Hanno & Madeli

Coral and peach wedding flowers, starting with a mood board

Madeli’s first message came in July 2025, eight months before the wedding, with images and a mood board attached. She wrote in Afrikaans. The pictures did most of the talking anyway.

Josie reads a mood board the way you might read a letter from an old friend, looking for what sits underneath. These pictures were full of warm colour, coral and peach and soft pink, and the shapes were loose: flowers that looked gathered rather than arranged. Nothing stiff, nothing too tidy. It is a style we love, and it suits an early autumn wedding, when the afternoon light turns long and gold.

“I love the colours and the style you are going for,” Josie wrote back. When the date was booked later that month, she wrote again: “We are so happy that you have chosen us to do your flowers.” She meant both lines completely.

Coral and peach wedding flowers can go two ways. Too much peach and the whole thing turns sugary. Too much coral and it starts to shout. The answer is usually in the supporting flowers: a deeper pink to give the eye somewhere to rest, a little white for light, and something stronger to hold it all down, a red, say, or a run of orange roses. Madeli would find that stronger note herself, a few months later, in a very particular shade of red, with peachy dahlias sitting between the peach and the red.

Wedding table flowers in footed vases

In February, less than four weeks before the wedding, Antoinette, who was helping Madeli plan, sent through the updated notes. “The main change is that she decided on arrangements in pots on the tables instead of the long low arrangements.” Madeli followed it with a video on WhatsApp so we could see exactly what she had in mind.

Josie was away at a wedding in Tulbagh that week. By 26 February the new plan was confirmed. Footed vases were ordered for the guest tables, and on the rectangular tables the arrangements were shaped oblong so they followed the line of the table. Still loose and lovely. Nothing clipped into a dome.

This is a change we see often, and we welcome it. Long, low runners read as one continuous line down a room. Flowers raised on a foot give each table its own moment and leave space to see the person sitting opposite. Neither is right or wrong. It depends on the room, and on how a couple want their guests to feel when they sit down. Our ideas for wedding table flowers walk through both.

On 2 March the guest tables got their final adjustment: a little blue and a little white worked through the coral and peach. The canapé table was to have no blue at all. On the day, the guest table flower arrangements held open orange tulips, ivory roses, blush dahlias, bronze chrysanthemums and cosmos, with a spire of blue delphinium and rust amaranthus hanging over the lip of the vase toward the cloth.

Arch to top table at one of the Somerset West wedding venues we love

Guests were due at half past three for a four o’clock ceremony. Our aim for this wedding was simple: everything finished at least 45 minutes before the first guest arrived. Nobody should walk into their friends’ wedding past a florist with a bucket.

The plan for the ceremony arch had grown since October, with flowers on each side and a little blue through them, and after the vows the arch flowers were to be lifted and carried inside to be used again in the venue. Ceremony flowers deserve a second life.

At the welcome sign, which read “Hanno & Madeli, Maart 2026”, the flowers sat on the ground at the foot of the easel rather than on top of it, built high on one side and lower on the other, as if they had grown there. The signing table was planned with its own small arrangement in the bridal bouquet colours.

Inside, the bridal table had grown too. Two large flower arrangements stood at either end, one on each side of the couple, and they were allowed to fall, greenery and amaranthus trailing down to the floor. Behind them were white arched panels, candles, a chandelier and rattan pendants. The cake was planned with a garland of flowers with some white in it.

The best photograph from the day is of Hanno and Madeli laughing at that table, between the two arrangements. We did not make them laugh. We like to think we gave them a lovely place to do it.