I absolutely treasure a good water-fall effect. While my first bouquet I ever made was a cascade in shape, I had never actually made it the traditional way until a little further into my wedding design journey. I was super excited to see more people interested in cascading bouquets. I had seen many from my retro wedding studies but always wondered how to extend and manipulate the stems of flowers to defy gravity. I remember chatting with some of my more tenured designer co-workers mentioning how they figuratively made cascading bouquets in their sleep. Reminiscing on the summer nights where business was so booming that they were wiring and taping flowers into the wee hours of the morning to keep up with all the wedding orders they had to make. Fast forward several years and I would be making some of my own, inspired by dramatic editorials in floral magazines of cascades so long they touched the floor!


My cousin's cascading bridal bouquet with flowers from her mother's garden

One of my favorite cascading designs was for my cousin Traci’s wedding day. Traci wanted a classic cascading bouquet, utilizing some flowers from her mother’s STUNNING garden. While I usually am not able to oblige with such a risky request, Traci’s mother was well known in our family for her gardening abilities and extensive knowledge of plants so I knew when she mentioned what she was growing, she was certain to have plentiful petals on hand exactly when we needed them to be looking their best. When it came time to cut flowers for the arrangements, we had a wonderfully misty-eyed chat about these beautiful dahlia cultivars, the exact ones my grandmother used to grow in her garden. We also harvested some cone flowers and zinnias, blooms that would bequeath our ancestral history as Traci burgeoned into matrimony.

a detail shot of the flowers used in my cousin's bridal bouquet

It is exactly this type of attribution that inspires me to create the work that I do. After all, how can you understand where you are headed if you don’t acknowledge where you’ve been?

 

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