Confetti

As wedding and events florists we are lucky enough to be sent a huge number of wedding photos. We love seeing them all but we often notice that the most joyful and natural photo of the big day is the 'confetti shot'. There is something about throwing hands full of glorious dried petals at your friends and loved ones which, apparently, brings out the inner child in many of us. Because of the resultant mess it makes, most venues will not allow the throwing of any confetti except dried petal confetti - this is not a problem though, because, as confetti experts, we believe dried petal confetti is the very best confetti you can get!!

As flower growers we use most of our blooms to make our wild and romantic wedding arrangements but, in an effort to use all our hard grown flowers, we also make dried petal and flowers confetti.

We have learnt a thing or two about confetti over the years; the first one seems to be that when it comes to buying confetti it is difficult to decide what to buy and, in particular, how much, so this is our quick guide to buying confetti

1. throw your colour scheme out of the window - lots of different, bright colours make the best confetti photos as the colours show against even the palest dresses (bride!)

2. chose a mix that has a mixture of sizes of petal so that they fall at differing speeds giving a longer 'in the air' time. The smaller petals are the slowest to fall and give a lovely fluttering.

3. Buy your confetti a couple of months in advance and keep it in a safe place in the dark - the colours fade in daylight so back of the wardrobe is ideal.

4. we find a basket is the best way to hand round the confetti - this enables committed throwers to take a couple of hands full. Some prefer cones but it leaves a lot of litter to be dealt with and there is always so much left over as no one takes more than 1 cone - don't give yourself an extra headache - stick to baskets!

5 men don't/wont  throw confetti! There are, of course, many exceptions but most men seem reluctant to grab and throw the way women do - encourage the men in your life and party to join in!

6 to work out how much you need 1 litre of dried petal confetti gives roughly 12 hands full of confetti. In our experience about 1/2 of your guests will throw confetti so if you have 100 guests buy confetti for 50 of them.You will get 50 hands full from just over 4 litres so round down sightly and buy 4 litres of dried petal confetti.

7. tell your photographer that the confetti shot is important to you so they can direct the count down to throwing!

Hopefully these 7 tips will help on your confetti quest. Look for confetti on our website www.thecountrygardencompany.co.uk or in our etsy shop - little bee and the owl.