Wedding flower ideas: feathers

I consider myself to be a retro, vintage type of a girl with a lot of modern influences and I love getting the opportunity to take on these styles in the wedding flower ideas I create. So naturally when I stumbled across the idea of feathers in wedding bouquets from a fellow feather shop blogger – I thought fabulous! To me this encompasses all things vintage and modern, the possibilities seemed endless.

In my early work while I was still at TAFE in the mid 1990’s we used feathers in a theatrical way in big display pieces, using the feathers to symbolise American Indian themes, but never in our wedding work. Thankfully now the times have changed and these delicate details shine as added beauty to an already beautiful palette of flowers.

After discovering this new wedding flower idea I did some solid research to learn a little more about types of feathers. I was so amazed by the shear amount of feather varieties produced in an array of colours for our use. A thank you must be given to the wonderful birds in this world for giving up their coats for fashion and beauty.

My all time favourite feather species has to be marabou for the softness and delicate texture – these are the feathers most commonly used on the marabou slipper which is also a very popular wedding shoe, or at least wedding night shoe!

But did you know there are actually more than 5 varieties of just the marabou feather?

A lovely memory I have of the marabou feather is my Aunt’s wedding dress, she was married in the late 1970’s and her dress had a hood on it which was covered in white marabou. It looked stunning!

A feather wedding moment that also sticks in my mind is the effervescent Carrie Bradshaw who wore the most amazing feather headdress for her wedding in the first Sex & The City movie. The vibrant blue feathers were a stand out, and mirrored by the huge cream roses in her natural stem wedding bouquet.

The end result of flowers and feathers is soft, delicate, intriguing (have your guests wondering “what’s that in her bouquet?”) unique and timeless.

In addition to a great wedding flower idea, feathers are also being used to decorate reception venues in vases on tables, as part of larger arrangements, and even in the church flowers and on pew ends.

So whether you’ve just started looking for wedding flower ideas – or you’ve already made your floral choices -stop and consider the beauty that feathers can add to your big day.