Image via Wikipedia

The Gerber Daisy is said to have been given its name in 1737 by Jan Fredrik Govonius the Dutch botanist in honor of the German doctor Traugott Gerber, but who was he and what do we know of him? Very little I’m afraid.

He was born into the family of a Lutheran minister on what is now the border of Poland, where he spent his childhood and youth. Not a lot of facts are known about his life but we do know that he studied medicine at the University of Leipzig and upon receiving his doctorate he became ‘the first private physician’ to the Czarina of Russia who when she discovered his interest in botany, commissioned him to create a medical garden in Moscow and to educate the medical students in herbology. Between 1739 and 1741 he lead expeditions to look for medicinal plants and herbs in Russia and went to Finland as a doctor to the Russian army. He died at the age of 33 in 1743.

No pictures of him exist and it is well known that all of the documents and dissertations of his trips, are written in his own hand and are still in archives in Russia. Perhaps when the contents of these documents are revealed more may be known about him.

It is still a mystery today just why Jan Fredrik Grovonius named a South African plant species after Gerber.

Centerpiece Design from TheGardener in the UK

Gerber daisy wedding ideas are bold and beautiful. There are few flowers that can, themselves be the theme of a wedding, but Gerberas can hold their own and provide beautiful bouquets, corsages and centerpieces as well as making wonderful wedding favors, cake decorations and, of course, designs for wedding invitations.

Before you decide on a theme for your wedding, you need to explore what’s possible, what’s easy to do, what’s expensive and what is good value for money. If you’re working to a tight budget you can’t afford to have too many custom made or unique items, but you can still seek out what’s readily available, and put it all together in your own unique way. Do it yourself weddings are far more practical than you may think, and in a year or so, you may well wish you had the money you spent on your big wedding to spend on your home.

Weddings are important, but it is just as important to get good value for your money. Flowers, though necessary and beautiful, are an area where it is very easy to spend a great deal!

Gerberas, those big, sunny, bright colored daisies, are easy to find and not too expensive as wedding flowers go, and there are a number of themes you can create around them.

• Pure white gerberas, with lovely yellow centers make a very pretty bridal bouquet, especially for a young bride.
• If your wedding is the later part of the year, gerberas come in all the gorgeous fall colors
• For Christmas, gerberas come in deep burgundy and brilliant red, both look fabulous with green accents and a touch of gold or silver.
• For spring, pale pink, yellow and cream are perfect
• and bright orange and fuschia daisies scream ‘tropical’ at any time of year,

Red gerber daisy wedding bouquet from innescent design

Why complicate things, why not simply choose ‘gerbera daisies’ as your theme? Your options range from extrovert orange and shocking pink, to demure white, with all variations in between. Gerberas even come in different sizes – choose the large showy daisies for flower arrangements, bouquets and centerpieces, while the smaller flowers are used as cake decorations, in favors and corsages, and of course for your small bridesmaids. Gerberas have relatively large heads, are reasonably priced (both silk and fresh) and available pretty well throughout the year.  They are in many ways, ideal as wedding flowers, except

for one thing; their fleshy stems make them difficult to arrange unless the stems are wired – not something the DIY bride may want to tackle. Fortunately artificial gerberas look very realistic and are much easier to arrange.

Gerbera Daisy Bouquets

One of the easiest and least expensive ways to create a bridal bouquet is to use the small bouquets you find ready made up in craft shops; of course you want something individual, not something ready made, but it is very easy to take apart 2 or even three of these ready made bunches and put them together in your own way, perhaps adding a bouquet jewel, or another flower, or a bouquet collar. Gerberas can be dressed up, into something formal, or dressed down into something bright, fun and wild.

Gerber Daisy Wedding Bouquets Pictures

Here are some gerbera bouquet idea using fresh gerbera daisies which could be replicated using the silk variety. In each case, click on the picture to learn more.

Some readily,available small silk gerbera bouquets which could easily be adapted to create some of those bouquets:

Decorations for the Ceremony

For decorations at the ceremony, use garlands made from silk daisies twisted together – white and white, orange with pink or twist in an ivy garland.

It’s easy to find silk daisy garlands you can use to decorate the church or reception, and to find gerbera invitations, you can get the look of expensive embossing by making your own. Buy a rubber stamp – perhaps a single gerbera or a bunch, and stamp onto good quality paper using a gold or silver embossing ink. Immeditaly use an embossing tool to heat the ink so it creates raises. Once you’ve created the inside of your invitation, you can simply print the inside using your computer printer, put them together and send. Be sure to check the spelling. More than one poor bride has found turned out to be bridle, rather than bridal or her special day.

Gerbera Daisies for Your Cake

Of course you can add fresh or silk flowers to a cake, but how about something a little different? Here’s a cake design from Diane’s Cakes, showing how you can take a simple cake and add Diane’s special cake decorations to have it match the daisy theme.

Gerbera Daisy Wedding Favors

Coming soon

Gerbera Daisies at the Reception

It’s easy to get hold of wedding favor boxes with a daisy theme, and why not extend the theme to your attendants and give them gerbera themed gifts?

Do you have any other favorite items for a daisy theme? If so, please add them as comments.

Not sure about using gerber daisies as your wedding theme?  Take a look at Calla Lily Wedding bouquets or, if you prefer artificial flowers, how about silk hydrangeas? 

]]> http://www.silkgerberdaisies.com/a-daisy-themed-wedding.html/feed 0 http://www.silkgerberdaisies.com/ready-made-silk-gerber-daisy-centerpieces.html http://www.silkgerberdaisies.com/ready-made-silk-gerber-daisy-centerpieces.html#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:35:25 +0000 Lesley http://www.silkgerberdaisies.com/?p=55

Silk Daisies are one of the best and most lifelike of nature’s flowers when transformed / translated into ‘silk’, even after they have been touched and examined no one is ever quite sure if they are real or not. If you are having ‘one of those days’ and ‘not feeling quite ‘up to the mark’ then an arrangement of these joyful, happy flowers can lift your spirits quicker than most other things, they are very colorful, bright and always seem to have an impish grin. No wonder they are called ‘the happy flower’

So there’s nothing better for a full corner in your home, and if you don’t have the time or inclination to create your own centerpiece, you may want to consider some of those that are available on the web, so we’ve tried to round up the best of the bunch for you to see.

Roses, Gerberas and Ivy.

This one is simple but pretty, 12” tall and is a mixture of cream roses, fuchsia gerberas, a deep pink hydrangea and with the delicate green and cream of the variegated ivy has that ’fresh from the garden look’. Can be used in a guest room, on a side table, anywhere really that needs to be cheered up.

Gerberas, Peonies and Ivy.

Most people would have a hard job telling if any of these are not real in this 19” tall arrangement. Here pristine white Gerberas team up with fuchsia Peonies and dainty variegated Ivy’s in a frosted vase. Just the thing to welcome guests, on a sofa table or on a kitchen island to keep you smiling while you ‘slave over a hot stove’.

Gerberas, Cone Hydrangeas, Alstromerias, Cosmos and Gypsophila.

This 20” tall arrangement is simply stunning. What a joyful piece this is, it has such a happy blend of colors, no one could possibly be miserable with this in the room. The yellows of the Gerberas blend beautifully with the jewel like colors of the other flowers, especially the deep rust red of the Cone Hydrangeas and are a joy to behold. Take it to the office but keep your eye on it or put it in your entry hall to greet your guests, put it on the dining table or buffet, or on a dresser in the guest room, for a special guest or have it to yourself in the sitting room to make you smile. Personally I would just buy it and make a place, specially for it.

Gerbera, Hydrangea and Rose.

Now we have turned full circle and is not what I expect to see from the Gerbera. This light and airy, delicately colored centerpiece with it’s white Gerberas and Hydrangeas, pastel pink Roses and Cherry Blossom all set off with the greens and creams of the Grasses and Ivy’s, will bring a touch of elegance to any room you care to put it in. Perfect of course for your dining table, sofa table, coffee table or to repeat myself, in the entry way.

Gerberas and Snow Balls.

This is a distinctive arrangement that your guests will not forget easily with the intense purple of the Gerberas, the white of the Snow Ball, Ranunculus and Lilies and glossy dark green leaves. It is 15” tall and  very showy indeed. A special place needs to be found for this one but when found, it will certainly be a talking point.

Mixed Bouquet.

This colorful mixed bouquet is recommended for a long dining table and no matter what your decor is, it is bound to fit right in. With Gerberas, Ranunculus, Hydrangeas, Roses and Zinnias in red, orange, cream, blue and maize it is a  kaleidoscope of colour all combining to adorn your home with a ‘pop’ of color.

Gerberas, Tulips, Poppies and Ivy.

Considering how Gerberas give a lift to an arrangement I am surprised that there aren’t more gerbera daisy arrangements to be found. I was just about to give up when I chanced upon this bold, bright and beautiful fusion of yellow Gerberas, orange California Poppies, adorable Red Tulips and dainty variegated Ivy, arranged in a round glass bowl with glass nuggets and crystal clear acrylic water in a way, which exactly suits this type of flower. You’ll never feel alone with this one in your house.

Image by smilla4 via Flickr

Geberas, both silk and fresh have large saucer shaped flowers. This means they look fabulous and provide a great splash of color, but they have another very useful characteristic, they float well.

The simplest, cheapest, quickest centerpiece you can make, is a bowl of water with floating flower heads, and the good news is that if you add Floating candles, your centerpiece will be simple, inexpensive AND stunning.

I discovered this when, newly married and as yet without a job, my husband and I lived in one room in Oxford, but for some reason we had an active social life, restaurants were too expensive, so I found ways to create fun, interesting meals for very little. The last part of this was always finding something to decorate the table. Fortunately one of the dishes we’d received as a wedding gift was wide but shallow and made of glass, my first version simply filled it with water, I then removed the heads from 3-4 flowers in the communal garden and floated them in the water. The result was admired and when our visitors came again they brought me a set of floating candles which I gladly added to the mix.

In the years since, I’m not quite so budget conscious, but I love to use large colorful gerbera heads floating in water, often over pebbles or glass stones. The bright colors of the flowers look fabulous against a black or dark green tablecloth, which in turn provides a dramatic backdrop for the meal, and if you can’t find flowers because you really messed up? You can add very thin slices of lemon instead. If your flowers are really past their prime, simply remove the petals and float those on the water instead of the whole bloom.

Instead of one bowl, you can float your gerberas singly in 3 or 4 inch square vases and either place them down the middle of the table, or add one at each place setting.

Related articles

• Floating Candle Centerpieces (apartmenttherapy.com)
• Easy and Inexpensive Homemade Centerpieces for Everyday Use (brighthub.com)

First, there is the question of silk flowers in general. Some people don’t like them and don’t enjoy the idea of a wedding with artificial flowers, but there are some circumstances where they are ideal, and others where they are downright essential.

If you would like to use silk flowers, but there are those in your family who think it’s wrong, silk gerber daisies are a fabulous choice because the really good ones, usually described as ‘real touch’ are almost impossible to tell from the real thing.  So you could just use them, and don’t tell.

If you’d like to use silk flowers because you want a color scheme that doesn’t exist in nature, then its likely you will be spotted, so my advice is simple; don’t. Gerberas come in many shades, colors and sizes, but, for example they do not come in blue, unless dyed, spray painted or artificial. If you’re looking for a blue flower, go for delphiniums, cornflowers or best of all, [amazon_carousel widget_type="SearchAndAdd" width="600" height="200" title="Silk Bouquets" market_place="US" shuffle_products="True" show_border="True" keywords="silk wedding bouquets" browse_node="" search_index="HomeGarden" /], all of which can be found in silk.  Silk hydrangeas especially look extremely natural.

When You Must Use Silk Flowers

If you’re not a florist and you’re making your own bouquet, use silk flowers. You’ll have plenty of time to work our what you want and to make it work. There are many many places where you can get everything you need to build a beautiful bouquet.

If you’re being married somewhere sunny and warm, like a Caribbean Island, somewhere exotic and Mediterranean and of course on the beach in Florida, the chances are that your bouquet will suffer from the heat, and you don’t want it to be wilting in the wedding photographs.  You can get round this with real flowers in two ways;

choose heat resistant flowers, usually tropicals, or perhaps forget flowers entirely and use something like seashells or ribbons and feathers.

have more than one bouquet, one to carry, one get in cold storage for the pictures and afterwards.

With silk flowers there is no problem.

Again, if you are traveling to a remote location, or just going back home and you’ve had little chance to visit and talk with the florist before the wedding, you might want to have the bouquet made by a florist you know and have time to talk to. In this case silk is pretty well your only option.

One final reason to use silk flowers is cost. There are many many artificial bouquets available online and from stores, usually at low cost. Some of those made from gerbera daisies are amongst the most realistic. Simply add a beautiful bow, and in most cases your guests will have no idea you didn’t spend a fortune on a one of a kind bouquet.

Image by doug88888 via Flickr

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Silk Gerber Daisies  is dedicated to providing quality information about silk flowers in general and in particular, on silk daisies, also know as silk gerbera flowers.

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