Amanda Luu speaks softly — but she’s likely carrying a stick or two. Whether walking in the wilds with her three-year-old son or tending her studio garden, she’s immersed in what’s growing around her. Not only that, but she takes note of how it’s growing and where. Along the way, she is gathering clippings, fallen leaves, sticks, and stones to bring back to her table for further study, enjoyment, and inspiration.
Amanda is steeped in the ancient Japanese philosophy of ikebana, which, in the simplest of terms, translates to “the way of flowers.” The idea is to honor and express unity with nature by creating intentional, expressive floral statements inspired by it. “I fell into it as a young person,” Amanda says. “I’ve always loved gardens in the actual world and being outside, and the studio practice really allows me to root down in that — I’m able to explore the natural world with this curiosity and learn all of these finer points of Japanese ikebana. People think of it as an aesthetic, but it’s really a philosophy. It’s a way of relating to the world and seeing the world that pulled me in at a pretty young age, and I’m able then to translate that discovery into our work for our clients.”
With her study of nature to ground her, Amanda and her Studio Mondine team have created some fantastical weddings and events. Each design plan is rooted to the setting and translated through the couple’s vision, making it unique and unforgettable. “If you look at our body of work,” she tells us, “you’ll see it’s quite distinct from client to client. And while we are working within each client’s sort of dream universe, we’re also applying those values from ikebana, namely naturalness, balance, harmony, movement. These ideas can be rendered in a lot of different ways with the various materials that are available to us seasonally.”
Though it’s logical to think that winter weddings mean floral limitations, to Amanda it’s a season of inspiration. “I always think that the most creative designs come out of these types of constraints,” she says. “So, I love a winter wedding. I think if you can get past all the holiday greenery, there’s still a lot of incredible material.”
The beauty of the ikebana philosophy is that flowers themselves are only a part of the story. “There’s something very important about branches and leaves in ikebana,” Amanda explains. “And so, when people come to us, they’re really thinking about the flower. But we’re looking at roots, stems, trunks, branches — and that’s how we’re able to create looks, I think, that have a bit more depth than say, a traditional wedding flower look where it’s really focused on the bloom, the face itself.”
Going beyond the blossom means a wedding that celebrates a couple’s chosen venue as well as their desired vibe and vision. “When we’re carving out space inside of a reception tent or trying to create a meandering aisle,” Amanda explains, “we’re really looking at the entire landscape. And that can even include inorganic material. For instance, we just did an installation in Palm Springs, and we brought in these giant boulders for the installation, and that just helps to ground a composition and give it a bit of patina. So that’s the big world for me when I think about how we ground our work, we’re looking to add that life, that patina, that story that’s unfolding over time.
Big boulders or not, there is a minimalist aesthetic at work in Amanda’s designs that elevates a wedding landscape. The most dramatic, sweeping settings require carefully considered materials — even if they are scaled up to meet the moment — that will translate into picture-perfect events. It’s an idea that, again, is informed by her guiding philosophy. “The less cultivated a flower looks, the more I like it,” she says. “That’s something that’s borrowed from ikebana — when you look at a flower that’s grown in the field, you’ll see the points in its life where it was stressed or where it was reaching for the sun. And so it learns to grow around. It arches around; it comes back. Any time you can work with material that has that life force and that struggle, at least in ikebana and Japanese aesthetics, it is actually very, very important to highlight it. And so, we bring that same energy into our sourcing for our events. We look for the rare, the unusual, the seasonal, and we try and make sure that we don’t clutter the design so that we can celebrate those types of moments in the material as a way to honor it.”
Amanda’s Advice for Winter Weddings
Lean into lichen-covered branches, mossy trunks, leaves. It presents a wonderful design challenge, which means it can be super memorable.
Turn to the hot house. This is actually the most appropriate season to be using hot house flowers, such as any of the tropicals you might see coming in, such as orchids, heliconia, ginger, anthurium. They are long-lasting and sculptural.
Look to other natural materials, especially from the produce aisle. Fruits, vegetables, food stuffs can be incredible decor. Sunny lemons, for instance, are perfect to brighten the winter wedding.
Think about botanicals. Amanda is a huge fan of forced bulbs such as paperwhites and amaryllis. Look for uncommon, exotic varietals that take you past red and white. Dramatic tarantula amaryllis come in shades of peach and buttery yellows.
Be inspired by the season. If you reconstitute the materials that go into a wreath — readymade straw wreath bases or berried branches — there’s a lot there to work with.
Earth-Friendly Ideas
Amanda’s roots in ikebana means honoring the earth with sustainable choices. Here are Studio Mondine’s practices:
Use planted material. These are plants that can be rented from nurseries and go right back to them — a circular approach. It offers material that allows them to create aisles that have all that softness, that movement of real plants.
Shop for organically grown flowers that are compostable after the wedding ceremony.
Purchase favorite plants that can become a lasting “wedding garden” when replanted into the yard or garden of your first home together.
Avoid plastics and especially floral foam. Amanda and her team avoid designing arrangements that use foam. When flowers need to be held in place, reusable chicken wire takes its place.
Trend Watch
Amanda travels the world to make wedding dreams come true. So, she needs to stay on top of trends. Here’s how she spots them and what she sees coming.
To keep my finger on the pulse, I keep up a bit more with landscape design and interior design. I feel like those two fields are ahead of weddings. What happens in landscape and interiors and even fashion then trickles down to wedding in a couple of years.
What she sees coming? Two opposite schools of thought. One is the maximalist mindset, younger people who are into the endless party and the dramatic, Roaring Twenties, over-the-top scene. And then at the other end of the spectrum is the hyper minimalist, all organic and values driven.
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