Being creative with flowers for a winter wedding can be a great way to express your winter theme. Clustering white carnations in a tight bundle suddenly makes a handful of simple stems turn in to an elegant bouquet that looks like fresh snowflakes. But you don't have to stick with winter whites either, almost any color can actually be shipped in by a florist from a greenhouse or different climate. However, this can sometimes be costly and lack the quality of fresh, local blooms. It is often the best idea to try to work with locally available flowers for a winter wedding.

Types of Winter Flowers

In order to have the best chance at a good, informed meeting with your floral designer, a bride should take the time to become familiar with what varieties of flowers are appropriate by season. At the very least, becoming familiar with favorite flower names and their colors is beneficial to understanding blue flowers may have sounded great in your head but really the shades are tough to match. There are some winter favorites a bride may want to consider which include orchids, amaryllises and nerines.

One of the most delicate, but elegant flower varieties is the orchids. These flowers are excellent choices for a winter wedding with beautiful, unique blossoms. There are common and exotic varieties that come in every shade of delicate pinks, purples, whites and greens. Some of the exotic varieties have spotted, striped and even bright lime green blossoms. They can be used for bouquets, single stems or corsages.

Large, long stemmed amaryllis blossoms are elegant and can stand alone as a bouquet without accent flowers. The vibrant red blooms are great alternatives to the traditional selections, particular bright red roses. The most common varieties come in reds, pinks and whites.

A less commonly used flowers for a winter wedding are nerine varieties. These untraditional flowers come in pinks and whites and are readily available during the winter months to specialty florists.

Winter Foilage, Extras and Year Round Varieties

Many brides think they cannot use roses or tulips because they only bloom during the spring and summer months. However, along with lilies, carnations and gerber daisies, roses and tulips are flowers readily available year round to most florists at reasonable prices. These year round flowers also come in a vast range of colors, especially daisies and carnations.

Using seasonal greens instead of traditional foliage can be a nice variation to your bouquets and arrangements. Using holly, ivy or evergreen trim instead of leafy ferns. A creative and seasonal touch to your bouquets could include adding tiny pine cones covered with glitter, small, decorative silver snowflakes or bright red holly berries.

As you begin to choose flowers for a winter wedding, it will likely work far more smoothly to consider what is currently in season. These flower choices are much more readily available and will have some of the highest quality blooms and color varieties available at much more affordable prices.