Bright, Cheerful Lakeside Wedding Near Kenora
I LOVE a good lakefront wedding, and I love a good logistical challenge (every once in a while). So when Sam and Joel first reached out to me (from Calgary!), about their wedding taking place at her family’s property near Kenora, I knew I wanted to be involved.
3 provinces and 2 lakefront locations. Moving pieces back and forth between the ceremony and reception properties and a lot of little things that could be easily missed. With a wedding like this, you’ll want to make sure that you have an excellent team of professionals on board, and we certainly did for Sam and Joel!
Photos by Keila Marie Photography
Cheerful, colourful, romantic, clean…we had a lot of great theme words for this design.
I started my day by driving out to Kenora, with all of the florals, the arch pieces, and supplies loaded carefully into my van. There’s always a bit of stress that everything won’t fit in, but especially with an out of town wedding, it’s simply got to work! When I arrived, the first thing I did was hand off Sam’s bouquets and get a glimpse at their colourful invitation suite (how adorable, right?!).
Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: all the floaty bits! And almost entirely locally grown in Manitoba! Lisianthus, ranunculus, cosmos, scabiosa, feverfew, sweet pea, and forget me nots.
We then got to work right away on designing the ceremony flowers. We set up the arch right in front of the water, and the view was obviously immaculate. It was a bit windy (just can’t seem to get away from that stinking wind!) so we had to counter-weight the arch in the front (normally we only need to weight the back, to counter-balance the weight of the florals in the front).
I didn’t want the florals to be too polka-dotty, so I started with an all-over base of greenery and peach statice, and then started clustering in pockets of colour. The pink expression roses are a personal favourite of mine, and they really showed off in this arch. We added touches of light blue delphinium and some super fun and frilly orange and peach zinnias to finish it off.
In my opinion, a polka-dotty design is a clear indication of a designer who doesn’t actually have much of a design sense…they might know a ton about flowers and care and how to arrange, but if they don’t have a design eye, then what’s the point? When you’re looking for a florist, pay attention to the overall design: are all the flowers smushed together? Is it polka-dotty? Is the texture off-putting to you? (everyone has their preferences and these are certainly mine…and I will die on all of these hills).
Aren’t their aisle shots AMAZING? If you’re ever a guest at a wedding and they give you confetti or rose petals to toss at the end of the ceremony, please GO FOR IT. That makes for such an incredible moment for the newlyweds, and in a time when it already feels like you’re walking on air, the confetti creates so much magic.
Next came time for the tent reception! The tent was actually situated on a different private property (a family friend’s home, on a different lake about 15 minutes away) and it was completely perfect. The lawn was large and flat, with the tent running lengthwise along the shoreline.
Alli designed a crisp white and blue tent, and we looked to the flowers and a few other elements to bring all the colour. The centrepieces alternated between low floral arrangements on the round tables and loose greenery on the long tables (I love an interesting floor plan!).
With repurposing a ceremony arch, there are a few things to be aware of.
First, it doesn’t always work. Please just trust your floral designer if they tell you it’s not going to work. It might not physically fit (out of where it is, or into a vehicle, or into where you want it to go), it might be too heavy, there might not be enough time to do, if we have to drag it through your entire crowd of guests to get it where it needs to go that doesn’t look good…just know that some pieces are meant to accomplish just what they are intended for.
Second, it’s never going to look as good in its second position as it did in its first. Flowers will break or wilt, things will have shifted, the scale might be off in the second position, and so on. I always keep these things in mind and usually reserve replacement flowers to freshen up the arch, and I definitely keep a focus on scale and placement when we’re designing in the first place.
In this case, the scale was perfect to place around the sweetheart table but the arch had been sitting in the full sun for several hours and then moved into the van for a bumpy drive, so we needed to replace some flowers and give it an overall freshening up. This freshening took us about 30 minutes, which took place during cocktail hour so guests didn’t notice us. Keep this in mind if you aim to repurpose pieces from the ceremony to the reception — there needs to be time to actually make it happen!
We planned for 2 focal points in the reception space: the overhanging greenery and basket installation above the dance floor, and the sweetheart table with repurposed ceremony arch.
The baskets were pre-hung (though I reinforced a few that were a little precarious), and then started adding smilax around the support wire. I ended up having lots of extra, so I added smilax to the vertical tent poles on either side of the dance floor to tie it all together and make them look a little nicer and try to hide some of the black tape used by the tent company. Side note, can we all just agree to use tape that blends in?
For our wedding on private property in Kenora, we wanted a statement floral arch that would really make our wedding stand out. We asked Lauren to move the intricate arch between our two rural venues. From the moment we met her, we knew she could deliver everything we were dreaming of and more. We had full confidence in her from day one and she really delivered!
All the floral pieces Lauren created for us were beautiful and blew us and our guests away. The arch was a showstopper. Many of our guests could not believe the detailed floral work and it was one of the most photographed pieces at our wedding. Lauren also helped to create a hanging vine and basket chandelier installation over our dance floor which beautifully framed the space. All the florals were incredibly beautiful and perfectly matched the look and feel we were going for.
We are so glad we trusted Stone House Creative with our wedding florals. We can’t recommend them enough. Lauren is amazing and we would choose her and her team all over again!
Looking for a Wedding Floral Designer in Winnipeg?
The logistics of a lake wedding are a bit more detailed than you might expect. We happen to be really, really good at that part.
Whether you’re planning an intimate dinner on the dock, or a tented lakeside celebration the likes of which have never been seen before, Stone House Creative specializes in create the perfect ambiance for your wedding!