Madison Greenhouse was one of my bucket-list wedding venues, so I was especially excited when I got the chance to photograph and provide the flowers for this December wedding. There is something pretty magical about being surrounded by greenery in the middle of winter, especially here in Ontario when the days are short and everything outside is cold and bare. The couple chose silk flowers for their wedding, featuring white roses and lamb's ear greenery, and I thought the combination worked especially well for a winter celebration. They were able to have the full, lush look of greenery throughout their reception without relying on fresh seasonal flowers, and the greenhouse itself was surprisingly warm and comfortable despite the December weather outside.
The ceremony location is beautiful on its own, with a bridge and plenty of existing greenery, so the couple really didn't need to add much floral décor. It's one of those venues where the surroundings do a lot of the work for you. The large greenhouse reception space was also impressive, with plenty of room for a full wedding setup. I can imagine how spectacular it must be in the summer when all of the plants are thriving and the days are long, although the greenhouse can apparently get quite hot during the warmer months. For a December wedding, though, the temperature inside was very comfortable and the greenery gave the reception a completely different feeling from what you would normally expect from a winter wedding.
The morning of the wedding was a little more chaotic than I expected. There were other couples coming through for venue tours while we were setting up, and the on-site coordinator was busy with other things. At one point, the cake person was trying to find the refrigerator for the cake, so I ended up helping track that down. It's a good reminder that at larger venues there can be a lot happening behind the scenes at the same time, and sometimes vendors end up helping each other keep things moving.
Winter does change the experience of photographing the property quite a bit. By December, the days are extremely short, and the couple chose a 4:30 p.m. ceremony, which meant it was almost dark by the time the ceremony was finished. The clock tower on the property is such a neat feature, but there simply wasn't enough natural light left to photograph it the way I would have liked. I ended up using flash quite a bit throughout the evening. If I were planning a winter wedding here now, I would strongly recommend considering an earlier ceremony time so couples can take advantage of whatever daylight is available for portraits.
I also found that the greenhouse itself looked quite different from the beautiful summer photos I had seen of the venue. Not every plant survives through the winter, so there was less lush greenery than you might expect from a greenhouse, and there were leaves and bits of debris around in some areas. It had more of a working greenhouse feel in December—almost a little like a garden centre greenhouse—rather than the perfectly manicured, overflowing greenhouse you see during the summer. That's something I'd definitely keep in mind when choosing this venue for an off-season wedding.
Despite those differences, I still loved getting to experience Madison Greenhouse for a winter wedding. The ability to have real greenery surrounding the reception in December is something you simply can't replicate at most venues, and the silk flowers were a practical choice for the season. The white roses and lamb's ear added that soft, wintery floral touch without competing with the greenery that was already there.
