Botanical Inspiration Shoot

There’s so much goodness in this shoot put together by Kirbi and Tina of A Style Collective, it’s difficult to know where to begin! I’m already crushing on the protea bouquets, the amazing restored building venue, the BHLDN dresses, and the botanical touches. If you’re crazy about the plexiglass seating chart display like I am, stay tuned to hear back from the ladies on how to make it!

From the stylists, Kirbi and Tina of A Style Collective: When we first started designing this shoot, a very large factor of our inspiration came from the location it was produced at. Vine Street Studios near downtown Houston, Texas is an old Shipping & Receiving building from the early 1920s that has been historically maintained, preserved, and updated into commercial offices. We are lucky enough to share one of these beautiful office spaces with other local industry vendors. The exposed brick, concrete, industrial style ceiling and doors, wood beams, original piping, and airiness of the studio gave us leverage to create an edgy, scientific-meets-industrial shoot.

We wanted to create a floral and fauna based theme with emphasis on certain specimens, like butterflies and ferns, but we gave it both an industrial-scientific twist as well as a touch of vintage inspired elegance. BHLDN’s beautiful dress and jewelry offerings really played up a bit of this look. We love the use of both pattern in the floral, colorful, lace bridesmaid dress paired with the vibrancy of the solid, watermelon colored dress as well that really brought out the floral used. We chose spiky, unique, and very scientific style of flowers from scabiosa pods, scabiosa flowers, and King Proteas paired with ivy and fern to create wild, loose, bouquets. We pushed the scientific envelope in the use of the Lucite chairs, plexiglass escort card station that mimicked a museum specimen display, as well as the individual plexiglass Save The Date.

The apothecary jars, amber medicine bottles, paired with the industrial style cart that served as our cake table also gave this shoot the lab essence we wanted to show without overdoing it or feeling too stale or “sterilized”. We love the playful placement of butterflies on the sweet’s display cake and cupcakes, because it still allows Mother Nature to shine through a bit with a natural feeling of warmth. The ivy and fern wreath cake base completely enhances this entire feel and we were very pleased with how it turned out. For our ceremony, we wanted to create a very intimate, moody, museum feel. We designed a tattered backdrop with oversized, homemade looking paper and lots of butterfly specimen replicas that we cut out and allowed them to “fly” across the backdrop. When Ryan shot this scene, placing the models in order to view both brick and industrial steel behind them was really brilliant. The result is a perfect combination.

Moving on to the tablescape production, we really can’t say enough great things about the location and lighting pouring through the oversized windows. We used a wooden and Lucite clear-topped dining table, ghost chairs, solid white servingware, linen napkins, Field Notes inspired menu cards, and minimalistic centerpiece décor to create a very subdued but impactful scene. The feather-like ferns and single stem scabiosa flowers placed in BHLDN Houston’s collection of vintage jars is simply stunning in the light that Ryan captured them in. We truly enjoyed producing this shoot. All of the elements were all so important in their individual ways to enhance each scene and create this amazing shoot. Thank you to all of the collaborators whose talents really show in the results.

View all images from this shoot in the gallery

Shoot Location: Houston, TX / Event Styling, Flowers, Paper Goods, and Ceremony Apothecary Jars: A Style Collective / Wedding Photographer: Ryan Price Photo / Shoot Venue: A Style Collective Studio at Vine Street Studios / Wedding and Bridesmaids’ Dress, Jewelry, and Vases: BHLDN Houston / Hair and Makeup: Your Makeup Expert / Desserts: Cupcake Cachet / Calligraphy: Laurie Perez / Ghost Chairs: Aztec Rentals