1. What is my dress like? If your dress is ornate, a simple bouquet would probably be best.
2. What is my body shape like? Your bouquet can be another tool you use to look your best on your wedding day if you pick the right shape.
3. What do I LOVE? Your bouquet, as with everything else on your wedding day, should be what you love. What if your dress is ornate, but you want a big fancy bouquet? YOU SHOULD HAVE ONE!!
The problem is that most people do whatever is "in style" whenever they get married with no consideration at all to the above questions. I have to laugh at an "in style" wedding because if your wedding is "in style" that automatically means two things: 1. It wasn't YOUR style, and 2. It will be out of style. Don't just do whatever you've seen at all the most recent weddings! Look at a lot of different pictures to see what you really love and DO IT!
Consider the following examples:
This beautiful bride opted for a hand-held, long stem-showing bouquet with a lot of personal touches. With her on-the-farm wedding I personalized her bouquet by binding it with straw string, making a "W" out of horseshoes (both her maiden and married name started with "W").
This bride loved the cascading variety, but didn't want it to be too long. She already has gorgeous, long legs, so that was a good choice to flatter her body.
This bride liked the idea of having stems showing, but wanted her bouquet to look less formal and put-together. So it's arranged in such a way that it doesn't look like every flower was specifically placed (which, of course, it was), but rather like she gathered a bunch of flowers and just bound them together.
This is a good example of doing what you love. Her dress was very ornate, but she loved the big, ornate, cascading bouquet. And so that is what she got! GOOD FOR HER!
This bouquet is a great cross between super formal and tight (like the top bouquet), and very informal (like the third bouquet).
This bouquet is customized to the theme of the wedding (Spanish Vinyard) with the addition of the grapes. It is also a big, long, cascading bouquet. It was perfect against the backdrop of her simple, elegant dress.
This was the first all-white bouquet I ever did and the bride was thrilled with how it turned out (me too!). It is also of the cascading variety, but hers is more involved at the top and thins out as it goes down. I became a believer in the all-white bouquet after this! I loved how it turned out!
This cascading bouquet is full all the way down, but the bride wanted more greenery than flowers at the bottom. 
Sorry for the blurry picture. Don't know what happened there. This hand-held, stem-showing bouquet is a great marriage between formal and informal. It has the stems showing, which is traditionally informal, but it's put together in such a way that it fit perfectly with her formal wedding.
This bouquet made mostly of "black" Callas and dark wine Dahlias was accented with peacock feathers. They were such a fun addition and it turned out great!So start looking at pictures anywhere you can find them. Remember the following:
1. Only consider the outside edge. For example, if you were going to lay the bouquet on a piece of paper and trace it, when you lifted the bouquet, what would the tracing look like?
2. All the colors and kinds of flowers can be changed.
3. Gather pictures and make sticky notes your florist. Write on each picture things like, "I love these colors" or "I love this kind of flower".
4. It's as important to tell all the professionals you work with what you DISLIKE as much as what you LOVE. Make comments like, "I like the style, but dislike the orange flowers!" or "I love the Calla Lilies, but dislike the Roses!"
Happy flower picking!
