FAVORITE BLOOMS: PEONIES

Now that the wedding planning season for this summer has officially started (we can see it from the amount of emails we're getting from summer brides), we thought we'd share a little about our favorite wedding flowers with you. And today we're starting with one of the most popular blooms: the peony (paeonia). They are gorgeous litte darlings, easy to work with and they make a great impact. It's such a shame that they're in season only from the end of spring til the beginning or middle of summer. In Finland peony season is from March until June, if the summer is particularly warm, it may already be difficult to get all the common varieties in June, whereas if the summer is cooler, you might even still get some in July. But really, the season is way too short.

What we love about peonies is that they don't need other flowers to make for a pretty centerpiece or bouquet. Sometimes you don't even need more than one bloom to fill a vase.




An elegant, modern table setting created entirely from white peonies (SMP)
bottom left:, right: a white, fluffy peony bouquet via Style Me Pretty





top: a centerpiece from single low cut peonies in bright coral, Gem Photo // via
bottom left: single open bloomed peonies in different heights make for a fresh modern centerpiece (Martha Stewart Weddings)
right: a single centerpiece from this styled shoot featured on Project Wedding



Pairing peonies with other flowers of similar shape is super easy and we know that many brides love this full look. Roses are a great match, english varieties and garden roses especially, other favorites to match are dahlias and ranunculus.




Top left: peonies in soft pink and white paired with red roses and lush greens (via)
top right: a super-romantic bunch of peonies, ranunculus and different rose varieties (via)
bottom left: fluffy pink peonies and more closed white peonies paired with sweet pink roses (Hey Look)
bottom right: Peonies, dahlias and garden roses with Jasmin greens (Jose Villa)






These peonies with their yellow center are great in a colorful, eclectic bouquet of poppies, astilbe, craspedia, garden roses, succulents, dusty miller and adiantum greens. (see much more here)






Sweet peas, although totally different with their delicate, irregular shape are lovely paired with peonies.
Left: Style Me Pretty, right: Martha Stewart



One very important thing to tell your florist or to remember yourself (if you want to diy your wedding flowers) is how open you want the peonies to be. Usually you buy them quite closed, the blooms in the shape of a little ball. How quickly they open depends on where you keep them; the more sun/natural light they get and the warmer water they're in, the quicker they'll open. If you're going for a DIY wedding bouquet, buy a few test flowers 2 weeks before the wedding and see how long it takes for them to be in the for you perfect shape. If you're ordering them from a florist, show some example pictures. Obviously the more open the bloom, the bigger and fuller the result will be, hence if you want a large bouquet, the same size would need more closed peonies than open ones.




With Jenni's bouquet on the right here we went for a mix of half opened and fully opened fluffy peonies in blush and soft pink.
The blooms on the right are still quite closed (source)




These white peony bouquets might be very similar in size, yet the left one with its very open peonies (source) consists of roughly half the amount of blooms as the right one (source).


We'll be back with more of our favorite flowers tomorrow! In the meantime feel free to share your favorites in the comment section. We'd love to hear from you.