Five Minutes With… A Professional Wedding Decorator
What Laurie Edwards doesn’t know about wedding decor isn’t worth knowing. Through her wedding events business Laurie has made thousands of bride’s dreams come true with her award-winning floristry and venue styling.
Now considered one of the most highly-regarded planners in the wedding business, Laurie is at the forefront of knowing exactly which trends every bride is going to want on their big day. Belle decided to find out more about the floral must-haves for 2018, the biggest celebrity influencers when it comes to weddings, and what it’s like to work with a £14,000 flower budget…
How do you get into the business of wedding events?
I was exhibitions and events director for News International – a position I had held for 10 years – so I would work with suppliers that were dealing in floristry and catering. Then I had my daughter and thought I fancied having a career change and wanted to do something a bit different. I’d always had a love of flowers so enrolled in a two-year floristry course with the help of my mum, who looked after my baby! So 13 years ago I started my business – Chic Weddings and Events – from my garage and it really grew from there.
How has the business evolved since then?
What I realised very quickly, is that the bride’s would talk about all their beautiful designs for their flowers and they would then say, ‘Do you know anyone who could do chair covers for us or some finishing touches?’ I realised I could be doing some of it myself. That was when the venue designing side of things started to evolve. Around ten years ago weddings really started to change and people weren’t just thinking about one table piece – they were thinking about a whole set. Now, when you look at weddings, it is very much about what the whole venue is going to look like and having a theme for a wedding. A bride now thinks about it as a whole event, rather than just one individual aspect, and I think that’s where we have had to change and develop our business. We
now need to cope with a whole scenario.
I get my inspirations from everywhere – from different venues to Pinterest. The way we are going now is more down the American route, so I also get it from our US suppliers as well. Now we talk about decorating chairs rather than just having the bog-standard. Things like Pinterest and social media help ideas to be more accessible than they ever have been. We have gone through the very vintage stage, through to the bohemian look, and now we are going down the very classic and classy look. Lots of nude colours and crystal accents are coming through.
The Pantone colours of the year are set to be ultra violet and bright purples but at the minute we are still finding people are asking more for the heavy blush pinks and nude shades. The greenery look is very much coming back into vogue and the vintage country garden look is still going strong too.
When Michelle Keegan married Mark Wright there was a big dome of white hydrangeas and we saw that so many times and likewise when Kim Kardashian did the flower wall. Let’s see what Meghan Markle and Prince Harry come up with as it definitely has an effect. With Kate Middleton and Prince William, we went back to the very soft colours. Every bride is different and Meghan is going to want something which is very much her own style.
Last year we had two of the largest weddings that we’ve probably ever had. One of them was a traditional English wedding in a marquee at home for around 100 guests. Their flower budget was around £14,000 and then you had styling items on top of that. For them, floristry was on of the most important things and the money went into how the venue looked. We also do a lot in the Asian wedding market and there you are talking 700-800 guests for 70-80 tables. You have to be clever with lighting and the quality of linen on the table so it gives a luxury feel but actually the table centre is a lot more simple. They both had around the same budget but because of the numbers two of our largest weddings are on separate ends of the scales in terms of size. We will do what a bride or couple want us to do and work with any budget, no matter how big or small. We could do a whole wedding for £400-500.
The average wedding in the UK costs £27,000 but you also have the very budget bride at the opposite end of the scale. How do you tackle things when it comes to budgets?
I find there are always cost effective ways of doing things, so when I sit down and do a consultation I never ask about budget. I never want to know about budget because I think that when there is too much focus it can always outweigh everything else. You are completely setting a scene and I have got that budget in my head straight away. I think that’s a bit of a negative, because if a bride doesn’t think that’s a lot of money then they are going to hold back and not tell me what their actual dream is. So I prefer to get that whole wish-list done on a piece of paper and then I can look at alternatives on how they can get that look but for a budget that they can afford. For instant, if they were loving those tall arrangements which were jam packed with loads of flowers, and wanted to create a real English country garden theme, it might be that I suggest they do a smaller scale arrangement with a lot more greenery in there so there aren’t as many flowers.
Then they could put pretty blooms into jam jars on the tables so the guests have something to look at.
I think the one with the £14,000 flower budget because I actually planned and co-ordinated the whole wedding from start to finish. That was lovely to see because we only get a couple of opportunities a year to do that. It’s amazing to see an idea you’ve had actually come to fruition. It featured the largest table decorations and flower wall we’ve ever had to produce and because of that we had to make them on site. We were there at 4am and we literally made everything out of the van, so it was memorable for many different reasons. I think the other one would have been when we turned the Fairfax Hall in Leeds Castle into a nightclub and had a grand total of two hours to do it in!
Weddings are what we love and do. Where we differ is that we will cover the venue styling and the floristry and then we also have a lot of recommended companies that we work with, so we can do things like the cake and stationary. We can do all of those finishing touches so it makes it so much easier for a bride rather than having to talk to a number of different suppliers and have many appointments. Although I wouldn’t say we are a traditional wedding co-coordinator as such, we can co-ordinate many aspects of the design of a wedding.
I think it does and it makes it easier for the couples that see us. Because I have got an events management background, I sort of see weddings as a full-scale exhibition! It also offers the couple
security because they talk about all aspects of the wedding and know that they are getting it right.What is the best advice you could give to a bride about her big day?
Don’t let the budget run away with you as it’s a very easy thing to do. It’s very easy to spend money on lots of little finishing touches and that’s not what people remember. Have a clear idea of what both of you want because it is your day and it should be the way you want it, rather than the way other people want you to have it. Make sure you also take some time out just the two of you.
