I didn’t want to plan my wedding in the shadow of my older sister’s wedding but there was one vendor that I had to repeat. That vendor is in Richfield, who is my opinion the best Northeast Ohio Wedding florist.
As with every vendor, I met with a few other florists before Countryside just to make sure I was making the right decision. When you’re looking for wedding vendors, I recommend having a few meetings even if you have an idea of who you want to book. This allows you to compare and contrast prices and quality.
The venue is already pretty ornate so I knew that I didn’t need to do much in the way of decor. I wanted my flowers to be elegant but minimal. One of the florists I met with was insistent that not having tall centerpieces was a waste of my venue’s tall ceilings. He had ideas for elaborate centerpieces that were a) not what I wanted and b) totally out of my budget. I felt like he really wasn’t listening to what I wanted at all.
When we went to Countryside Florist, the experience was totally different. Our meeting felt like it was between old friends. Sandy, the owner of Countryside Florist, runs her business with professionalism and a truly personal touch.
When I shared my ideas with Sandy, I felt heard. She didn’t question my ideas but enhanced them. By the end of our first meeting, we had a plan for the bouquets, the arrangements around the venue and the centerpieces for the tables.
Since travel is such a common passion for us as a couple, we decided to do city names we have visited (or would be visiting on the honeymoon) instead of table numbers. My friend Sabrina helped me come up with the idea for the tablescapes.
Each city had a trinket painted gold to represent it paired with a gold sign featuring a photo of Gio and I in the city. For the cities we would be visiting on our honeymoon, we used photos of Jay-Z and Beyonce, of course.
Countryside Florist brought the whole vision to life. We did a run-through together at Countryside and on the day of the wedding, Sandy personally came to make sure the tables look exactly the way we had discussed. This is definitely one of the reasons she’s the best Northeast Wedding florist!
We didn’t want the travel theme to clash with the rest of the decor. Wedding themes can get really kitschy and we didn’t want that at all. Sandy used the terrariums to tie everything together. I love the way that the tables turned out. They looked elegant and modern and showed our love for travel in a classy way.
While the tablescapes were kept pretty minimal, I wanted my bouquet to be an over-the-top cascading style. Before I knew what kind of dress I wanted to wear for my wedding, I knew I wanted purple flowers in my bouquet.
I had seen purple wildflowers on a past trip to Sicily and I announced to everyone, those are going to be my wedding flowers. This inspiration taken from a 2015 trip became the basis for my entire wedding color theme. The flowers I saw in Sicily are similar to morning glories here so it was really important to incorporate this into my wedding bouquet. Sandy took that on with no problem.
One of the surprise touches in my bouquet was that my mom asked her to incorporate fabric from my grandmother’s wedding dress. This was such a touching surprise! My bouquet also included calla lilies which were in my grandmother’s wedding bouquet.
To save money, we planned on having my bouquet become the centerpiece for the sweetheart table. The drama of the cascade really came in handy!
The Bridesmaids’ bouquets were smaller but still contained shades of purple flowers. This purple really popped against the sparkle of their gold sequin dresses.
The groomsfolks had minimalist boutonnières made of greenery. Gio’s had a mix of a few purple flowers for some color.
Overall, I would highly recommend working with Countryside Florist. Whether you have your own ideas that you need help executing or if you need someone to totally design your floral decor, Countryside Florist is the best Northeast Ohio wedding florist, hands down!
If you see Sandy, tell her Alysse from Ready to Stare sent you!