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26 February, 2008
Wedding: Flowers

Finally it’s time for a wedding-related post! These will be more frequent as we get details nailed down. First I just have to send out a huge thank you to my mom. I have heard a lot of girls say their mothers were extremely controlling during the whole process and drove a lot of the decisions about their wedding. They ended up doing things they weren’t comfortable with, even down to wearing a dress they hated!

My mom is not like this at all, even though she could have every right to be. I am so fortunate to have her complete financial backing for this wedding, and so far she has been 100% behind all my decisions! Now that we’re getting most of the big hairy contract things nailed down, I can’t wait to get her creative advice on the fun details. I had no idea how quickly all the expenses could pile up and I am eternally grateful to her for throwing Jimmy and I a totally amazing wedding, I cannot wait! And I can’t believe it’s basically only three months away!

So let’s talk about flowers. My floral vendor for the wedding is Norfolk Wholesale Floral, who I highly recommend! They handled my sister Heidi’s wedding in 2005 and were recommended by a few friends as well. I met with floral designer Sandy a few weeks ago to go over my ideas for flowers and my samples just came in today. I wanted to share my experience and give a little unsolicited advice on wedding flowers.

Shop around. The quotes I got were vastly, vastly different depending on where I went. Not only did Norfolk Wholesale come out to be the least expensive, they also came up with the quote on the spot, I didn’t have to wait a week or wonder if what I was dreaming about flowerwise was going to match up with what I was willing to allot to flowers budgetwise. I was able to say, I don’t want to spend more than $30 on each bridesmaid, and Sandy told me what my options were in that price range.

Keep an open mind. Originally I wanted a big floofy bouquet of peonies for myself with smaller ones for my bridesmaids and centerpieces with orchid blossoms. Once I found out the cost of these flowers however, I decided that I loved other flowers just as much and could try out some new flowers I’d never even heard of. Think about it, you will only be able to enjoy your bouquet for 30-45 minutes during the ceremony, and maybe get a few glimpses of it at the reception. If you’re leaving for your honeymoon right away, you won’t even get to have it around your house! Do you really want to spend a couple hundred bucks on something with such a short life when you could have something just as gorgeous and maybe a little more unexpected for a fraction of the cost? I decided I didn’t.

Beg, borrow and steal. Okay don’t steal but definitely borrow (ideas) and maybe beg a little (from friends). I originally wanted cherry blossom branches for my centerpieces but since they aren’t in season, I had to get a little creative. I borrowed an idea from Martha. I originally planned to use her tissue paper cherry blossom idea but after I got real with myself I knew there was no way I wanted to make that many paper blossoms (or force any bridesmaid to do so either). After seeing this great post, which really captured the look I was going for, I decided to attach real blooms to the branches. My original thought was orchids, but the price was ridiculous. When I met with Sandy she asked if I’d consider silks. Me: “You mean FAKE flowers?” I was picturing dusty, fusty old roses with fake, hot glue drops trying to look like water droplets. She told me to just keep an open mind, and brought out two different bunches of blooms, cherry blossoms and azaleas. On the stems they looked fake as ever. Then as soon as we took them off and held them up to the willow branches, they looked amazing! You couldn’t even tell they were fake, and they totally captured what I was going for. Plus the centerpieces are going to be extremely cheap.

I sent out emails to my friends and the Norfolk Craft Mafia asking them to save glass bottles and little jars for me to use in the centerpieces. It’s going to be a really cheap, recycling type thing and will look really sharp.

So, shall we talk about the flowers? I think yes.

Bridesmaids (who are wearing dresses ranging from Tiffany blue/aqua to dark teal - they get to pick their own dresses) will be carrying small bouquets of gerbera daisies in shades of pink and fuschia with a few mini white gerberas thrown in. All the bouquets will have exposed stems with just a tiny ribbon cuff where we will hold them. I like seeing stems. By the way, gerbera daisies are extremely affordable and always available.

Mothers will be carrying small bouquets of white gerbera daisies, except my mom’s gets to be a little different with some color because I love her most.

Grandmothers will have corsages of white gerberas.

Groomsmen, dads and grandpas will have super simple bouttonieres of chartreuse hypericum berries with greenery.

Jimmy will have red hypericum berries and a few little pink hyacinth blooms to match mine.

And here is a sample of my bouquet. It will be larger but these are how the flowers look together. Ranunculus, open tulips, anemones, gloriosa lilies (those gorgeous deep fuschia blooms with yellow edges which are so my new favorite flower), hyacinth, hypericum berries and I think we’re throwing in a couple mini gerberas as well. I’m so happy with how it came out, I think it’s gorgeous and will look stunning up against my dress.

What do you think? Are gloriosa lilies the new peony?

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