May is one of the most popular months for weddings in Scotland, often blessed with good weather and at a time where you can still get late spring flowers and the start of the bounty of summer blooms. If you’re lucky with the weather you can even have an outdoor ceremony, but whatever you choose to do there’s plenty of beautiful flowers seasonally available. Photos by (left to right) Steven Gallagher Photography, Mack Photo, Kellee Quinn Photography.
Abundance
Most trees have come into leaf by May and blossom has been out for a few weeks so, depending on the weather, you may be able to include some beautiful blossom in your wedding flower designs. With trees now in leaf it becomes easier to create branchy, foliage heavy floral arches and hanging installations and designs. We loved creating these seasonal May floral arches for weddings at Rosslea Hotel in Rhu, the Dovecot Edinburgh and at Lower Largo on the beach.
Photos by (left to right) Kellee Quinn Photography, Rhiannon Neale Photography, Mack Photography
Colour
The verges and hedgerows are full of frothy cow parsley, red campion and hawthorne blossom at this time of year and you can have your pick of colourful wild flowers or something more subtle if you prefer an all white palette like this city wedding at 29 Glasgow photographed by Joy Story. For more inspiration from this elegant white wedding read our blog here, wild flower weddings don’t have to be restricted to barns and teepees, they can work really well in more urban or elegant settings too.
Table centres
If you want to inject some colour into your wedding there is lots to choose from and bottles, jam jars and mini vases filled with bright seasonal flowers look great at wedding receptions and can be given away to guests afterwards. Vases needn’t be expensive, you can task your friends and family with collecting gin and beer bottles, pasta sauce or coffee jars and either keep the labels on or customise your jars and bottles with paint, ribbon or materials. Make it your own!
Plain glass vessels can be effective on their own, take a look at this pastel marquee wedding in Perthsire which made the best of the seasonal may wild flowers in simple glass jars and bottles, photo taken at Persie House by PJ Phillips Photography.
Another good way to add colour to complement your flowers is to co-ordinate candles, table linen or favours with your colour scheme. This worked really well at this colourful May wedding at Errol Park in Perthshire photographed by Steven Gallagher.
Availability
Some of the seasonal flowers available at this time are:
Alstromeria, Blossom, Bluebells, Flowering Currant, Genista, Hellebore, Lunaria, Poppies, Sweet Rocket, Ranunculus, Tulips, Scilla, Snapdragon, scented stocks, delphinum, early sweet peas, lilac, roses, dicentra, aquilegia , cow parsely, orlaya, cornflower, spurge and of course peonies.
Photo by Claire Juliet Paton Photography
Take a look at my Spring flowers blog for more suggestions on individual blooms you can find in spring or for a peek at a colourful may wedding in Edinburgh’s Riddles Court read our blog. The colours in those wedding flowers really brought the wood paneled ceremony space alive and filled the venue with a beautiful scent.
If you’d like more inspiration for your spring wedding flowers follow us on Instagram or take a look at our Wedding Flowers gallery. To talk all things flowery and find out how to book Briar Rose for your wedding get in touch.