The Best July Wedding Flowers in the Pacific Northwest
Sometimes, we hear from couples that the details of wedding planning can quickly get overwhelming, especially when it comes to choosing flowers. Naturally, there are tons of beautiful flowers and inspiration images. But how are you supposed to know what is blooming when?! Well, the truth is that you shouldn't have to know - our easy creative process walks you through all the best choices for YOUR wedding. But after so many years of experience, we still love talking about seasonal and local flowers, and we can't help but highlight some of our faves. So, this week, we wanted to share some of our favorite locally grown July wedding flowers! July weddings have some of the first true summer flowers, and it's always fun to have a new crop to play with. We love the vibrant and abundant summer blooms we get this time of year. Here are some of the best July wedding flowers, in our experience.
Dahlias
Who doesn't love a dahlia? We know so many Seattleites love dahlias! They grow so well here that most home gardeners have dahlia plants in their yard. Commercially, some of the biggest tuber producers in the world can be found in our region. Dahlias are a very popular choice for wedding flowers in July, due to the wide variety of shapes, colors, and sizes available. There are no blue dahlias, but otherwise, the sky is the limit. You can always find several dahlia varieties that work beautifully for every wedding color palette!
One caveat: July can be a tricky month for dahlias, because sometimes they don't bloom "on time." This is especially true for the big "dinner plate" varieties, like the Cafe au Lait dahlia you see above. You may also notice that dahlias change hue somewhat depending on the time of year. As summer goes on, dahlias tend to get lighter - so the best blush dahlias don't show up until September. That said, we love how versatile they are for weddings all summer long!
Garden Roses
We will never stop our obsession with garden roses! Garden roses are the perfect wedding flowers for July, since they add stunning style, grace, and beauty to any wedding arrangement. We love the way they add softness and fullness to bouquets and centerpieces, and the swirly, kinetic petals in the center. They are the perfect flower for summer weddings, since they usually start blooming in May, and continue to bloom throughout the summer. This year, we are having an amazing season for roses! They really loved that cold, wet spring. Garden roses are some of the most expensive wedding flowers on the market, but they are totally worth the splurge. The photo below (by Between the Pine) shows how they can look in a July wedding bouquet next to dahlias, cosmos, and other locally grown July flowers. Swoon.
Cosmos
We love cosmos for their delicate, bouncy, fun personalities! They can make any bouquet or arrangement seem a little bit more wild and delicate. They typically start blooming in June, but really take off in July with the heat. They are such a favorite wedding flower for July, and the pollinators love them. (Often, you can find bees asleep on the petals in the morning. Just another benefit of organically grown flowers!) We also love that they come in white as well as more nuanced blushy tones. These cosmos "apricot lemonade" are the perfect color to tie together blush, mauve, and sherbet yellow within the same palette. We love how sophisitcated, airy, and light cosmos can look in July wedding arrangements.
Astilbe
That pink, frilly flower on the right is one of our absolute favorites to work with, and it's called astilbe. This bouquet has almost all of our July favorites, including dahlias, garden roses, sweet peas, cosmos, and astible! In all honestly, we don't have many great photos of astilbe, because it's only available locally for literally two weeks. It has such a short season, which makes it all the more precious to floral designers. Of course, we use it as much as we can while it is here! Its frilly, delicate spray makes such a romantic addition to July wedding flowers. We love how astilbe softens other elements of an arrangement and makes everything look so delicate. In addition, we love how astilbe reminds us of something you'd find under the sea - if Iris van Herpen made a flower, it would be astilbe.
Sweet Peas (& Their Vines)
Sweet peas might be considered more of a "house flower" than a wedding flower. Their stems can be short, they don't last very long, and they can be high maintenance to grow. But their fragrance is indescribably wonderful, and for that reason alone, we love to tuck them into July wedding flowers! We also love that sweet peas come in such a wide variety of colors, from blues to reds to everything in between. Some of them are streaked, or fade into other colors, like the ones you see here. Their ruffly delicate blooms add instant romance and softness to any floral arrangement. And we often also use the viny bits to add interesting foliage to arrangements, because each vine has these most delicate, perfect tendrils. We can't get enough of these beauties!
Textures
Bear with me here - I know this is sort of vague. But just LOOK at some of the cool botanicals you can find July! There are all sorts of wonderful textures available to us in floral design, including things like blueberries, pea pods, and artichokes. Ferns and scabiosa grow during July, and one variety of scabiosa creates these amazing geometric grey pods. We can also get poppy pods, grasses, and vines. July is the perfect month to find beautiful textural treasures that you have never seen before, and incorporate them into gorgeous wedding flowers! In fact, incorporating unexpected textures is one of our favorite ways to create something more artistic for our wedding clients.
Planning Your July Wedding
Your florist should always know what flowers are locally available and in season for your wedding month. We've been flowering for a long time, and we are more dedicated to local flowers than ever. We continue to witness problems with imported flowers, including recent protests in Ecuador that not only shut down rose imports, but highlighted the need for indigenous management of natural resources. Florists relying on cheap imported flowers have routinely been forced to scramble, substitute, and use inferior products due to these issues. Prioritizing local flowers means that we can always make sure our clients have the best of what is available that season, that month, or even that week! And we work closely with dozens of our farm friends to make sure we can execute your vision beautifully and ethically.
Getting Married in July?
We know wedding planning can be overwhelming, with so many flower choices and inspo images. That’s why we love helping our couples craft a wedding day that will be unlike any other. We have a real knack for getting all those ideas out of your head and into a plan you feel confident about. And our books are now open for July weddings in 2023! If you are ready to experience ease and enjoyment in your wedding planning process, let's chat! You can click below to inquire and we'll get back to you as quickly as possible. We can't wait to meet you!