Shaking up Wedding Flowers - Saint Floral

With a flurry of shiny new (and repeat, but equally as shiny) exhibitors to excitedly tell you about, we're interviewing Premium Exhibitors and Sponsors to give you the inside scoop on why they do what they do, and why they're so brilliant at it. Usually, they're a Q&A, where we pick their wonderful brains.

However, Hannah from the heaven-sent Saint Floral likes to do things a bit differently - and what better way to show how she absolutely shines than in her very own words?

Hello Most Curious couples, brides and grooms to-be! My name is Hannah Agnes Antmann and I am the creative hands and curious mind behind Saint Floral; a dream-like botanical realm and a platform to tell stories with flowers.

By definition; Saint Floral is a creative floral design studio specialising in carefully-curated wedding & event flowers, with an ethereal, romantic and artful aesthetic. My mission: to tell stories of romance through inspired, seasonal and curious bridal bouquets, floral displays and ceremony installations in cool and characterful spaces.

My love for all things botanical and a curiosity to further experience and explore their natural beauty stemmed from an early age. Drawing on childhood memories of my inquisitve 8 year-old self, sitting amongst the garden roses and fragrant lilacs, muddying my finest pair of gingham dungarees and curly red locks in an attempt to pick n'sniff, nurture and save them in their entirety before they made their way to 'compost corner'. I revered them for their colours, scent and fragility way back then for they posed as a subject matter for my 'still-life study' art homework.

Flowers continued to be my muse, my curiosity, my fascination, as I studied my way through art school, analysing the ways in which their singular forms, colours and nuances played a role in creating drama, romance and mood. 17th century Dutch floral paintings, archived V&A museum floral textiles, Georgia O'Keefe watercolours and my own still-life studies were just some of my inspiration sources.

Flirting with florals once more as I immersed myself a in fashion buying role, revisiting seasonal botanicals and noting an inspirational pull towards Alexander McQueen's darkly rich and sultry floral brocades to Valentino's ethereal, gilded floral organza silks. It was their storytelling element I loved, through floral theatre, whimsical styling and their other-worldly concepts which played on my own imagination.

I was yearning to tell my own stories with flowers; to pay homage to both their singular and collaborative beauty that I had already witnessed first hand. I wanted to create something visually beautiful with them, that could transcend people and places...lo and behold I discovered the world of floral design! It seemed quite the organic match.

I set to study floral art and design at Tallulah Rose Flower School in Bath, an institution that breeds it success on embracing the wild and natural way and play with flowers. I quickly developed a distinctive floral style that is fast trending and attracting today's modern brides looking for something different; combining soft and blowsy blooms with whimsical textures in mainly 'antique' but often rich colour palettes. Spending time around daily turnarounds of flowers, I sought to capture and embrace their fleeting beauty. From bud, bloom and decay, I wanted to capture their magical processes and tell their romantic stories in my bouquets and arrangements. This organically paved the way to create beautiful, curious wedding flowers, and soon enough, Saint Floral was born!

Wedding flowers are a pure joy to create. They welcome opportunities to embrace sentiment, season, scent, nostalgia and romance. These are signature elements I endeavour to lace through Saint Floral bouquets, ceremony flowers and tablescapes, for they tell their own stories and fill spaces with enchanting character.

Meeting my brides to-be; listening to their stories, visions and sifting through collated floral imagery, bridal textiles and inspiring wedding publications is a part of the floral process my brides and I love. More-so because my brides are reassured to expect an element of the unexpected, non-prescriptive and customised floral beauty.

Echoing flowers for their unpretence in nature, Saint Floral's flowers are curiously charming, full of natural movement, boasting the prettiest handpicked, fragrant tonal blooms, whimsical textures and seasonal foraged ingredients. Bouquet finishes range from sultry velvets to trailing antique silks. They are admired by Instagrammers, photographers, designers and brides for their rich, romantic and decorative appeal, something I hope will grab the attention of Most Curious couples!

The best part of my job? Watching the magic unfold when my flowers transcend a cermony space and seeing my brides light up when receiving their bouquets. I watch as they mesmerise, clutch closely and lean in to embrace their seasonal fragrance. It may be a fleeting moment but one of the best, and memorable! The majority of my brides have their bouquets sent off to be dried out fully so they can cherish them in their entirety. One of my recent brides said it was 'a work of art that I wanted to look at forever'. Wedding flowers don't have to be so fleeting...

Historical weddings, particularly in film, are often inspiration references for Saint Floral. Saint Floral is all about atmosphere, playing on the light and shade with flowers. Wedding scenes depicted in early silent films of the 20's and 30's had it all for me. Curious, dark and slightly haunting but always beautiful and mysterious. Clara Bow in 'Her Wedding Night'; her sultry demeanour, bias-cut silk gown, and her botanical headpiece that framed her trademark doe eyes. Joan Crawford's own wedding in 1929 to Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. Her ethereal starry lace and silk gown, her dramatic eyes and bouquet of roses and lashings of wild ferns. Considering I'm a fan of rich to delicate floral colour, it's the pairing of drama, bridal aesthetics and of course wedding florals that really tell the whole story, a picture I paint to all my bridal couples.

Most Curious couples, brides and grooms to-be identify themselves amongst the cool creatives. They have an eye for detail, character, fashionable trends and simply all things different when it comes to planning their wedding. Saint Floral's distinctive floral styling and design aesthetic certainly attracts today's modern and fashion-conscious couples, looking to wed in characterful spaces, scouting beautiful and edgy attire, and on-trend botanicals to match. I hope to bring floral beauty and exciting stories to the Most Curious couples, capturing their curious imagination along the way.

My approach to everything in life is with care and curiosity and my approach with brides and grooms-to be is relaxed, warm and welcoming. To the Most curious couples out there, I look forward to meeting you, transcending you and telling your wedding story through flowers, the Saint Floral way.

Hannah. X

Catch Hannah at A Most Curious Wedding Fair on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of March 2018 at the Old Truman Brewery - grab your tickets here