Rockhaven Farm Wedding Flowers, Elgin

Their story

A Rockhaven Farm wedding in every colour at once

Fabulous Flowers & Gifts did the flowers for Jodi and Wes’s Rockhaven Farm wedding in Elgin on Saturday, 2 July 2022, with the ceremony in the boathouse, canapés on the deck and the reception in the barn. For this Rockhaven Farm wedding, Josie van Aswegen planned bold, mixed colourful flowers throughout: a spiral of flowers around three pillars at the ceremony, eleven hanging baskets above the reception, and a long bridal table arrangement of sunflowers, orchids and roses. The photographs show that bridal table, its greenery trailing toward the floor, and a hanging basket on cream rope.

Jodi’s brief for her Rockhaven Farm wedding flowers was colour rather than a single colour theme, kept “classy and tasteful”, with sunflowers and pincushion proteas as her two must-haves. Josie van Aswegen planned the day with her after a site visit to the farm on 25 January 2022, added olive leaves from Rockhaven to the ceremony plan, and suggested about twenty tea lights per table in place of fairy lights. It is one of our favourite colourful wedding flowers stories, and a good example of how an out-of-town wedding venue near Cape Town can be dressed from our Claremont studio.

I · January 2022

Colourful wedding flowers, with one rule: classy, not carnival

Most brides arrive with a colour. Jodi’s first email, on 13 January 2022, said something we have rarely read and have not forgotten.

She did not want a single colour theme. She wanted colour. Bright and bold, she said, but classy and tasteful, and not a carnival. Two flowers were non-negotiable from the start: sunflowers and pincushion proteas. And then the line that tells a florist how much a wedding is going to ask of them: “The flowers are super important to me and I’d love them to be a main part of the wedding decor.”

A brief like that is harder than it sounds. White weddings are forgiving, because every white flower agrees with every other. Colour has to be managed. The skill is in giving every colour a neighbour it likes, and enough green between them for the whole thing to breathe.

Jodi’s must-haves helped. Sunflowers bring warmth and a big, open face. Pincushion proteas bring that fiery, spiky orange the Cape grows so well. Together they set the temperature of the wedding, warm and a little wild.

Twelve days later, Josie was standing in the venue with her. A brief like this needs the room in front of you.

Jodi raises a glass with friends in matching floral robes, bright pink flowers in their hair, on the morning of her Rockhaven Farm wedding — Colour, from the first toast

“I’d like the colour theme to be colour”
Jodi, January 2022

Jodi and Wes walk hand in hand down a gravel farm road between the orchards at Rockhaven Farm in Elgin — The farm, walked before anything was drawn

II · 25 January 2022

A Rockhaven Farm wedding, planned on the farm itself

On 25 January Josie went out to Rockhaven Farm in Elgin to walk the spaces with Jodi and her family. A boathouse for the ceremony. A deck for the canapés. A barn for the reception. Three rooms with three different moods, all needing to feel like one wedding.

The next day Josie wrote back, full of love for the venue: “your wedding is going to be beautiful.” Then the plan, and it was a big one.

In the boathouse, a spiral of flowers would wind around three pillars, with a macramé hanging on the window and a flower garland laid along its top. Two barrel arrangements would stand at the ceremony entrance and be moved to the reception afterwards. On the deck, an arrangement for the canapés, and something small on a table resting on two barrels. Persian carpets from the venue’s store room would go down for the ceremony.

In the barn, the flowers would go up rather than out: eleven large hanging baskets, very colourful and trailing. On the tables, bottles of different heights with small arrangements and no tall stands. Across the front of the bridal table, one long arrangement dropping to the floor at the sides. Even the round table in the bathrooms would have flowers.

Josie closed with a line we love: “Enjoy every minute this build up to your special day.” A plan this size is why we walk a venue before we draw anything. It is the same thinking behind our flower installations in any space.

III · February 2022

Hanging flower baskets for a barn wedding

On 1 February Jodi replied. “I absolutely love your ideas and am happy to go ahead.” About the hanging baskets she was even more certain.

She made two changes, and both were good ones. The table runners went. In their place, petals and penny gum leaves scattered straight onto the tables, looser and more like a garden. And the baskets would hang from the wire in the barn roof on cream rope, so they looked like macramé plant holders, in keeping with the macramé ideas in her décor plans.

Hanging flowers change a room more than almost anything else a florist can do. In a barn they bring colour down to eye level, so guests sit surrounded by it. In the photographs, one basket overflows with a sunflower, pink roses, blue hydrangea, orange blooms and hanging trails of purple and green, the cream rope running up into the rafters.

Baskets need strong fixing points and trailing material that falls rather than sprawls. Rockhaven’s roof wire gave us the first. Hydrangeas give the basket its body. Roses and sunflowers give it faces. Trails give it movement.

On 3 February Josie suggested one more change: about twenty tea lights on each table instead of fairy lights. Tea lights light faces, not ceilings, and on a winter evening in a brick barn that was the right call. Our guide to wedding table flowers covers more of this thinking.

Hanging flower basket for a barn wedding at Rockhaven Farm on cream rope, with a sunflower, pink roses, blue hydrangea and trailing purple flowers — A hanging basket on cream rope, made to look like macramé

“This sounds absolutely stunning!”
Jodi, February 2022

Jodi with her bridesmaids in green floral dresses, each holding a small colourful bouquet, on the gravel drive at Rockhaven Farm — Colourful, smaller, and made to match

IV · February to April 2022

A sunflower wedding, without sunflowers in the bouquet

For the bouquet, Josie made a suggestion that might surprise you at a sunflower wedding. Rather than sunflowers in the bride’s bouquet, she proposed a bouquet that “falls down a little”, a softer, trailing shape. Sunflowers have big, heavy, forward-facing heads. In a cascade they can look like they are staring at the camera. On tables and in baskets they are glorious.

Jodi’s reference picture had penny gum in it, and she was not a fan of baby’s breath. Penny gum means movement and soft silver-green. No baby’s breath means no filler for the sake of filler. Every stem in the bouquet would have to earn its place. Our notes on choosing the perfect bouquet start from exactly that kind of detail.

In April the details for the bridal party came in. The bridesmaids would carry colourful, smaller versions of Jodi’s bouquet, with no sunflowers. The groomsmen would wear colourful buttonholes, again without sunflowers, each a little different from Wes’s so that his stood out. Her dad would have a buttonhole to match.

There would be flowers in the hair for the bridesmaids and for both mothers, and a colourful flower crown in the same palette. It is a lovely thing to do at a colourful wedding, carrying the flowers off the tables and into the family photographs. If you want to try one yourself, here is how to make a flower crown.

On 2 February Josie had written: “I am so excited to be doing your flowers. Thank you so much for trusting me with this.” By April, she had another reason to be excited. On the 19th she sent her RSVP. She would be at the wedding as a guest, too.

“I am so excited to not only share the day with you but to be doing the flower decor for your special day.”
Josie, April 2022

V · 2 July 2022

A winter wedding at an Elgin wedding venue: boathouse, deck and barn

A July wedding in Elgin is a winter wedding. The light goes early and colour has to work hard indoors, which is why so much of the plan was built for the boathouse and the barn.

The ceremony was planned for the boathouse, with flowers spiralling around three pillars, Persian carpets on the floor, flowers on the macramé backdrop and a vine spiralling up the lectern. Olive leaves, offered by Liz at the farm, were to be picked straight from Rockhaven. There is something right about using a venue’s own leaves.

In the barn, the photographs show the bridal table exactly as Josie described it in January. A long wooden trestle in a brick room, bulb lights hanging overhead, and a run of flowers across the front: magenta orchids, sunflowers, bright pink bougainvillea, peach roses, deep red roses, orange alstroemeria and yellow solidago, with greenery trailing down to the concrete floor at both ends. Tea lights glow in glass behind it.

Look closely at that table and you can see the colour rule in action. The magenta sits next to the pink. The orange sits next to the yellow. The sunflowers hold the middle. Long arms of green run between every group, so no two strong colours fight. Bold and calm at once, which is what Jodi asked for in her first email.

Above the tables, the plan had eleven baskets hanging on their cream rope, and the photographs show one of them, full and trailing. Below them, petals and penny gum leaves were planned along the tables between bottles of small flowers, with multicoloured petals waiting in a basket for the confetti. And Josie, who had RSVP’d back in April, was on the guest list.

Jodi laughs as she holds Wes’s hands during their ceremony at Rockhaven Farm, bright flowers at the end of the aisle in the foreground — Vows under the timber roof

Wes lifts Jodi among the olive trees at Rockhaven Farm in Elgin, a pink flower in her hair — The photographs said the rest

VI · March 2023

What colourful wedding flowers look like in the photographs

In March 2023, eight and a half months after the wedding, a short email arrived. “Hi Josie! Find our wedding pics attached :) x”

That was all. The photographs said the rest.

Colour photographs differently from white. In Jodi’s pictures you can pick out every bloom on that bridal table from across the room, and the basket shot reads almost like a painting, sunflower yellow and hydrangea blue against a pale ceiling.

Couples sometimes worry that a colourful wedding will date. Colour dates far less than fuss does, and Jodi’s wedding had none. It had a clear idea, kept faithfully from January to July.

Looking back, the whole wedding grew from one sentence in one email. The colour theme was colour. Everything else, the baskets, the barrels, the tea lights and the olive leaves, was simply us listening. If that sounds like your kind of wedding, our wedding flowers page is where to begin.

Jodi and Wes leave their Rockhaven Farm ceremony through a shower of multicoloured petals, bridesmaids in green floral dresses holding bright bouquets on either side — Out through the petals

Macramé ceremony backdrop topped with a garland of sunflowers and magenta and purple flowers on the brick wall at Rockhaven Farm, Jodi and Wes standing before it

Wine barrel arrangement of magenta orchids, blue hydrangea, sunflowers and orange blooms with trailing eucalyptus at Rockhaven Farm, Elgin

Barrel of colourful wedding flowers and eucalyptus beneath hanging flower baskets and bulb lights in the barn at Rockhaven Farm

Detail of colourful barn wedding flowers on the Rockhaven Farm bridal table: magenta orchids, sunflowers, peach roses and trailing greenery

The flowers

Jodi and Wes’s wedding flowers, as planned, piece by piece

Bridal bouquet: A colourful bouquet that “falls down a little”, with penny gum and no baby’s breath.
Bridesmaids: Colourful, smaller versions of the bride’s bouquet, with no sunflowers.
Buttonholes: Colourful for the groomsmen, each a little different from Wes’s so his stood out, with a matching buttonhole for Jodi’s dad.
Hair flowers and crown: Flowers in the hair for the bridesmaids and both mothers, and a colourful flower crown.
Ceremony: Flowers spiralling around three pillars in the boathouse, on the macramé backdrop and up the lectern.
Ceremony entrance: Two barrel arrangements, planned to move to the reception afterwards.
Canapé deck: An arrangement for the deck and something small on a table resting on two barrels.
Hanging baskets: Eleven large, colourful, trailing baskets planned for the barn roof wire on cream rope, like macramé holders. One appears in the photographs.
Bridal table: One long arrangement across the front, dropping to the floor at the sides.
Guest tables: Bottles of different heights with small arrangements, petals and penny gum leaves, and about twenty tea lights per table.
Barrels and bathrooms: Barrel arrangements at the bar, either side of the bridal table and the door, and flowers on the round table in the bathrooms.
Confetti: A basket of multicoloured petals.

Sunflower yellowMagentaBougainvillea pinkOrangeLavenderLeaf green

In the mix

Bridal table and hanging baskets: sunflowers, magenta phalaenopsis orchids, pink bougainvillea, red, peach and pink roses, purple lisianthus, orange alstroemeria, bronze and red chrysanthemums, blue hydrangea, pink snapdragons, yellow solidago and hanging green amaranthus, with trailing vines. Guest tables: petals and penny gum leaves. Olive leaves picked from the farm.

The barn at Rockhaven Farm in Elgin, with exposed brick walls and bulb lights above a long reception table of laughing guests and bright flowers

The place

Rockhaven Farm wedding venue, Elgin

Rockhaven Farm sits in the Elgin Valley, in the Overberg, about an hour from Cape Town over Sir Lowry’s Pass. It is a family-run working farm growing apples, pears and even hydrangeas, with mountain, lake and orchard backdrops, and it seats up to 140 guests. For a wedding it offers three very different spaces: a boathouse for the ceremony, a deck for canapés and a barn for the reception. In the photographs the barn has exposed brick walls, bulb lights strung from the roof and long wooden trestle tables. It is one of the more characterful country venues in our guide to wedding venues around Cape Town.

The barn’s roof wire is what makes hanging flowers possible here, and it is worth asking any barn venue early what their fixing points are and how much weight they take. Brick and timber suit strong colour, because there is no white wall for bright flowers to glare against. Long trestles suit arrangements that run along the front and drop to the floor.

The venue’s store room holds Persian carpets, used for this ceremony, and the farm makes its own olive oil. Ask what a venue already has before you hire anything in.

Practically, an Elgin wedding means an early start from our Claremont studio, and in winter, set-up should finish while there is still good daylight. We plan event flowers outside the city this way as a matter of course, and for gifts on the way, our Somerset West flower delivery covers the towns at the foot of the pass.

FloralsFabulous Flowers & Gifts, Claremont (Josie van Aswegen, since 1999)

VenueRockhaven Farm, Elgin

NoteJodi is a friend of the Fabulous Flowers family.

Planning notes

Planning barn wedding flowers in every colour: what this wedding taught us

Give every colour a neighbour
A rainbow brief works when strong colours are grouped with ones they suit: magenta with pink, orange with yellow, and green running between every group. That is how Jodi’s bridal table stayed bold without looking like a carnival.
Put the sunflowers where they shine
Sunflowers are wonderful on tables and in baskets, where their big faces read from across the room. In a trailing bridal bouquet they can feel heavy, which is why Josie suggested a softer shape for Jodi. See our sunflower bouquets for how they work best.
Hang flowers if the room is tall
In a barn, hanging baskets bring colour down to where guests are sitting. Check the venue’s fixing points first. At Rockhaven the baskets hung from the roof wire on cream rope, which doubled as a macramé detail.
Swap fairy lights for tea lights
Josie suggested about twenty tea lights per table for a low, warm glow that flatters both the flowers and the faces. On a winter night in a brick barn, candles at table height do more than lights in the roof.
Use the farm’s own leaves
Olive leaves picked at Rockhaven were planned for the ceremony flowers. Ask your venue what grows there. A few local leaves tie your flowers to the place.

Gallery

Groomsmen in braces and bow ties wearing colourful buttonholes on the gravel drive at Rockhaven Farm

Wes kisses Jodi during their ceremony at Rockhaven Farm, guests smiling behind them

Jodi and Wes rest their foreheads together among the olive trees at Rockhaven Farm, a pink flower in her hair

Good to know

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a Cape Town florist do flowers for a Rockhaven Farm wedding in Elgin?

Yes, Fabulous Flowers did the flowers for Jodi and Wes’s Rockhaven Farm wedding in Elgin on 2 July 2022, working from our Claremont studio about an hour away. Josie van Aswegen visited the farm on 25 January 2022 to plan the boathouse, deck and barn. For out-of-town weddings we plan travel, set-up time and timing around the venue, so everything is finished before guests arrive.

How do you hang flower baskets at a barn wedding?

Hanging flower baskets at a barn wedding are hung from fixing points that can carry their weight, so check with your venue first. At Jodi and Wes’s Rockhaven Farm wedding, Fabulous Flowers planned eleven large baskets to hang from the barn roof wire on cream rope, made to look like macramé holders. Each basket should hang level, with trailing flowers and greenery that fall rather than spread.

How do you make colourful wedding flowers look classy?

Colourful wedding flowers look classy when strong colours are grouped with ones they suit and plenty of greenery runs between them, so the eye has somewhere to rest. Keep a few hero flowers, such as sunflowers or proteas, and build around them. Jodi’s brief for Rockhaven Farm in July 2022 asked for bright and bold but tasteful, and Fabulous Flowers found that balance through careful grouping rather than fewer colours.

Can you have sunflowers at a winter wedding in the Western Cape?

Yes, Jodi and Wes had sunflowers at their winter wedding at Rockhaven Farm in Elgin on 2 July 2022, in both the bridal table arrangement and the hanging baskets. Winter supply can vary, so your florist should confirm closer to the day. Sunflowers work beautifully in table runs and baskets, where their large faces can be seen from across the room.

What wedding table flowers work in a barn?

Low wedding table flowers work best in a barn, especially small arrangements in bottles of different heights, with petals or leaves scattered along the table and tea lights between them. At Rockhaven Farm in July 2022, Jodi and Wes’s guest tables were planned with small arrangements in bottles, petals, penny gum leaves and about twenty tea lights each, with no tall stands to block conversation.

What does the Rockhaven Farm wedding venue offer for flowers?

Rockhaven Farm in Elgin gives couples three spaces to dress with flowers: the boathouse for the ceremony, the deck for canapés and the barn for the reception. The venue seats up to 140 guests and supplies its own tables, chairs, crockery and glasses, so flowers can be planned around what is already there. The barn’s roof wire allows hanging flowers. For Jodi and Wes in July 2022, Fabulous Flowers planned two ceremony barrel arrangements to move to the barn afterwards.

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If your colour theme is colour, send us your must-haves, your venue and the one sentence that sums up your day. We will build the flowers around all three.

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