Our Favorite Fall Flower: The Cafe Au Lait Dahlia
For our inaugural blog post (!!), we wanted to share one of our absolute favorite flowers to use in weddings, the queen herself: the Cafe au Lait dahlia.
Photo by Forged in the North.
Cafe Au Lait dahlias are truly a testament to the insane beauty of flowers, sporting long, tissue paper-thin petals swirling out from a deep yellow center. One of their most amazing qualities is that their shade can range from creamy warm buttery yellow to a cool, almost lavender tone, depending on the grower and the time of year they were harvested.
Peep the top dahlia on this cake design- a cooler-toned Cafe Au Lait that worked perfectly for this palette.
Photo by Larisa Shorina Photography.
Now, you’ve probably seen these stunners all over Instagram and Pinterest; we certainly see them in our clients’ mood boards all the time. But did you know that these are ONLY available in our region in late summer/early autumn? That means if you’re getting married in August, September, or October, these babes may make a feature in your wedding designs!
Photo by Forged in the North.
Part of the appeal of this dahlia is its ephemeral nature. What’s so challenging about this particular variety of dahlia is its shelf life; Cafe Au Laits are notoriously finicky, drooping in high temperatures and only lasting a few days from harvest to wilt. For us, this means we’re careful in how we use these dahlias. We wouldn’t use these in a wedding bouquet for an August wedding anymore- it’s just not worth the risk of a big dead flower in the middle of your bouquet!
Photo by Christian Oth Studios.
Using them in an installation with a water source is a much safer way to use these without fear of them melting. This October arch featured Cafe au Laits which remained hydrated throughout the ceremony via hidden water cups that we buried in the design!
Forged in the North.
Here’s a photo of a hyper-local Cafe Au Lait from last season- you can see at the very bottom tips, this flower is already beginning to wilt. EEK! Luckily, the wedding was the next day, so this flower was able to be salvaged before it was beyond use.
This means we’re extremely picky when it comes to sourcing these- we typically try to only buy these from local growers, where we can be sure they were harvested shortly before purchase and they weren’t flown to us on a plane.
Our favorite growers for these are located either right here in Brooklyn (looking at you, St. Millay!) or in the surrounding counties of upstate New York and New Jersey.
Forged in the North.
When sourced locally and used wisely in designs, Cafe au Lait dahlias are an unforgettable element of a wedding design. They may be tricky to work with, but the result is always 100% worth it, elevating a wedding design to something truly special.
