How to Make Bold Wedding Flowers Look Elegant: A Haddo House Real Wedding

Heather's bouquet

Bold, bright flowers aren’t just for summer garden parties, when designed thoughtfully, they can feel completely at home in the most elegant of settings.

At Paper & Petals, we recently created vibrant floral arrangements for a wedding in the stunning Haddo House Chapel, and it proved that colour can be every bit as refined as white and blush. Here’s how we made it work, and how you can embrace bold blooms for your own wedding day.

1. Start with a Cohesive Colour Story

When couples think “bright,” they sometimes picture a rainbow of unrelated shades. The secret to making bold flowers look elegant is to create a colour family rather than a random mix.

For this wedding, we drew from a palette inspired by the stained glass in Haddo Chapel, repeating certain colours across bouquets, centrepieces, and ceremony flowers. This kept everything connected, even with a wide variety of shades in play.

Tip for couples: Choose a colour family, for example, jewel tones or playful brights, to keep variety without chaos.

2. Consider the Venue’s Architecture

Urn displays and bud vases in Haddo Chapel

Haddo House Chapel has beautiful high ceilings, and it was important to design arrangements that suited the scale of the space. Elevated, statement designs helped draw the eye upwards and filled the room without overpowering it.

Large-scale florals not only matched the grandeur of the setting, but also created an atmosphere of drama and celebration from the moment guests walked in.

Tip for couples: Always match your flower scale to your venue. A small arrangement can disappear in a large hall, while grand pieces can overwhelm a more intimate room.

Bridesmaids in assorted dresses

3. Work with, Not Against, the Bridal Party

The bridesmaids all wore dresses in different colours, a beautiful, personality-filled choice that made it even more important for the flowers to stand out.

We introduced a wide mix of colours so no bouquet would blend into a dress, ensuring each bridesmaid’s blooms complemented her look while still tying the group together. The flowers became the unifying detail, connecting the varied outfits into one harmonious aesthetic.

Tip for couples: If your bridal party outfits vary in colour or style, your flowers can be the thread that ties everything together.

4. Keep the Styling Elegant

Bold colour works best when the shapes and styling remain clean and intentional. In this design, we used balanced arrangements, thoughtful repetition of certain flowers, and structured bouquet shapes to keep the look refined. Bride Heather also noted she wanted larger headed blooms rather than lots of little flowers, leading by a more modern design.

Tip for couples: Think of bold flowers like a statement outfit, classic tailoring makes even the most colourful fabric look sophisticated.

5. Choose Blooms with Personality

Every flower in this wedding was chosen for impact, texture, or romance, from velvety dahlias to classic roses, delicate clematis, and unique seasonal stems. Mixing textures and shapes added depth, ensuring the flowers were captivating from every angle.

Tip for couples: Combine flowers with different forms and textures to add sophistication to any palette.

Bold Can Still Be Timeless

When planned with care, bold flowers are joyful, memorable, and deeply elegant. This Haddo House wedding was living proof, a celebration that felt vibrant yet completely in harmony with its grand surroundings.

If you’re dreaming of wedding flowers that burst with colour while keeping an air of sophistication, we’d love to create something beautiful for you.

Photos by Scott Arlow Photography | Aberdeen Wedding Photography