If you love wedding flowers that look loose, playful, natural and just a little bit unruly, you might be dreaming of a wildflower-style wedding. Wildflower wedding flowers are all about creating the feeling of an overgrown meadow or garden, using lots of different flower shapes, colours, textures and stem lengths rather than a perfectly neat and symmetrical arrangement.
And here’s the thing: you don’t actually need to use literal wildflowers.
In New Zealand, flowers such as scabiosa, cosmos, ranunculus, sweet peas, anemones, dahlias, poppies, veronica, Queen Anne’s lace, cornflowers and many more can be combined to create that gorgeous meadow-style look.
As a wedding florist, this is one of my favourite styles to design. It looks effortless, but getting it to look effortless is actually quite a skill.
What are wildflower-style wedding flowers?
Wildflower-style wedding flowers are designed to look natural, loose and slightly untamed, as though you’ve wandered into a beautiful overgrown garden and picked a handful of whatever caught your eye.
Imagine:
- Lots of different flower shapes
- Tall flowers mixed with short ones
- Big flowers next to tiny ones
- Flowers that face different directions
- Plenty of movement
- Unexpected colour combinations
- Delicate flowers mixed with more substantial blooms
- Texture and interest at every level
- A little bit of beautiful chaos
The aim isn’t to make everything match perfectly. It’s about creating something that feels abundant, organic and full of life.
You might also hear this style described as meadow-style wedding flowers, wildflower-inspired wedding flowers, natural wedding flowers, relaxed wedding flowers or whimsical wedding flowers.
They all describe a similar feeling: flowers that look like they belong together in nature rather than flowers that have been arranged into a perfectly symmetrical shape.
My florist’s take on the wildflower wedding look
When I’m designing a meadow-style bouquet, I know this sounds super cheesy, but I close my eyes and visualise a messy, overgrown floral garden.
What’s growing in it? What colours are there? What shapes? Where are the tall flowers? What’s growing underneath them? What little flowers are popping out between the bigger ones?
And the answer is usually everything.
Every colour. Every shape. Tall stems, short stems, big flowers, little flowers. Delicate flowers, chunky flowers, floppy flowers, upright flowers.
It’s controlled chaos, and it’s gorgeous.
And that’s what I want a wildflower-style wedding bouquet to feel like.
The secret is controlled chaos
Wildflower-style flowers are actually one of the harder things for a florist to design.
That might sound strange. Surely a loose, messy bouquet is easier than a perfectly structured one? Not quite.
Traditional floral design often relies on symmetry, repetition and harmony. With wildflower-style arrangements, you deliberately start breaking those rules.
You have to let go of the instinct to make everything even. You can’t put every flower in exactly the right place or make both sides of the bouquet mirror each other. But you still need it to look cohesive. That’s the tricky bit.
A good wildflower-style bouquet should look like it just happened to grow that way. It shouldn’t look like a florist tried to make it messy.
There’s a fine line between effortlessly wild and actually just messy.
The best meadow-style wedding flowers sit right in the middle: beautifully designed, but never overly contrived.
Which flowers create a wildflower wedding look?
There are so many flowers that can work for this style that I don’t want to give you a restrictive list of ten.
Some are obvious choices. Others aren’t traditionally thought of as wildflowers at all, but their shape, colour or movement can completely elevate the look.
The flowers available to you will also depend heavily on your wedding season.
Spring wildflower-style wedding flowers
Spring is an absolute dream for this style because so many gorgeous, delicate flowers are available. Depending on the timing and what is being grown, spring can bring flowers such as:
Ranunculus – One of my favourites for this style. Their layered petals give you a gorgeous, romantic focal flower without making the bouquet feel too formal.
Anemones – Particularly beautiful if you love a little bit of contrast. Their dark centres give a meadow-style arrangement some graphic detail.
Japanese anemones – These have a completely different feel from the more compact anemones and are brilliant for adding height and movement.
Tulips – Tulips are fantastic in wildflower arrangements because they don’t always behave perfectly. They curve, bend and move, which is exactly what we want.
Sweet peas – Delicate, romantic and beautifully scented. Their naturally loose form makes them almost made for meadow-style bouquets.
Freesia – Another beautifully delicate flower, with movement and fragrance.
Hyacinth and grape hyacinth – These can add beautiful texture and a slightly unexpected element to a spring arrangement.
Iris – Their strong shape and architectural form can be brilliant amongst softer, more delicate flowers.
Spring is also a great example of why I don’t recommend becoming too attached to a specific flower list. Availability can change depending on the season, the grower and what is happening in the growing fields.
Summer wildflower-style wedding flowers
Summer is where the meadow really starts to come alive. This is when you can have fun with colour, texture and an enormous range of shapes.
Some of my favourites include:
Cosmos – Probably one of the ultimate flowers for this look. They’re airy, delicate and wonderfully imperfect.
Scabiosa – One of my absolute favourites for adding movement and texture. The little pincushion heads look beautiful tucked throughout a bouquet.
Veronica – Fantastic for height and movement, particularly when you want flowers poking out beyond the main body of the bouquet.
Queen Anne’s lace / wild carrot – That gorgeous frothy, airy texture that makes arrangements feel as though they’ve just been gathered from a meadow.
Achillea – Another excellent texture flower, with flat flower heads that contrast beautifully with rounder blooms.
Poppies – Wonderful if you want something a little more playful and loose. Their delicate petals and strong stems bring movement and personality.
Cornflower – Particularly lovely if you want blue in your wedding flowers.
Matricaria – Tiny daisy-like flowers are perfect for filling the gaps between larger flowers without making the arrangement feel heavy.
Zinnias – Colourful, cheerful and full of personality.
Strawflower – Great for texture and a slightly more rustic feel.
Phlox – Beautiful clusters of flowers that can add colour without looking too formal.
Sweet William – Excellent for adding texture and colour, particularly in a more abundant arrangement.
Marigolds – If you’re brave with colour, marigolds can be incredible. They bring warmth and personality that you don’t necessarily associate with traditional wedding flowers.
Liatris – Tall, spiky and wonderfully architectural. They’re brilliant for adding another shape to the mix.
Delphinium – One of my go-to flowers for height and movement.
Snapdragons – Another excellent vertical flower. They’re also available more widely than some of the highly seasonal meadow flowers.
Mini gerbera daisies – Particularly the pompon and pastini types. These can be fantastic little pops of colour tucked amongst more delicate flowers.
Autumn wildflower-style wedding flowers
Autumn is when dahlias really come into their own, and they can be spectacular in a meadow-style arrangement. You might not immediately think of dahlias as wildflowers, but that’s exactly the point.
A dahlia doesn’t have to make a bouquet feel formal. Put one amongst scabiosa, cosmos, delicate filler flowers and other seasonal varieties and it becomes part of the garden.
Autumn also gives you an opportunity to lean into richer, warmer colour combinations while still keeping the arrangement loose and natural. Colours like burgundy, terracotta, rust, apricot, peach, hot pink, plum, butter yellow and soft pinks rather than feeling restricted to one traditional autumn palette.
Flowers that aren’t technically wildflowers but make the look
This is one of the most important things to understand about wildflower wedding flowers.
You don’t need to use only flowers that you’d find growing in a meadow.
Some flowers are incredibly useful because of the way they behave in an arrangement. Ranunculus, tulips, dahlias, lisianthus and mini gerberas can all work beautifully in a wildflower-style bouquet.
Even something as elegant as a lisianthus can feel completely relaxed when it’s surrounded by flowers with different shapes and movement. The overall design matters more than the individual flower. It’s the combination that creates the feeling.
What about year-round flowers?
Some flowers give us a little more flexibility because they’re available across a broader part of the year.
Snapdragons, mini gerbera daisies and lisianthus are useful examples, although exact availability and varieties can still vary.
This is why I always recommend looking at the overall flower palette rather than deciding that you absolutely must have one particular flower. Your wedding date matters.
Your florist can work with what’s actually looking fantastic at that time of year and build the design around it.
Can you get wildflower wedding flowers in New Zealand?
Yes, most definitely. But there’s something you need to know about sourcing these flowers in NZ.
A lot of the beautiful, unusual varieties that create a really good wildflower look are grown by specialist flower growers. That means they won’t necessarily be sitting on the flower auction floor every week waiting for someone to buy them. Some varieties need to be special ordered.
Florists and flower wholesalers have relationships with specialist growers, and in some cases flowers can be ordered directly from growers. This is one of the reasons it’s worth telling your florist about the look you want rather than simply giving them a list of ten flower names.
If you tell me, “I want my wedding flowers to look like a colourful, overgrown garden,” I can work backwards from that feeling and source the flowers that are going to create it beautifully at the time of your wedding.
Don’t get too attached to individual flowers
This is probably my biggest piece of advice if you’re planning a wildflower-style wedding.
Don’t go into the process thinking you need exactly 17 stems of cosmos, five scabiosa and twelve ranunculus.
That’s not how I’d approach it. Instead, save the inspiration photos you love.
Look at the colours. Look at the shapes. Look at how loose the bouquet is. Notice the movement. Then show your florist.
If you trust your florist to source what is looking beautiful around your wedding date, you can end up with something much more interesting than if you try to dictate every single flower. Sometimes the flower you didn’t know existed becomes your favourite flower in the bouquet.
Go all in on the colour
If you’re thinking about a wildflower wedding, my advice is: lean into it. Don’t be afraid of colour.
One of the things that makes meadow-style flowers so beautiful is the sheer variety. You can have pink next to orange, blue next to yellow, purple next to coral. You can have soft pastel flowers alongside something bright and punchy. You don’t necessarily need a perfectly controlled colour palette.
In fact, trying too hard to control the colour can take away from the very thing that makes this style work. Of course, there still needs to be an overall sense of cohesion. That’s where your florist comes in. You can have lots of colours without it looking like a random assortment of flowers.
Wildflower wedding bouquets aren’t the only option
This style works beautifully throughout a wedding.
Bridal bouquets
This is probably the most obvious place to use the look, and it gives you the opportunity to really go for it. A meadow-style bridal bouquet can be loose, abundant, colourful and full of movement.
Bridesmaid bouquets
Smaller versions of the bridal bouquet can work beautifully, or you can make each bouquet slightly different using the same overall colour palette.
Buttonholes
I absolutely love the idea of treating a buttonhole like a tiny little meadow. Instead of one formal flower with a small amount of foliage, you can create something that feels like a miniature version of the bridal bouquet.
Table flowers
This style is brilliant for dining tables. Using little vases, bottles and bud vases running down a long table, each filled with slightly different combinations of seasonal flowers. It creates that feeling of flowers growing naturally along the table rather than one identical centrepiece being repeated over and over.
Ceremony flowers
Wildflower-style flowers can work beautifully around your ceremony space, particularly if you’re getting married outdoors or somewhere surrounded by gardens.
Arches and installations
And then we can go BIG.
A meadow-style floral installation can look as though it’s growing directly out of the ground.
You can create a floral arch with flowers spilling in different directions, or a ceremony runner that feels like a patch of wild garden has appeared along the aisle.
It’s seriously gorgeous.
What if I don’t know the names of the flowers I like?
That’s completely fine. You don’t need to be a flower expert to plan your wedding flowers.
If you’ve been saving photos of bouquets and keep noticing that they all have that loose, colourful, meadowy quality, send those photos to your florist. You don’t need to know that the tiny pink flower is scabiosa and the tall blue one is delphinium. That’s our job.
In fact, I’d much rather know what you love about the overall look than have you feel like you need to arrive with a perfectly researched flower shopping list. Flowers don’t have to be intimidating.
FAQs About Wildflower Wedding Flowers
What flowers are best for a wildflower wedding?
Some of the flowers I love for a wildflower or meadow-style wedding include scabiosa, cosmos, sweet peas, ranunculus, anemones, poppies, veronica, Queen Anne’s lace, achillea, cornflower, matricaria, zinnias, dahlias, delphinium, snapdragons and mini gerbera daisies. The best flowers will depend on your wedding season and what’s available in NZ at the time.
Can I have wildflower wedding flowers in any season?
Yes, but the flowers will change throughout the year. Spring brings beautiful bulbs and delicate flowers such as tulips, ranunculus, anemones and sweet peas, while summer gives you flowers such as cosmos, scabiosa, cornflower and Queen Anne’s lace. Dahlias are fantastic in autumn, while some flowers have broader availability.
Do wildflower wedding flowers have to be colourful?
Absolutely not. You can create a wildflower-inspired look in whites, creams, pastels or a more restrained palette. That said, if you love the true meadow feeling, don’t be afraid of colour. Lots of different colours can be part of what makes the style feel abundant and natural.
Are wildflower wedding flowers cheaper?
Not necessarily. A wildflower-style bouquet can include some relatively affordable seasonal flowers, but specialist or hard-to-source varieties can be more expensive. The complexity of creating a loose, layered design can also require significant florist time. If you’re working with a budget, tell your florist and let them recommend flowers and designs that give you the look without unnecessary cost.
If you’re working with a particular budget, my guide to How Much Do Wedding Flowers Cost in NZ? can help you understand where your money goes.
Can a wildflower wedding look elegant?
Definitely. Wildflower doesn’t have to mean rustic or casual. With the right flowers, colour palette and design, a meadow-style wedding can be incredibly sophisticated. The key is that the arrangement looks intentionally wild rather than unfinished.
How far in advance should I book wildflower wedding flowers?
I’d recommend booking your florist around six to twelve months ahead for peak wedding season, particularly if you have your heart set on specialist flowers. That gives your florist time to plan the seasonal flower recipe and arrange any special orders.
What should I tell my florist if I want a wildflower-style wedding?
Show them your inspiration photos and explain what you love about them. Tell them about the colours, the overall feeling and how wild or relaxed you want the flowers to feel. You don’t need to know the names of every flower.
Alyssa’s florist verdict
If you love the wildflower look, lean into it.
Don’t try to control every flower. Don’t worry if you don’t know the names. Don’t decide that you need exactly the flowers you saw in a Pinterest bouquet.
Trust your florist to look at your wedding date, your colour palette and the flowers that are available and looking incredible at that time.
Give them the freedom to find the interesting stuff. Because the beauty of this style is that it doesn’t look like it came from a catalogue. It looks like a little piece of an overgrown garden has somehow made its way into your wedding. And honestly, that’s the magic.
Planning Your Wedding Flowers?
If you’re dreaming of colourful, relaxed, wildflower-style wedding flowers in Auckland, I’d love to hear what you’re imagining.
At Avant Garden, I create bespoke wedding flowers for couples across Auckland, from intimate celebrations to big floral installations. I love working with seasonal New Zealand flowers and finding unexpected ways to bring a couple’s vision to life.
You don’t need to know exactly what you want. You don’t need a giant list of flower names. And you definitely don’t need to speak florist.
Bring me your Pinterest board, your colour palette and the general feeling you’re after, and we’ll work out the flowers together.
Explore Avant Garden’s Auckland Wedding Florist services or get in touch to start planning your wedding flowers.
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