FMK - The Flowersmith

13/08/2024

Isn't she LOVELY 💕

Shan-nel the absolute dream bride, a pleasure to design and coordinate with from start to finish.

The brief for Shan-nel's bouquet - texture, garden roses, pale muted pinks, rich in flower and no foliage.

Photography

14/02/2024

Love is more than a feeling, it is the belief that all people deserve freedom from oppression. Love and liberation go hand in hand.

Love is not tolerance or keeping the peace. Too often we ascribe the ‘loving’ label to people who are simply interested in niceties and maintaining the status quo but you cannot love someone if you are responsible for their subjugation, and you cannot love someone if you ignore their de-humanization.

So, as we send each other pretty flowers and cute messages of love today, let’s take a moment to also celebrate the many Palestinians who are suffering under the world’s most brutal occupation.

It is hard to remain hopeful, but hopeful both we and they remain.

Palestine will be free, just you wait and see.

But first, we need a PERMANENT CEASEFIRE and we need it NOW!

 

12/02/2024

If experience has taught us anything, it's that subtle hints don't work. It's time to be specific. Tell them you want FMK roses and be done with it (and do it NOW because time realllly is running out to order). And while you're at it, consider sharing this reel to help save other girlos from filling-station flaaaars as well! Come on ladies - team effort - last push - let's do iiiiiiittttt x

28/01/2024

Valentines roses 💌
DM to PRE-ORDER💋

25/01/2024

Spring is just around the corner...really we can feel it, no matter how blustery and cold it currently is. It will creep up on us, I can already see the good ol' stretch in the evenings.

Nothing says SPRING more than Shannen and her beautiful tribe of girls. We love the scented sweet pea Shannen chose for her Bridesmaids, in tonal pastels.

Swipe to see a close up of Shannen's beautiful Bouquet 🌸

Photography

16/01/2024

Over 150 members of the wedding industry and community, are speaking out to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine. Here is an extract from the letter. If you’d like to read the rest and add your name, see the link in our bio or contact [email protected].
Image description: A series of text posts which read as follows:

1. This wedding business is in solidarity with Palestine.

2. Over 150 members of the wedding industry and community, are speaking out to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine. We call for an end to the occupation and its apartheid system in Palestine. We call for an end to the genocide of its people. We call out the Israeli government’s collective punishment and indiscriminate killing of civilians as war crimes and we demand an end to these war crimes.

3. In an industry which is all about love and connection, silence is directly at odds with our purpose. Let us join together at this crucial point in history to push for humanity, loudly, clearly and with strength in our numbers. Everyone has a part to play. You are not alone, we are here in solidarity, our voices unwavering and united.

4. What follows is a list of the letter’s authors and those signing in solidarity. This makes up pages 4-9 of the carousel. This list can be accessed in the full copy of the open letter - details of how to read this are below.

5. The final page of the carousel reads, We are inviting all wedding businesses to join us and add your name to the collective in solidarity with Palestine. You can read the open letter link in the bio or email [email protected]. Follow on Instagram.

09/01/2024

SIMPLE JUST GOT SIMPLER //

Newly-engaged? Congratulations you guys 💍

Now … how does spending just £650 of your 💷 and 6.5 minutes of your time 🕰️ on your wedding flowers sound to you at this moment in time?

(And yes, we’re looking directly at you, who on just the 9th day of January, and with a ring on their finger for less than a month is already mentally and financially exhausted from your wedding planning 🙃).

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Everything you need to know is in our Flowers & Frolics brochure which you can download from our website (click the link in our bio) or if you have questions and need answers FAST, just DM us and we’ll get right back to you.

Keri x

09/01/2024

CHOOSE YOUR DREAM PACKAGE //

…

✨CREATIVE✨

x 1 statement wedding bouquet
x 2 person-of-honour bouquets
x 5 buttonholes
x 2 corsages

x 1 bucket of luxury blooms

gorgeous water vessels in which to create your designs

£650

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✨SIGNATURE✨

x 1 statement wedding bouquet
x 2 person-of-honour bouquets
x 5 buttonholes
x 2 corsages

Your choice of x 8 florist-prepared table centrepieces or x 8 pew-ends

£750

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FREE delivery within Fermanagh included with all packages.

—

50% deposit secures your date.

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Not sure if a package is right for you and your wedding? DM us or give us a call and we’ll be happy to guide you through your options.

…

K & L

x

31/12/2023

We love a still, so finishing 2023 with this stunning wedding, this couple were a pleasure from start to finish, the details in this wedding were just 👌🏻 Everything worked. We left this day in Larchfield on a massive high.

For us professionally we have had some big changes with FMK, where now you have two of us grafting away to make your flower dreams come true and it feels so good to have a partner to bounce ideas of and get those creative juices flowing. We have loved every wedding we have been a part of this year and wanted to say a truly heartwarming thank you for choosing us.

2024 brides and grooms, it's your year and we are beyond excited to get going. Remember January is mainly our month of bookings, so get in touch if you want to discuss. The link is in our Bio to contact us via the website.

Now back to the baby of the clan, there's a 1st birthday to celebrate and that's a pretty special milestone 💖

Over and out see you in 2024 ✨

Lou and Keri

Photography

23/12/2023

Well, it's a wrap for FMK, we are switching off for Christmas with our small folk. We wanted to thank all of our 2023 couples, it has been a year of truly beautiful weddings, flowers and people. We've loved every minute of creating your floral dreams.

As much as we are horrified about what is happening in Gaza we also realise that we are the lucky ones. We have 4 little people between us that have no idea how cruel the world can be and frankly no idea what is going on and it's our job to create the magic of Christmas for them. This Christmas feels like a very different one and genuinely as mummies it feels hard to celebrate. Sending love to all those that find this time of year tough. Palestine you are never far from our thoughts. 🍉

Love Lou and Keri x

Photography

17/12/2023

Just here reminiscing about the stunning Jessica soaking it all up on the morning of her wedding back in May. Enjoying a moment with her beautiful mummy, who by the way is super MOTB, as she made the wedding cake!

We are forever grateful to receive images like this of the wedding morning, as we are often busy setting up the next area of the wedding. It's a total treat to catch a glimpse of these magical moments.

We were beyond obsessed with this colour palette, swipe to see a close up of the blooms 🌸

Photography

12/12/2023

Hi there,

Keri here, as promised a little intro from me.

I am Principal Florist at FMK. Formally qualified with a Level 3 Advanced Diploma in Floristry, my real floristry training started after I created the flowers for her sister-in-law’s wedding (serendipitously meeting Louise in the process) and it was from there I decided to hone my technical skills in floristry by working freelance on weddings across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I joined FMK in a more central role in 2023 and now I get to be creative and work alongside my super talented friend, it's a win-win for me.

Some fun facts about me:

- I spent my honeymoon travelling around South America for 3 months visiting the Galápagos and trekking to Machu Picchu (Lou likes to refer to me as the ‘intrepid adventurer’).

- When I managed visual merchandising for Topshop and Topman, my store won ‘Store of the Year’ and I got an all-expenses-paid trip to New York.

- Spring is my favourite season – I just love how it brings new life in the garden, no matter the weather. My girls were born in the springtime as well, so the season brings all the feels for me.

- Composting and recycling are huge in my home (my husband thinks I have a bin obsession and maybe I do).

- Being an Aquarius, I’m happiest in water and I love a dip in Lough Erne in any weather.

- When I’m not flowering up weddings, I practise reflexology and I also teach baby massage.

- Chilli Heeler is my hero.

Fire away if you have any questions about how I ended up here ✨

31/07/2023

The love between this pair 🫶🏻

Thank you for sharing your day with us all Shannen + Conor

Forever a favourite wedding ever.

This is "Conor and Shannen Wedding Clip" by Stevie Lawn on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

31/07/2023

That stopped you scrolling didn’t it!?


Now, THAT’s what I can a bridal party group-shot. Unreal Tiffany Gage Photography

A joyous day flowering up Niamh Leonard and Andy’s outdoor wedding at dreamy Larchfield Estate.

A pop of floral colour and plenty of kilts in the estates greenhouse 👌🏼






iri






band

17/09/2022

MATERNITY LEAVE //

Did you hear? FMK - ‘The Family’ is growing! 👣

As we prepare to welcome another little flower into our world, I will be hanging up my scissors for a while; commencing my ‘maternity leave’ early, starting today with a very welcome week in the sun 🛫

The Whole Scoop:

- I’m currently rocking a 6-month-preggo baby belly🤰… Fun, until you’re trying to balance on a ladder with your arms above your head or lugging a filled-to-the-gills trug around a workshop!

- Baby P is due at the very end of the year … so we’re taking bets on which year they’ll be born into - 2022 or 2023. Either way, we just can’t wait to meet them and to see Cillian’s reaction to finally 🌈🌈being able to play the role of ‘big brother’.

- All 2022 weddings are now a wrap … and what a year it’s been! 🥂THANK YOU to each and every couple that placed their trust in me to flower up their day this past year - you are all amazing and FMK literally would not exist without you. Go raibh maith agat, danke schön, big love to you all 🙌🏻

- Messages will still be replied to, but responses may be a bit slower for the next while.

- Enquiries for 2024 weddings will be replied to whenever my diary opens on 1 January 2023 (note, I am already at full capacity for 2023).

- Bouquet art commissions 🎨 will continue as usual up until Christmas. If you would like to secure a spot in the diary for a watercolour reproduction of your Bridal bouquet (see my ‘Floral Art’ Highlight), please DM / PM me with your details.

- My ‘physical’ return to work will be Monday 1 May 2023, when I’ll be kicking off wedding season 2023 with a really beautiful local wedding 💒. Hopefully I won’t have forgotten how to do wedding flaaaars my then (I joke, I joke!)

So, I guess ats us nai. See ya’ll on the flip side!

Kindest,
Lou x

23/06/2022

A O I B H I N //

She was everything ✨

📸 .soulful
👰🏼‍♀️
🏰

22/06/2022

Y E L L O W //

Teamed with muted purples, earthy browns and oranges and lush greens and you have yourself one winning colour palette for a Spring wedding (or a wedding in any season actually!) and what I love about it is that it’s not ‘typical Spring’ - it’s so much more exciting than that. I’m not exaggerating when I say that flowers like these genuinely make my heart beat a wee bit faster!

I loved this Bride’s vision of ‘pops of yellow’ (her Bridesmaids wore moss-green velvet dresses) and her bravery in letting me run with the idea and see what I could come up with (the couple also loved Toffee roses so those were an absolute must too … and weren’t they worth the splurge?!!).

For anyone out there planning a wedding and who’s starting to talk to Florists about wedding flowers, I would say that if you have a burning idea in your head - of a particular colour palette or design you think you’d like for your wedding but you haven’t ‘seen it done’ before and / or can’t quite see how it would come together to ‘work’ in practice, that is 100% ‘OK’. Share your ideas anyway! No matter how vague, incomplete or seemingly ‘half-baked’ they appear to be when you try to describe them out loud, just share them anyway because you can bet your life that the jumbled words will be no sooner out of your mouth than your Wedding Florist will be already half way to creating your dream flowers for you!

No one expects you to be an expert in wedding flowers (chances are this is your first time ordering them!), and that includes any Wedding Florist you ever speak to, so never hold back from expressing your ideas for fear of sounding ‘silly’ or misguided. Chances are, you’re just like my Bride and you’re on to an absolute winner with your idea! 💛

21/06/2022

1 YEAR //

Happy 1️⃣st anniversary to The Grants
🫶🏻

What an epic day at this was (for sooo many reasons) and what a joy you were to ‘work’ with (not that any of it really felt like work!) ✨ I could look at you handsome pair and your bright sunny blooms all day long! 🌈🤍 Hope you’re both having a lovely time reminiscing and celebrating!

📸 (the amazing)

14/06/2022

IT’S CALLED ART, MOM //

Starting to work my way through a small back-log of bouquet artworks for some of my lovely 2021 couples. It’s been a funny old year so far and to be perfectly honest, the drive to pick up a paintbrush and paint left my body entirely (genuinely think I have PTSD from last year ha!) but I’m back up and at it now and looking forward to seeing more of these beauties hanging on your walls 🤍

Note to self: Do one for yourself Lou! (can you believe we will be 1 year married in a couple of weeks )

The artwork pictured was created last year for the beautiful whose white and green bouquet made it into my all-time FMK favourites. Thanks to for the fabulous shot of my flowers in action 🙌🏻

01/06/2022

When the Groom’s Mum reached out to me over 2.5 years ago with an email that started “My son is coming home to Magheraveeley to get married. We are holding the reception in a marquee in the garden” I just KNEW an adventure was about to happen. Little did I know it would take us THIS long to get ‘em married … but love won, and we got there in the end and what can I say … some things are definitely worth waiting for. What an amazing day! Ciaran - these photos are INCREDIBLE!! 🤍🤍🤍

08/01/2022

S H I N E B R I G H T //

Thank you for sharing these beautiful shots of your wedding day. July seems like such a distant memory now, but before long you’ll be celebrating a year married under a warm Summer sun and you’ll have your gorgeous photos to look back on with a glass of bubbly in hand! Thank you for reminding me how much I really love delicate Summer blooms like Sweet Pea and Nigella. I do need these back in my life!

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m kind of done with Winter now (and the snow hasn’t even arrived yet ….. help!). At least we have Dubai to look forward to in February (friends of ours got the three of us flights out to Dubai as a wedding present since they couldn’t make our wedding back in June - yes, generous, I know!) Can’t wait to feel the sun on my skin again.

Autumn into Winter 2021 was a really busy time for weddings (and life in general) and I’m so looking forward to slowing the pace and getting rejuvenated as we move into Spring.

My ten cents of advice for anyone right now who’s heading into the new year wanting to feel better but not knowing where to start or what changes to make is just “Do what lights you up”. It’s advice I got from a book I read back in the Summer of 2017 by and I’ve never forgotten it. I’d even take her advice a step further and say if you’ve got the choice, then do ONLY what lights you up. Stop saying yes, when you really want to say no, stop hanging out with people who don’t bring out the best in you, and stop using (wasting) your time and energy pursuing goals that aren’t your own. Life’s for shining bright!

I’ve one rule I’m living by in 2022 and it’s if it doesn’t feel like 90s R & B on full volume with the windows down, whether that’s people, projects, or places … then I simply don’t want it ✋🏻

Who’s with me?

05/01/2022

2 0 2 3 //

Best thing to happen so far in 2022 was receiving your message .23 with ‘the link’ (I think I speak for Wedding Suppliers universally here when I say that getting sent ‘the link’ to one of your past couple’s wedding gallery ranks amongst the best mood-boosters in the world .. and what an honour it is too!). If this is all the joy January gives me, I think I’ll be happy! What a pair of absolute babes you were to look at that October day and what a privilege to have been able to watch it all unfold as not just your Wedding Florist, but also your friend (that’s what happens when a wedding gets postponed and it takes years to ‘get ‘em up the aisle’ … you spend so much time in the wedding trenches together that you kind of accidentally become besties!). Every cloud and all that!

I struggled to decide which photo to share on here because every single shot’s a beauty .ie And I don’t know how this gorgeous pair are ever going to narrow down their selections for their printed wedding album. A great conundrum to have though! I know I’m sounding like a broken record when I say this but “TOP TIP: HIRE AN AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHER FOR YOUR WEDDING”. The best money you’ll spend on your wedding by a country mile … only second to a decent Wedding Florist (of course). No seriously, do it. Find the Suppliers you love, and get them booked. You won’t change your mind; you know it, your Mum and your Bridesmaids know it, a blind man on a galloping horse can see it! So if you’ve fallen in love with a Creative’s wedding work and know it’s what you want to still be looking at when you’re sat holding the old and wrinkly hand of your husband or wife 50 years from now, then do it. Enquire with your favourite Suppliers, make those bookings, and then kick back and wait for the magic to unfold ✨

Oh, and on that note, my 2023 diary is now officially open. Dates will be limited as they have been for 2022, as I focus on doing less; more joyfully. If you’d like to check the availability of your date, please send a short email to [email protected] and I’ll get right back to you.

Your wedding, let’s do it! 🤍

07/12/2021

G R A N N Y ‘ S G I R L //

how happy and proud your wee Granny must have been watching you from above 🤍 I just love how you thought to include her in this way. So special ✨

📸 the amazing

06/12/2021

T I M E L E S S //

“Timeless beauty (over fleeting trends)” is one of the things I really value as a Wedding Florist. I’m just so in love with this idea that a wedding can be timelessly beautiful - unaffected by the passage of time or changes in fashion; like the love between the couple itself. The thought of my couples looking back on their wedding photos 50 or 60 years from now saying ‘I still love our wedding flowers!’ is something that really inspires me to do my best work and it is in working mindfully and with nature in mind, that that timelessness can be tapped into.

M & A //

We ended November with our first ever visit to St. Laebhan’s, Killeevan - a 163 year-old Church of Ireland church; which was so full of olde-world charm and romance, it was no wonder the couple chose to say “I do” there. Melissa and Aodhan chose a pair of asymmetric floral pillars for their entryway flowers and from the outset, I wanted to create something that would complement the ‘natural’ beauty of the historic building, rather than detract or distract from it; which meant pillars in a very natural shape (to create that sense of them ‘growing’ from the ground), lots and lots of different varieties of green to mimic the kind of textures found in the ‘wild’ and a random placement of flowers to create an intentional yet uncontrived design. For me, the key to creating ‘natural’ looking ‘anything’, is variety - variety of line, shape, texture, form, colour, the whole nine! And so, naturally, we had a little bit of everything in our pillars. Colour-wise, we had pops of blue from Agapanthus, Anemone, Delphiniums and Sea-Holly (thistle), warmer reds and oranges from our ‘Princess Irene’ Tulips (they’re a bright orange colour flamed with purple down the sides - they’re amazing!) Lisianthus, Ranunculus, and ‘Piano Red’ roses and call me crazy, but we also had pastels in there too with our ‘Cafe Latte’ (hubba-hubba!) and ‘Antigua’ spray roses. Yummy!

Congratulations again Melissa & Aodhan. You were a Wedding Florist’s dream ✨ Thanks also to the amazing Treanor who captured love under a winter sun so beautifully 🤍

18/11/2021

O N E F A B D A Y //

I’ve just realised it’s T- minus 4 days until my own wedding is being published by wedding magazine OneFabDay | Weddings] so take this as your nudge to get following OneFabDay | Weddings] if you’re not doing so already!

I’m excited for all our wonderful wedding suppliers but in particular for our incredible photographer (who’s no stranger to having his work published and for good reason!) and for our super-talented, and super-lovely Wedding Florist As you’ll see from the photos, Georgia definitely understood the assignment! 🌺✨

Our wedding was definitely not ‘textbook’ but what it was was an authentically written and illustrated storybook that Ruairi and I are so incredibly proud of. We reckon it’ll be fun to tell our grandkids about how we got married in a garden in the middle of a global pandemic, a year ‘late’ but a year ‘the wiser’ and how we didn’t do things exactly the way others may have expected us to but that we did it the way that felt right - that felt 100 % ‘us’. As we look back on our photos ‘five months married’, we can both agree, that whilst it wasn’t the day we originally planned, it was perfect in every way. Perfect, because it was ‘us’ and one fab day from start to finish.

Here’s to infinity Husbina 🤍

17/11/2021

M A I D S //

When I have the time, I often stick around after ceremony set up to see the Bride and her entourage arrive and am often one of the last, if not the last, person to see the Bride before the chapel doors close behind her and she sets off on her walk down the aisle - and you know what, I think it may just be one of the most satisfying and special parts of this job. I just love it! ✨

The way Shauna’s bridesmaids prepared her at the chapel doors for her ‘walk of a lifetime’ was such a joy to see. You could tell the girls were as bursting with excitement for what lay ahead as the Bride herself and there was something so beautiful about that. The joy was palpable - I wish it could have been bottled somehow.

“A good friend listens to your adventures, a best friend makes them with you” 🤍

A perfect moment captured so beautifully by the amazing 📸

16/11/2021

GREEN + WHITE //

Bride, Inga wanted a classic look with mainly white flowers but was happy to leave the choosing of flower varieties up to yours truly (yay!) and so what we ended up with was a sumptuous collection of pure white vanda Orchids, ‘Early Grey’ Roses (silvery grey with a slight lilac tinge) and ‘Clarity’ Roses by (the ones with the delicate peach-pink petals and lime-green stamen) along with some lower-key beauties like white Veronica, Stocks and just a ‘sprinkling’ of Gypsophila at the Bride’s special request.

you’ve got vision girl, and what a vision you were 🤍 I especially love when I get to be involved in a fellow Mummy’s wedding day - it’s just so lovely to see a person who has given so much of themselves to others to be pampered and fussed over and to look and feel like a million dollars .. and of course to see the look of awe on their little ones’ faces as ‘Mummy’ becomes ‘Real Life Princess’ right before their eyes!

A little shout-out to Inga and her Maids also for their expert flower arranging skills that they demonstrated the day of the wedding - yes, they did just ‘rustle up’ the table centrepieces the morning of the wedding (wow!) which was made possible (and stress-free) with the Bucket of Blooms and handpicked vaseware that was included as part of the couple’s ‘Flowers & Frolics’ wedding package. The room looked AMAZING girls and I’m so proud of you all! never looked so good!

Sidenote: I am LOVING all the green Bridesmaids’ dresses that 2021 weddings have given us .. in every season and in every shade! Green is definitely having a moment this year and I’m here for it.

DID YOU KNOW: Green is understood to be the most restful and relaxing color for the human eye to view? Perhaps then if you’re planning a relaxed wedding, Bridesmaids in green may be a great place to start? Just a thought! ✨

What beautiful captures 📸

13/11/2021

SANS ROSES //

Today’s brief was one I enjoyed very much as God knows I love a wee challenge from time to time. Shauna was happy to give me full creative licence on her bouquets today with the only caveat being ‘no roses’.

Personally I LOVE a rose BUT what I love more is a couple brave enough to put their own stamp on things. What I always try to remember is that the day isn’t about me - I am merely a facilitator, a vessel if you like - here to make my couples’ ideas come to life through whatever means necessary … and if that means digging deep to find just-as-gorgeous alternatives to the usual ‘wedding favourites’ then that’s what I’ll do. ‘Avignon’ chrysanthemums (yes, they do look like Cafe au Lait dahlias!) ‘Passion’ ranunculus, ‘Black’ Callas and that show-stopping ‘Red Ice’ protea made for some pretty awesome focal flowers today … what do you think?

I was full of nervous energy this morning heading off to Ederney and for no particular reason other than that I just wanted to do an amazing job. At times it felt like this day could never come (cheers Covid!) so to be finally waking up on ‘Shauna and Eoin’s wedding day’, it was a bit surreal. As the Queen of Jazz herself (Ella Fitz) would say … “At Last” All that worrying and waiting (and brain dying) was worth it in the end. Hope you’re enjoying every moment of this, your ‘Best Day Ever’. Thank you for bringing me along on the journey! ✨

Now ya’ll … what do you think of a wedding ‘sans roses’? Would you ever consider having one (or maybe you’ve had one!) Do tell us below ↙️