Wedding Flowers [Hardcover]

Paula Pryke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2004

Wedding Flowers taps into the desire of every bride to make her wedding day special. The choice of flower color, fragrance, and display is one of the most effective and fun ways to do so. Wedding Flowers will give the bride the confidence and ability to design her own floral theme and work with a florist to execute it, or perhaps even undertake some of the arrangements herself for a truly personal touch. The book explores wedding traditions as well as making suggestions for how a modern bride can depart from them. It addresses every type of seasonal concern; distinguishes decorative, ceremony, and reception flowers; provides great ideas for floral accessories; and, of course, devotes a lot of consideration to the all-important matter of the bridal bouquet. With step-by-step instructions throughout, the book demonstrates how brides, bridesmaids, friends, and family can make some of Paula's most popular wedding flower arrangements themselves.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paula Pryke has over fifteen years of experience at creating beautiful weddings. Her work is featured regularly in all the leading magazines. Wedding Flowers builds on the success of her five previous titles: Simple Flowers; Festive Flowers; Flowers, Flowers; Flair with Flowers; and Living Color. She works as a floral consultant and has her own school for floral arrangement and design in London. Always a trendsetter, Paula Pryke continues to innovate with this latest title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (February 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847825817
• ISBN-13: 978-0847825813
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 0.8 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For the bridezilla who wants a whole book on hiring someone, September 15, 2004

By 

T. Sanchez "writer, editor, voracious reader" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wedding Flowers (Hardcover)

It's a lovely book on choosing wedding flowers, but like all products from the Bridal-Industrial Complex, it's more about giving you a complex than giving you a wedding. Paula Pryke comes up with some beautiful arrangements, and she gives you lots of wonderful information about the history and meaning of flowers, what flowers are in season, and how to go about choosing flowers. That said, she is, as is unsurprising for a professional florist, utterly convinced that decorating a wedding is something for hired professionals to do. She says in the intro that you should, at the very least, hire someone to do the bridal bouquet, the implication being that if you do not, you will suffer ignominious failure. This is especially frustrating, since many of the bouquets she showcases for the bride are simple, classic, one-type-of-flower affairs, of purple calla lilies or roses making a wonderful impression, simply gathered in a ribbon. There is a lot of great information, but not much practical how-to. And much of what's good in the book (the seasonal suggestions) you could get from merely speaking to a competent florist, which is what she encourages you to do anyway. Save your money, or at the least, only buy this used. It's better as a coffee table book than as a resource.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tasteful book from a talented, top UK florist, December 12, 2007

By 

K. Berry (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wedding Flowers (Hardcover)

Paula Pryke is very popular in the industry and has the reputation of being UK's top florist. Paula designs tasteful, classic, never go out of fashion styles so you won't find anything wild or trendy in her work. Because of this, brides who lean towards classic, tasteful styles are more likely to be satisfied with the bouquets they'll find in this book.

This is definitely more of a reference book for bouquet photos and basic information and not really a "how to" book. If you're looking for "how to" books for making bridal bouquets and wedding arrangements, you'll want to check out books by Ardith Beveridge and Terri Rye. Most of their books are "how to" books filled with step-by-step instructions.

A previous reviewer states that the book's author recommends brides hire a professional florist to design at least their wedding bouquets, and that reviewer ultimately rated the book lower because of that. I make that same recommendation to my budget-conscious clients on a daily basis due to a long history of past experiences so I totally understand why Paula felt that is important enough to mention. All too often florists everywhere (including myself) get last minute, frantic calls from tearful brides or their mothers. It's the evening before the wedding and the bulk flowers they ordered online to save money are wilty and brown or not the flowers they ordered and they need to know what you have available for purchase. Ultimately, they spend twice as much as they would've (buying two sets of flowers) if they had contacted a florist in the first place. The other most common frantic call is from brides and their mothers when they've attempted to design the bouquets themselves and they are gravely disappointed at the results (typically because they don't have any formal art or design training to understand proper visual placement to make the designs most appealing, they don't know proper floral prep procedures to make sure the flowers don't prematurely wilt, and/or they don't know proper mechanical techniques and the bouquets are loose or falling apart). I wholeheartedly agree with the author on this point. It's one thing for a bride to place some simple loose stems in a vase for inexpensive centerpieces, but when the bride spends a small fortune on photographs, it makes sense to let a professional design the flowers (bouquets and boutonierres) that will appear in nearly all the photographs and be forever documented in an expensive wedding album.

The two key visual things that define a bride as a bride on her wedding day are her wedding gown and her bridal bouquet. Most brides don't make their own wedding gown (for fear of how it will turn out if they haven't had formal sewing training) so why would they make their own bridal bouquet if they haven't had formal training in floral design? It's not just about knowing how to hand-tie a bouquet -- it's about knowing formal visual design principles and floral properties (such as how quickly a flower blooms and wilts, how it reacts to other flowers and greenery that may excrete sap, how to condition, handle without damaging, etc). It really is more involved than people think so it's very easy for people to bite off more than they can chew and get into trouble, resulting in panick during one of the most nerve-racking, stressful times of their lives. As such, I don't interpret Paula's comments as a "hard sell" for floral services. Instead, I think she's simply trying to educate brides about the fact that it's so much less stressful and risky to hire a professional designer to handle at least the most important and photographed flowers of their wedding day.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YAY FOR FLOWERS!, March 9, 2011

By 

monnie09yo (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wedding Flowers (Hardcover)

I had made an arrangement at this hotel I was working for in San Francisco, and a guest at the hotel requested me personally to arrange the flowers for her wedding and immediately flipped out.. considering I didn't know a dang thing about flowers, I had gone to the flower market and was just going with it and having fun. So, I did my research and found this book.

This book was great because it had an encyclopedia of common flowers (which was nice!), many beautiful techniques. It was definitely a great reference. :)

The author breaks it down into seasons and themes, so she helps you determine which is in season and what not.. haha And the photos are spectacular!