I am so excited to be bringing you another amazing inspiration shoot this week, and something completely different in style.

I do love succulents, they are amazing plants which are so versatile, and easy to use, plus they are eco friendly as you can reuse them after your wedding.

This rustic shoot, is natural, pretty and oh so chic. It would be great to see more UK couples make use of succulents and our beautiful outdoors. Imagine your wedding reception in the woods, it’s just so magical. There were some amazing wedding vendors working on this shoot including the amazing  Helen Carter Weddingswho styled the shoot. Anyway i know you guys are going to love this one… get ready to start pinning :-))

Thanks so much to the fabulous Surrey based wedding photographer, Fiona Kelly Photography, for submitting her amazing images to share today, here is what she had to say;

“I absolutely love the idea of incorporating succulents into a wedding day. They’re quite widely used in the US, but sadly are less frequently seen here – maybe it’s because we think of them as desert plants and don’t think they’ll work with our less than predictable climate! However, these fabulous little plants are incredibly versatile, being available in all sorts of colours and sizes with weird and wonderful shapes and fabulous textures, so you definitely don’t need to have a beach theme to incorporate them into your wedding day!

I got hooked on the idea of a succulent-inspired shoot after spending a happy few hours with the lovely Liz of Blue Sky Flowers putting together some succulent buttonholes for a civil partnership. The way in which these miniature versions of the larger plants could be combined with different foliages to create a totally modern and unique look totally fascinated me, so we came up with the idea of extending this to a complete wedding design. We approached Fiona Kelly, a photographer with an instinctive natural talent for capturing the tiniest of details, and so our shoot was born!

For the design I wanted to reflect the natural, rustic look that so many varieties of succulent have, but show how they can be displayed in unique and eye-catching ways as opposed to just planted in pots! To complement the rustic theme I opted for a mixed colour palette of earthy tones and used natural materials, such as bark and hessian, as part of the succulent displays.

We set up the scenes in the beautiful setting of Epping Forest on a sunny day in late September. The early autumn colours of the surroundings provided the perfect backdrop, whilst the gorgeous dappled light highlighted the beauty and vibrancy of the succulents we were using. We set up a small ceremony under the trees with a succulent ‘curtain’ as a backdrop, which was created using different sized, textured and coloured succulents tied with delicate copper coloured wire and hung from an overhead branch.

I didn’t want to use any flowers at all in this shoot in order to showcase the succulents’ versatility. Liz worked her magic with the bouquet, mixing different sizes and shapes of fleshy Echevaria succulents and combining them with textured Leucadendron, Brunnia and Kalanchoe foliage to complete the look. To complement the bouquet she created buttonholes using miniature succulents, again mixing them with textured leaves and also including orange chillies for a modern twist!

For the reception table we used a picnic bench for a relatively informal look, and incorporated a hessian runner and tree trunk slices to complement the natural feel of the design. We intertwined bark and moss with an array of multi-coloured and textured succulents along the length of the table to form a low, eye-catching centrepiece, and used hessian-wrapped pots of miniature succulents as place cards – at a wedding these could also easily double up as favours! To complement these pots I wanted to create a quirky table plan, so we used a pin-board of escort cards that were each decorated with a miniature succulent buttonhole.

I had so much fun putting this succulent shoot together, and I hope it provides brides with ideas of how to incorporate these wonderful plants into their own wedding day!”

Credit where credit’s due….

Photography: Fiona Kelly (www.fionasweddingphotography.co.uk/)

Style and Design: Helen Carter Weddings (www.helencarterweddings.co.uk)

Flowers/Plants: Blue Sky Flowers (www.blueskyflowers.co.uk)

Stationery: DIY by Helen Carter Weddings

Furniture, linen and tableware: Jones Hire (www.joneshire.co.uk)

Picnic Table: The Hire Business (www.thehirebusiness.com)

Thanks so much to this dream team of wedding suppliers for letting me share this amazing shoot with you all today :-) please do leave them some comment love below xoxo

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