14 Oct Complete Guide to Picking Your Adventure Elopement Florals
October 14, 2022
Adventure elopements + hand-crafted floral arrangements: one of our favorite combinations. Adventure elopements come with a plethora of different variables than traditional weddings, from unpredictable weather, to outdoor hikes, to colorful landscapes & more. We’ve created this guide to adventure elopement florals to help you choose the right flowers for your adventure elopement – enjoy!
Our Top 6 Adventure Elopement Floral Tips
When it comes to having an adventure elopement, there are significantly more factors you have to take into account when planning your logistics: weather, the details of any hikes you’ll be taking, what you’ll pack in your backpack, etc. This means there’s more to plan for when it comes to your adventure elopement flowers, since you won’t be getting married at a venue where you can simply set your massive bouquet down on the table when you don’t want to carry it.
Here are our top 5 adventure elopement floral tips to ensure you pick the right flowers for your elopement day, and that you’re prepared for the logistics of bringing flowers/bouquets along on your adventure elopement!
1. Tell your florist you’ll be hiking with your elopement flowers
First off, it’s incredibly important to inform your florist that you’ll be hiking, or at the very least exploring the great outdoors, with your flowers.
For couples that are doing some degree of outdoor exploration for their elopement, we usually design something that’s not too big – you do not want to be carrying around a heavy bouquet all day, especially if you’ll be exerting physical effort doing something such as hiking. You want it to be hardy enough to be handled quite a bit, and to withstand any wind or rain you experience.
All-dried florals are always an option we love, if you’d like to ensure your flowers don’t wilt if you run into extreme weather – they will stay looking natural & beautiful throughout the whole day (or the weekend, if you’re having a full weekend celebration)!
2. Prepare to carry your bouquet comfortably and/or secure it somehow
One of the most important things to take into consideration when investing in adventure elopement florals is how you’re going to carry them on your hike/during your outdoor elopement. The first step is to make sure your florist designs the base of the bouquet in a way that is easy for you to hold, grip, & carry.
If you’ll be hiking, you’ll want to ensure that your bouquet can be easily secured to the outside of your backpack when you don’t want to hold them, using items such as carabiners & bungee cords, or similar straps that you can tightly secure.
We pack our bouquets in a vase, safely given to our couples in a small box. This can easily be carried as-is, with the tissue tucked in the box helping to protect the flowers.
3. Keep the weather in mind
Pretty please keep the weather in mind to ensure your elopement florals stay as beautiful as possible! This is crucial if you’ll be eloping in the summer, with the sun shining down on you all day: keep your flowers in water as MUCH as possible to avoid them wilting quickly! You can do this by carrying your flowers in a small vase, or bringing bottles of water + a portable/foldable cup to fill up and put your flowers in whenever you’re not actively hiking.
On the day of your elopement, do not put your flowers directly in front of a blasting AC, but do keep your car cool – especially for longer drives.
4. Plan your flower pickup in advance for a stress-free elopement day
To ensure a smooth elopement day, we recommend picking your flowers up in advance to avoid any day-of stress!
If you pick your flowers up the day before your elopement, store them in a cool, dry place like a covered deck (if it’s cold outside at night) or ideally in a fridge (with no open food – this can cause a reaction that can brown the petals!).
If you pick up your flowers from us on the day of your elopement, we are usually available between 8:30am-5:30pm, and are super conveniently located right off the Mt. Baker highway on your way out to Glacier (many people stay in AirBnbs here), if you’re eloping in northwest WA!
5. Have your florist come on-site for large floral installations
Finally, if you’ve invested in any larger floral installations, you’ll want to have your florist come set it up on-site – at Noctua Florals, we require on-site setup for installations! This will save you so much time & stress, because you won’t have to worry about setting anything up yourself on the day-of.
Keep in mind that it takes a lot of time to carefully package and prep flowers + installations for safe transport, and that travel fees can be more if we are driving up to a trailhead or somewhere further into the mountains. We offer delivery for all orders starting at $150 + $1.50/mile, even if you aren’t having us set up a full installation!
How to Preserve Your Elopement Flowers After the Big Day
So you’ve spent all that hard-earned money on the most stunning florals for your elopement day – but now you’re wondering:
“Can we preserve our elopement flowers to last after our elopement day?”
Yes, you absolutely can! There are a few ways to preserve your elopement flowers to last long after the big day.
Bouquets can be hung upside down in a dry indoor space to be dried as a whole. Or, once they are dried, you can separate them + keep individual stems.
Pressing flowers is also a very simple + fun process. These can be framed + made into such a special art piece for your home.
There are some cool preservation companies (like Soil + Soul) out there, too – you can ship your bouquet to them + they have lots of fun products to choose from.
Specially Curated Elopement Flowers: Why We Care So Much
Now that you’re a bit more familiar with the importance of hiring the right florist, as well as the investment into florals, we want to share the heart behind why we do what we do, and why we believe flowers can have such an incredible impact on a couple’s elopement day.
There is really something special about tiny weddings and elopements. They tend to be really heartfelt and personal celebrations, focused on the love and ritual. Gathering with just your closest family and friends and exchanging intimate vows… it’s truly a beautiful thing. Bring all of this into the mountains, desert, ocean… it is truly a magical adventure!
Each year we design for a limited number of specially-curated weddings & events so that we can offer our clients our undivided energy & passion for our work. We work with each client to create an intimate, personalized atmosphere for the bridal party & guests alike to experience & enjoy. Using exclusively sustainable elements & our custom-grown flowers, we offer everything from bridal bouquets & boutonnieres, centerpieces, custom installations (arbors, floral chandeliers, etc.).
What Type of Floral Service to Invest in for Your Adventure Elopement
There are a variety of different types of floral services available to you for your elopement, from a la carte to full-service to Prix Fixe – but what do they all mean?
Here are a few examples of the types of floral services you can invest in for your elopement, depending on what you are looking for, using the services we specifically offer here at Noctua Florals!
A La Carte vs. Full-Service Flowers
We offer both A La Carte & Full-Service options for adventure elopements to ensure that couples are able to find the exact fit for their floral needs. Our A La Carte option (with a $500 minimum) was designed to be simple & easy, for couples who want the opportunity to work with an experienced floral designer, but also have the ability to customize their flower choices. This is the perfect option for couples who aren’t looking for an in-depth collection of floral pieces for their adventure elopement, and maybe only want a bridal bouquet & boutonnieres.
Our Full-Service option (with a $3500 minimum before tax/travel) is for couples who would like us to specially curate lavish designs for their elopement, from bridal bouquets & boutonnieres to table centerpieces, all the way to custom installations such as floral arbors & chandeliers. If you’d like to say your vows in front of a floral-accented arbor, or walk down the aisle with organic, earthy floral pieces on either side of you, this is the service for you! We bring your vision to life through extensive communication before your elopement, and we fully transport, set up, & break down the florals on the day-of to give you peace of mind knowing it’s all taken care of by professionals.
Explore your full-service options by reaching out to us here!
Prix Fixe Flowers for a Hands-Off Experience
Finally, if you’re feeling extra adventurous, you can put your full trust into our creative vision + ideas through our Prix Fixe floral option! This service is for couples who are seeking out the skill of a creative florist without the need to pick & choose or contribute to the ideas – they’d rather fully put their trust in a professional to ideate & bring to life a magnificent elopement vision through artful & seasonally inspired florals. Couples using this service will put their full trust in Noctua Florals to select the colors and flowers for their elopement, and will reap the benefits of botanical treasures from our flower farm and our most intentional work!
Read more about our unique Prix Fixe service here.
Real-Life Adventure Elopement Floral Inspiration
A stunning Mt. Baker adventure elopement
Before we wrap this up, we wanted to briefly highlight the story of the elopement you’ve been enjoying images of throughout this article! This lovely couple flew in from Texas with a small, intimate group of friends to celebrate their love in one of the most stunning mountain landscapes that Washington has to offer.
For this intimate Mt. Baker adventure elopement, we designed bouquets & centerpieces around a dreamy cream + honey color palette, which ended up coordinating perfectly with some incredible golden hour lighting they experienced. The handcrafted pieces incorporated many of our favorite blooms, including honey Dijon Garden roses, cosmos, Agrostemma, zinnias, Litchfield angel roses, sweet peas, yarrow, phlox campanula, and eucalyptus – all of which we were able to source locally! We also added a special couple stems of stunning white orchids to stand out in her bridal bouquet.
The couple enjoyed their stay in a Bellingham Airbnb with a woodsy backyard brunch – many of our couples stay in Bellingham, or head straight out to the Glacier/Deming area for a few nights in the forest before heading into the mountains for their elopement! We actually had so much snow this year that they had to change the location of their elopement at the last minute (gotta be flexible with Mother Nature!), but nevertheless it turned out beautifully.
After getting ready for their day, they drove up to the Artist Point area for a stunning ceremony in the snow, braving the rain and gloomy weather like total troopers. Once they’d exchanged their vows in front of the fog-covered mountains, they ventured back down the forest below the mountain tree line for some incredible rainforest photos in front of the rushing river water. They ended their day with a final celebration in the evening with their closest friends, sitting down at a beautifully-decorated table, highlighted by the organic, earthy centerpieces we created.
All in all, this gorgeous elopement was the perfect example of how even the most simple, minimalist florals can truly bring out the beauty of the landscape & nature surrounding you, and can add such an impact to any intimate dinner celebration!
We hope that this article helped you learn more about how to choose the right flowers for your adventure elopement, as well as the logistics of elopement florals. For more elopement floral inspiration, be sure to check out our blog, and contact us here if you’d like to learn more about working with Noctua Florals for your special day!