2018 was definitely the year of cascading bouquets for me! We’ve been seeing a bit of a resurgence of the cascade shape for a little while now, but with a looser, more garden style than the horrendous pointy triangle bouquets of the 80s and 90s. I thought I’d share a little about this style of bouquet in case it’s something that interests you!

1) To get the more organic, garden-inspired shape, these are handtied bouquets. In the past (and some older-school florists still do it this way), cascade bouquets were always designed in a bouquet holder. This is essentially a plastic handle that has a little cup at the end where a chunk of Oasis sits, for the flowers to be inserted into. I try to use Oasis/floral foam as little as humanly possible, as it’s terrible for the environment and is essentially plastic - and a carcinogenic! Yuck! I certainly don’t want you carrying around a bouquet that has the potential to make you sick. I also don’t think that the plastic holders are very comfortable to carry - they’ve always hurt my hands. I’d rather you hold onto the stems!

2) Because I don’t use a bouquet holder, it means that I need to use a LOT of stems to create the bouquet. So, not only is your bouquet going to be a little more expensive, it’s also likely to be pretty heavy. That might get a little annoying on the wedding day, but your biceps are going to look awesome in photos ;) Some florists will wire the flower heads to alleviate some of the weight, but with our super hot summers, I’m always a little worried that those flowers aren’t going to make it if they have no chance of being popped back into water throughout the day.

3) You’ll have to carry your bouquet slightly differently than you would with a traditional handtied bouquet. You can tell from some of these pictures that the bride’s hands are angled a little differently - the bouquet is in front of her like normal, but her hands are angled so the bouquet hangs down in front. I cut the stems as short as I can to allow for this to be as easy as possible for the bride, as you’ll want to hug the stems as close to your body as possible. This is really the one benefit of using a bouquet holder, as far as I’m concerned - the holder is designed to make it easy to design the bouquet’s shape, but the negatives outweigh that. So, angled hands you’ll have!

4) I have to be really specific about the flower and greenery types that I use. I like to use a few focal flowers, as I would normally, but then I’m also looking for stems that naturally have a vertical line or a curved line, to help create that cascade shape. And of course, vines and trailing greenery are a must to make the shape!

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