Welcome to Part 2 of the Wedding Bootcamp recap! As I mentioned in my last post, hosting a Floralpreneur® Workshop with a commitment to foam free designs and a balance of business strategies has been a privilege and a proud accomplishment over the last 3 years! In all of the work we’ve done, not one piece of floral foam has been used. The reason for this is simple: if we can work more sustainably as floral designers, I believe we should!
I love learning and sharing new foam free techniques because it can truly be quite simple to reduce our environmental impact by cutting out single use plastics in our work. And when I can use the same simple mechanics in more than one way, I am really winning! Here you can see how we used the floral table runners above (from Part 1 of our Wedding Bootcamp recap) to create a foam free arbor design. We just placed the designs in boxes and marched them over to the arbor with a step stool and a few floral tools.
It was a beautiful spring day here in Vermont and we enjoyed the time outside to set everything up and enjoy the views of our work! We used Holly Chapple eggs, water tubes and bind wire to attach each arrangement to the arbor–so all of these mechanics could be reused if you want. Lori and I placed the first two pieces and then everyone jumped in to add a personal touch!
One of our reusable mechanics included these water tubes on bamboo skewers that I made in a workshop with Hitomi Gilliam several years ago. Sometimes the finer details on our mechanics can transform them into something that adds value to the design! As you can see below, another foam free flower design tip I share often is to mist your flowers with water. That’s why I gifted everyone with a 3-second mister to help encourage good flower hydration.
We’re a good looking group, aren’t we?! You can hardly tell that we’d been working hard for the last few days! (Although thanks to our wonderful hosts at The Round Barn we were eating quite well, too!)
In addition to the centerpiece designs and arbor decor that we made on Day 2 of our Wedding Bootcamp, our students created hand-tied bouquets, cascade bouquets, wearable flowers and floral crowns on Day 1, which Isora Lithgow Creations captured in the images below, too! Each student used their time to explore something they’d never made before or wanted to just experiment with. Every designer’s work is unique, though we did work with recipes and price out our designs.
A tremendous thanks again to all of our students and to my co-teacher, Lori Bley of The Hidden Daisy and her fantastic assistant designer, Kollin. We’re a great team and this was a truly special experience for everyone who attended!
A successful workshop requires so many tiny details coming together and it was an absolute pleasure to get to do this with you! I’m kicking around an agenda for 2026, so let’s plan to meet up again for another memorable floral gathering at The Round Barn. I’ll see you here!
xo. -Alison Ellis
