Zita Elze
Naturalistic, theme-led wedding flowers, and the original Living Embroidery gowns
About Zita Elze
Zita Elze Flowers is an award-winning Kew florist, founded in 2003, known for naturalistic, emotionally themed wedding flowers and for inventing the Living Embroidery technique, real flowers hand-stitched onto bridal gowns.
Zita Elze Flowers has worked from the same corner of Kew, Richmond, since 2003, the year Zita won the Design & Decoration Award for a therapeutic garden built for traumatised children in northern Italy. Her wedding flowers are built around a feeling rather than a fixed palette, themes as varied as elation, fireworks and summer picnic translated into naturalistic, hand-tied designs that rarely repeat from one bride to the next.
In 2009 Zita won a silver-gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for an exhibit that revealed her own invention: Living Embroidery, real flowers and foliage hand-stitched onto gowns, veils and accessories. The technique won the Condé Nast Brides Editor's Gold Design Award twice, in 2014 and 2016, and Zita went on to become RHS London Floral Artist in Residence in 2018. Creative direction has since passed to her daughter Laura, who leads the studio's floral output today, from an English parish wedding to Alvaro and Lisanne's fairytale celebration at a Baroque German palace.
Gallery
32 curated photographs
Services & Specialties
The services this team offers and the areas they are known for.
Specialties
Their Aesthetic
The character, mood, and vision behind the work.
Mood
Prestige Level
PlatinumMade For
Zita Elze is a rare hybrid of florist, garden designer and couturier. She trained in artistic bookbinding in Paris, interior design at London's KLC School of Design, and landscape design at the Inchbald School, where a therapeutic garden for traumatised children won her the 2003 Design & Decoration Award and led directly to her first Kew shop. Six years later, a silver-gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show introduced Living Embroidery, real flowers hand-stitched onto fabric, to British floristry for the first time. Brazilian by birth and shaped by years in Italy, France and Germany, Zita describes her style as a blend of Brazilian fantasy, English gentleness and Japanese precision. Today the studio's creative direction has passed to her daughter Laura, who joined the family business in 2017 and now leads its floral output, carrying Zita's instinct for theme-led, emotionally specific design into a new generation of weddings.
Contact & Location
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Guest Reviews
Enchanting and perfect colours
We were thrilled with the flowers and the wonderful candelabra, bay trees and orchids. Everything looked beautiful and we especially loved the gorgeous little posies on the tables, we managed to give them to lots of guests and family and have several here. They are really enchanting and perfect colours.
FAQs
The studio has worked from the same corner of Kew, Richmond, since 2003, when Zita opened her first, eponymous shop.
Naturalistic and theme-led. Rather than starting from a colour chart, Zita or Laura begin with a conversation about the feeling the wedding should carry, so designs rarely repeat from one couple to the next.
Zita's own invention: real flowers and foliage hand-stitched directly onto bridal gowns, veils and accessories. It debuted at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2009 and won the Condé Nast Brides Editor's Gold Design Award twice, in 2014 and 2016.
Yes. A silver-gilt medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2009, RHS London Floral Artist in Residence in 2018, the Condé Nast Brides Editor's Gold Design Award in 2014 and 2016, and Best Wedding Florist at the 2012 Perfect Wedding Awards.
The studio does not publish set pricing. Every wedding is quoted individually after a consultation about the outfit, venue and season.
No. The studio also offers event flowers, flower deliveries and subscriptions, lifestyle and editorial shoots, one-to-one classes and the Zita Elze Flower School.
Creative direction has passed to Zita's daughter, Laura Elze, who now leads the studio's floral output as Zita has gradually spent more time back in Brazil.
Yes. In February 2023 the studio designed Zita's own son Alvaro's wedding to Lisanne at Schloss Weißenstein, a Baroque palace in Pommersfelden, Germany.
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"I'm Laura, and I lead the creative work at Zita Elze Flowers alongside my mother Zita, who founded the studio in Kew in 2003. Our wedding flowers are built around a feeling rather than a fixed palette, and for couples who want it, we can create a hand-embroidered Living Embroidery gown or accessory using the technique Zita invented and brought to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. I still make the trip to New Covent Garden Flower Market myself, and every wedding starts with a conversation about you, your venue and your day."
Zita Elze
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