For as long as she can remember, Kaylyn Hewitt Garceau of True Vine Studio has harbored a passion for flowers. “My mom is a very avid gardener and my great uncle was a pretty famous landscaper in Texas,” she says. “It was in my unconscious. I just love them.” After graduating college in Texas and moving to Boston for graduate school, Kaylyn helped some friends do the florals for their weddings. “They asked because I was the creative friend,” she says. “I had never done florals before, but from there, it was history.”
After over a decade of working as a studio florist for weddings, editorial shoots, and brand events, Kaylyn was offered a more personal design challenge—creating the florals for her own wedding. Like many members of the wedding industry, the designer didn’t exactly know what she wanted for her celebration. Rather, she knew what she didn’t want. “I remember early on being like, ‘In order to preserve the specialness of it being my time, I’m going to try to not think about it.’ I very purposely tried not to brainstorm my wedding for a decade,” shares Kaylyn. One thing she did know? “I wanted it to feel like a garden,” she says.
Kaylyn and her fiancé BK—who works as an editor and photographer—first wanted to give themselves a month to enjoy being engaged before they began their planning process. Once the month was out, the two first needed to decide between hosting a celebration in Los Angeles—where they lived—or Texas, where they both grew up. When they learned about a private residence in the mountains of Malibu with incredible views and a beautiful garden with availability in July, it felt like a perfect fit. “The owner reminded me so much of my mom. Then, I found out they became besties at the wedding,” says Kaylyn. “She had taken so much care and consideration into her home and garden. She has this ethos about life of just really making things flourish where you live.”
When it came to the question of whether or not to do her own floral design, Kaylyn arrived at a compromise. Understanding the stress that comes with installation on a wedding day, she decided that she would do the full design deck and order the florals she wanted, yet would have a team of friends in the industry come together to actually create the designs. “It became the best team thing. I basically put all my friends in the room and was like, ‘This is kind of what I want, but you guys just have fun,’” she says. “It just became this celebration of flowers and family. I just felt so loved.”
Within her design, Kaylyn hoped to illustrate elements of her own story. “Florals have been this throughline in my life,” she shares. “We had a honeysuckle vine on our fence in Texas, so I knew I wanted it in my bouquet. I knew I wanted certain varieties of hydrangeas from living in New England. There were these moments where I was creating a history with these flowers which got very deep and emotional.”
Kaylyn also wanted the wedding florals to be reflective of the summer. “I wanted to stay true to what was seasonal but also to have this color palette that felt fluid and organic enough that it was more of a garden than a really curated color story.” This strategy worked to their advantage with the weather. “I m so thankful that we did that, because it was the hottest day in Malibu. We might as well have gotten married in Texas,” she says. “If I had gone out of season, everything would have been torched.”
The result of her vision and the hard work of her floral community paid off. “We had a meadow at the ceremony. Literally everything was surrounded by flowers,” she remembers. “It was so beautiful.” Since she left the final design decisions to her team, she also was able to have some sweet surprises. After the ceremony, the floral designers repurposed the florals to create a beautiful frame around the dance floor. “Being a florist, I ve done that 1000 times, but I didn t think of that from my own wedding,” she says. “People loved them.”
Reflecting on the day, Kaylyn is thankful for that beautiful mountaintop garden, the people who surrounded them, and the love she and her new husband share. “We are people that take beauty seriously and creativity really seriously,” shares the bride. “We want it to be an expressive thing. But at the end of the day, we were like, ‘We just want to get married.’”
