sustainable wedding flowers from the forest and field

About

 

About

That feeling when you get to run an incredible business celebrating love, making beautiful things, growing flowers, and supporting local flower farmers!

Welcome! My name is Carolyn Cosgrove Payne and I run Wild Ginger Weddings, a boutique floral design studio + mini flower farm based here in the City of St. Louis since 2018. I became obsessed with flowers when I was actually trying to be a vegetable farmer. I did a few weddings for friends, met a few local flower farmers, and started dreaming up wild & whimsical & romantic floral designs that shift with the seasons, that move, that are filled with life, texture, and color. Before I knew it, I was quitting my job to create wedding flowers full-time.

It’s not all dreaming up designs and skipping through fields of flowers- I also have a handy MBA in operations & logistics, meaning making high-pressure, complicated events seem effortless is kind of my jam. Yes, I am a Capricorn.

I feel so incredibly lucky and grateful to have this life where I’m able to celebrate your love through flowers. You can usually find me wearing black and lurking in the background of wedding venues doing things like this:

Photo: Della Chen Photography

When I’m not working on your wedding flowers, I’m probably at a park or library with my wife and our 2 kids. As a proudly LGBTQ* owned business, weddings are a big deal for me. When you work with me, you support our family & community and I love you for it.

Clockwise from top left: Me, my wife Amy, and our kids Landin (3) and Aster (1).

Sustainability is important to our couples, and we are guided by our love and wonder for the diverse ecosystems that bring forth flowers and other living things. Our clients love that we never use floral foam, we minimize single-use items, and we compost our organic waste. We prioritize buying flowers from local & regional sustainable flower farmers, including the ones listed below:

  • City House Country Mouse (STL)

  • Bloombox Botanicals (Union)

  • The Flower Field 618

  • Flora Place Flower Farm (Collinsville)

  • Grown by Love (St. Charles)

  • Stems & Sprouts (Metro East)

  • Urban Buds (STL)

  • Clara Joyce Flowers (Stockton, IL)

  • Sunny Meadows Flower Farm (Columbus, OH)

In our eyes, harm done to the Earth and harm done to Black and Brown people is one and the same, a viewpoint that paraphrases a speech on environmental justice by Des Moines artist Jordan Weber. Our sustainability necessarily includes justice work. We oppose carceral systems and we support groups working to dismantle them.

We can’t wait to bring your vision to life. Click here to get started.