Catching Up on the 2026 Wedding Season

It has been a little while since I last wrote anything here, mostly because I seem to have blinked and found myself at the end of another wedding season. So I thought it was time for a catch up from behind the scenes at The Botany House and a look back at some of my favourite flowers, weddings and moments from 2026.

This summer has been a big one. Beautiful, creatively fulfilling and if I’m being completely truthful, pretty exhausting too.We somehow managed to find ourselves working through what felt like one of the hottest summers ever. Not necessarily ideal when your chosen creative medium prefers cool rooms, plenty of water and absolutely no direct sunshine.There were lots of very carefully timed installations, setting up as late as we possibly could, seeking out every scrap of shade we could find and topping up buckets and arrangements with water at every opportunity. There was also an extraordinary amount of suncream!

But amongst all of that were some really special weddings. From relaxed garden-style wedding flowers here in Norfolk and immersive marquee installations in Suffolk, to a flower-filled trip to Euridge Manor in the Cotswolds, this season has been full of gorgeous colour palettes, beautiful seasonal ingredients and some of my favourite designs we have created yet.

Flowers that look as though they have always been there…

Something I have loved seeing more and more of this year is couples really embracing natural, garden-led wedding flowers. The designs I am always most drawn to are those that work with their surroundings rather than feeling separate from them. Flowers growing up buildings and marquee poles, meadows appearing from the edges of lawns, foliage travelling overhead and arrangements that feel as though they could have sprung from the ground beneath them.

That slightly wild, romantic style has always been at the heart of The Botany House and it has been so lovely to create so much of it this year.Colour has definitely been having a moment too.There will always be a place for timeless white and green wedding flowers, but so many of my 2026 couples have wanted something softer, warmer and more colourful. Pinks have, unsurprisingly, featured rather heavily, alongside apricot, peach, lilac and little unexpected moments of colour. I am completely here for It!

At the other end of the scale, I have also loved some of the beautifully simple personal flowers we have made this year. Bouquets don't always need endless varieties to feel special. Sometimes limiting a design to just one or two flowers creates something incredibly considered. Danielle’s bridesmaid bouquets were a perfect example of this. Sweet peas and tiny pansies from my own cutting garden made the prettiest combination and felt all the more special knowing I had watched those pansies grow from seed.

A fairytale at Euridge Manor …

If I had to choose one wedding that really defined this season for me, it would probably be Daphne and Felix’s August wedding at Euridge Manor. The wedding was planned by the wonderful Get Wed team and Daphne and Felix gave Rebecca and me so much creative freedom. Those are always such special projects because instead of simply working through a list of arrangements, we are able to look at the whole setting together and think about where the flowers can have the most impact.

The palette was completely delicious. Juicy peach and apricot tones melted into pinks, with blousy Annabelle hydrangeas, cosmos and soft geranium foliage bringing movement and that slightly undone garden feeling I love so much.

I travelled down from Norfolk with Abbie and Charlotte before Carly joined us on the Saturday, and there was so much laughter amongst the buckets, mechanics and flowers. Euridge Manor itself feels almost impossibly romantic. Hidden pathways, water, gardens, old stone and beautiful buildings make it the sort of wedding venue where your imagination immediately starts running away with you.

One of my favourite designs was the ceremony installation at the boathouse. Rather than creating something that looked as though it had been added to the building for the wedding, we wanted it to feel as though the flowers had started growing from the ground and kept going. They rambled upwards, eventually finding their way into the rafters of the boathouse so that everything felt completely connected to the landscape.

The reception tables were set outside in the rose garden and the whole space genuinely felt like something from a fairytale.

It was also a wedding full of those little behind-the-scenes memories that guests never really see. We had a very persistent four-legged assistant at Euridge who spent much of the boathouse installation bringing us his stick in the hope that somebody would abandon the flowers and play with him instead. Later, when it was time to move the ceremony flowers over to the reception, Charlotte, Abbie, Carly and I loaded everything onto a golf buggy and set off across the estate. At one point we found ourselves going up an alarmingly steep rocky hill, all clinging onto flowers and trying not to fall off. We eventually appeared at the top, still holding everything, to guests taking photographs and looking extremely entertained by our arrival.

Very elegant. Very luxury wedding florist!

Roses at Wilderness Reserve…

Another favourite installation from the year was Ellie and Chris’ wedding at Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk, beautifully planned by Amy at Attabara Studio. Wilderness Reserve is somewhere I will never tire of working. The landscape is incredibly peaceful and there is so much natural beauty already there that florals need to feel sympathetic to it.

For Ellie and Chris’ reception, we created a large-scale floral installation inside their stretch tent. Roses climbed organically around the marquee poles before meeting trailing vines of greenery overhead, which crisscrossed across the ceiling. The soft greens and rosy pink flowers looked gorgeous against the patterned table linens and pink details beneath them. I loved that the installation completely transformed the tent while still retaining that loose, rambling feeling of something growing naturally.

Large-scale marquee wedding flowers are some of my favourite designs to create. There is something incredibly satisfying about taking what is essentially a blank structure and using flowers and foliage to completely change how the space feels. It is also one of those parts of wedding floristry where what guests eventually see bears very little resemblance to what happens behind the scenes. There are mechanics, ladders, cable ties, vans full to the roof and quite a lot of staring upwards with your hands on your hips trying to work out whether something needs to move approximately three centimetres to the left.

Which brings me to...

The very serious art of van packing…

I genuinely think van packing deserves its own mention in any honest account of wedding season. The first few weddings of the year always feel slightly chaotic.You have temporarily forgotten your systems. Everything looks as though it should fit, but somehow doesn't. You question whether you really need all twelve buckets despite knowing full well that you absolutely do. I have a breakdown and have to walk away for 10 minutes to process it all.

And then somewhere in the middle of wedding season, something clicks. By the final few weddings you have entered an almost meditative flow state of spatial awareness.Every centimetre matters. Every bucket has a home. Plinths slide neatly beside mechanics. Urns nest into gaps. The emergency kit somehow slots into the only remaining patch of floor.

Nothing makes you feel quite as accomplished as shutting the van doors on the first attempt.

One of our more questionable additions to the floristry toolkit this season has also been a metal skittles ball, which has turned out to be an extraordinarily effective hammer! I don't remember this featuring on the list when I trained as a florist.

Flowers of the year…

There are always a handful of flowers that I become mildly obsessed with each season. This year, Didiscus has been one of them. It is delicate, lacey and incredibly pretty, particularly in pink and white, and adds that little bit of airy movement I am forever looking for. There is a lavender-blue variety that I am already determined to use next year.

Pink Annabelle hydrangea has been another favourite and has now firmly made its way onto my list of plants I need to grow myself.

And perhaps my flower of the year has to go to the beautiful British-grown phlox from Kerri at Jane's Garden. There is something particularly lovely about being able to include flowers grown close to home within my wedding work. British-grown flowers often have a softness and movement that is very difficult to replicate, and they fit perfectly into the relaxed, seasonal wedding flowers I love creating.

Back in my own garden … My own cutting garden has continued growing alongside the business too. There have, once again, been hundreds of pansies. I don't seem capable of growing pansies in sensible quantities, but I also never regret it. Being able to snip them from the garden and use them within Danielle's bridesmaid bouquet alongside sweet peas was one of those small but very satisfying moments.

Sweet rocket and Orlaya were particularly gorgeous earlier in the season. Both flowered beautifully in May, and the scent of the sweet rocket made wandering through the garden particularly lovely.

The rose collection has also expanded rather dramatically. I've added lots of new ramblers and some beautiful David Austin roses, and I'm currently taking as many cuttings as I can in the hope of filling the borders with even more of them. There is something quite addictive about growing roses when your favourite floral aesthetic could essentially be described as “what if a rose garden escaped?”

The people behind the flowers…

One of the loveliest parts of wedding season is the people I get to spend it with. Wedding floristry can be physically and mentally exhausting, particularly during those long stretches in summer, but being surrounded by wonderful people makes an enormous difference.

Some of my favourite memories from this year have nothing to do with the finished flowers. After Abi and Dow’s wedding, Abbie, Katy and I returned completely exhausted, showered and inhaled an enormous Wagamama takeaway together. We were all so tired there wasn't even a huge amount of conversation, but there is something very cosy about reaching the end of one of those days and sitting together knowing you did it.

Then there are the hours spent driving. Some of the best conversations happen on long van journeys between Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cotswolds and the rest of the south of England. There is normally a mixture of serious life conversations, complete nonsense and somebody rummaging around for snacks.

One particularly memorable journey home from Wilderness Reserve involved Katy trying to squeeze a large flapjack from it’s wrapper. It looked considerably less appetising than it tasted. At approximately the same time I realised that the sheep at Wilderness Reserve have surprisingly long tails. Abbie's incredibly infectious laugh then finished all of us off.

It is difficult to explain why this was so funny. It was probably the tiredness.

I have also been incredibly lucky to work alongside brilliant planners and suppliers again this year. I always love creating weddings with Amy from Attabara Studio and Rebecca, Izzie and Helen from Get Wed. Working collaboratively with planners who really understand design makes such a difference, especially on larger, more immersive weddings.

It has also been lovely crossing paths with photographers including Klaui Varadi and the team at Little Moments Films, who capture all of those details that disappear far too quickly once the wedding is over.

Norfolk, Suffolk and a little further afield…

Although The Botany House is based in Norfolk, I love the balance my work now has between beautiful weddings close to home and projects that take us a little further away. Oxnead Hall remains a lovely local venue to work at. The new team there have been incredibly kind and helpful, which makes such a difference during a busy installation day.

Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk continues to be one of my favourite places to create flowers. Between the rolling landscape, woodland, lakes and beautiful buildings, every wedding there feels completely different.

And then there are venues like Euridge Manor in the Cotswolds, where staying away with the team and completely immersing ourselves in a wedding for a few days feels like a little creative adventure.

I feel very lucky that being a Norfolk wedding florist now means some weeks creating flowers just down the road and others packing the van to the roof and travelling across the south of England.

What comes next…

The 2026 wedding season isn't completely finished just yet. I have two October weddings still to come and I am very ready for autumn flowers. After months of protecting delicate summer flowers from the heat, I cannot wait to get my hands on rich seasonal textures, branches, berries and all of those gorgeous slightly moodier autumnal colours.

And then there is 2027. I already have some really exciting weddings in the diary, including designs that feel like genuine career-moment installations, new wedding planners to collaborate with and some completely new destinations for The Botany House. There is also a particularly gorgeous Norfolk marquee wedding in Burnham Market coming up which feels quintessentially Norfolk and is already living rather happily in my head.

But for now, I am trying to enjoy that strange little moment at the end of summer when the buckets start being put away slightly more often, my studio becomes marginally less chaotic and I can look back properly at everything we made.

This season has been hot, tiring, colourful, funny, occasionally ridiculous and incredibly creatively satisfying.

Wedding floristry is a funny job. It asks a huge amount from you physically and mentally and then rewards you with the opportunity to spend your days making things from flowers. I still feel incredibly lucky that this is my creative art form.

And before I go, the very unofficial Botany House awards for the 2026 season...

Flower of the year: British-grown phlox from Kerri at Jane's Garden

Best post-wedding dinner: Wagamama, eaten in near silence

Top mascot: Finley, obviously

Most useful item in the kit bag: one metal skittles ball masquerading as a hammer

The uninvited visitor: Katy's tick

Here's to the final weddings of 2026, lots of autumn flowers and everything that 2027 has waiting for us.

Lots of love,

Bex x