When I started Alcott Weddings and Events 10 years ago, I met the lovely Carole from Tuckshop Flowers and knew her work would be an amazing fit for our couples. Quirky, elegant and natural!

Personally I think flowers absolutely make the space of a marquee or tipi come alive and there are other areas where you need flowers for bridesmaids, pinholes, in hair, perhaps for your pet…

When I finally got married myself in 2022 there was no other florist to go to but the lovely Carole and the pictures from the big day were incredible!

Read about Carole’s experience of Alcott Weddings & Events and see her fabulous blog for lots of inspiration on choosing a wedding florist.

"Ten years ago, about two years into my flower growing business, I started to offer floristry and wedding flowers. New to the industry, I had a lot to learn about the local wedding scene but I knew that there was a growing market for my natural, garden-gathered style flowers.

When I was contacted by a bride who told me that she was having a marquee ceremony and reception at Alcott Weddings, I had to Google it to find out where it was and what kind of 'feel' the place might lend itself to. I was amazed to find that this new-to-me wedding venue, set in the rolling countryside, was just 6 miles down the road from my own urban South Birmingham location on the edge of Bournville! That felt like serendipity, so I put on my self-employed big-girl pants and picked up the phone to Lucy to ask it we could meet up as our businesses seemed such a natural fit.

I remember going up the farm drive to meet Lucy for the first time on a sunny weekday and thinking how beautiful the setting was. Arriving in the livery yard car park I was met by a friendly labrador and curious horses and made a mental note that this might be a good source of fertiliser for my flowers!! Sitting down with Lucy in her cosy cottage, I showed her a photo book of my flowers and explained that I wanted to offer more seasonal, eco-friendly locally grown blooms. These days I couldn't keep up with printing photo books and have long since gone on to develop an extensive online gallery on my website! Like me, Lucy was a newcomer to the world of weddings, so we found that we had a lot in common - especially our enthusiasm for doing them differently and offering choice to couples who wanted to do weddings in their own unique ways.

I was delighted when Lucy suggested making me a recommended supplier for Alcott Weddings and for more than a decade it's been fun to flower up some of her wedding showcase events and capture photos of these for her (I chuckled to see that it's my photo of Lucy that you'll find on her 'About' page!). I've worked with so many Alcott couples since Lucy and I first met and am always intrigued to know what ideas will pop up as a wedding theme. I think one of the most memorable is still 'Pugh Fest' - a glorious tipi wedding celebrating the fact that Hayley and Scott had met at Glastonbury. (See more here. **). There are so many happy memories associated with weddings at Alcott - whether its dropping off buckets of flowers for couples and their friends to busily DIY their table flowers on the final day before the wedding, doing full set ups for bespoke wedding flowers, or whether it's turning up the day after huge wedding celebrations to collect my milk churns and arches and finding rather dazed and happy people gingerly sipping their first coffees.

It's been fun to watch Tuckshop Flowers and Alcott Weddings grow and develop alongside each other, and it was a real joy to flower up Lucy's own wedding and to play a small part in her big day when she and Paul FINALLY got married! I'm so glad that I took the initiative to contact her for a chat all those years ago."

10 top tips for choosing a wedding florist