The Travels of a Wedding Bouquet

With our wedding taking place in Durham, we had a long drive ahead. So it seemed like a good idea to break up the journey by calling into some of the florist friends I have made around the country on our road north. I particularly liked the idea of a wedding bouquet made up of a mixture of their flowers.

First stop Kate's new shop, Rustic Rose in Sturminster Newton.

Here I gathered hydrangeas, red spray roses, velvety black bacarra roses and plum ranunculus.

The journey would not have been complete without calling into Ted Martin Flowers in Tisbury.

Here I spotted some pale peach roses splashed with deeper pink.

These were added to the buckets in the car.

By the time we got to Miss Pickering's glorious floral emporium in Stamford we badly needed a break, so we whisked her off for a gin and tonic in the local pub.

As usual her shop was looking wonderful and she was full of news of her forthcoming book - which if her blog is anything to go by will be (like Miss Pickering herself) just fabulous!

From Miss Pickering I collected rosemary and myrtle, as well as Grand Prix and Memory Lane roses. The latter being particularly appropriate as Billy Kelly and I got together 10 years ago in Durham, so this really was a journey down memory lane.

A few hours later, the girls were collected from the station and we were happily ensconced in my best friend Pip's house having a noisy family supper.

As we chatted on, I started to make my wedding flowers.

I know it is not the norm to make your own bouquet with your husband to be by your side, but I thoroughly recommend it.

What is certainly not the norm is to see Billy Kelly with a cup of tea in his hand rather than a glass of red wine!

Now this is more like it - the next morning and bucksfizz.

I have always wanted to be Doris Day!

I loved my flowers so. They were a delicious mix of the blooms I had encountered the previous day and they made me smile every time I looked at them.

And I did not stop smiling. I had my girls by my side and my Irishman had married me.

Into the girls' flowers I added some tulips that had been delivered to me by my friend Julie from the Tynemouth flower group. She had arrived the previous afternoon bearing gifts and cards and I thought it would be rather special to have some of her flowers in the bouquets too. So thank you Julie.