Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Flowers on the Brain!

For some reason I've always known that I wanted to do my own flowers for my wedding.  It's no secret that I love flowers.  I love taking pictures of them; I love smelly them and admiring them.  I'm not so great at growing them, but luckily there's these things called wholesale flower superstores online that will ship you what you need, when you need it.  All you need are a couple of friends and family members and a moderate amount of supplies and BOOM...wedding flowers.  In reading A Practical Wedding, I've come to realize that DIY or DIT (do-it-together) isn't for everyone, and no one should attempt to DIY their whole wedding or even most of their wedding.  But instead you should DIT the aspects that seem like they'd be fun and you'd enjoy them, instead of the things that stress you out just thinking about.  And for me, DIT flowers seem like a fun activity for my bridesmaids, my mom, and I to do the day before the wedding.  I can totally picture us all hanging out in my sister's basement, with hot tea and snacks working on bouquets and small centerpieces.  Just thinking about it gives me the warm fuzzies.

And it's not surprising, that like most aspects of our future wedding (which is over a year away), I've (we've) got this ALL figured out.  I know the wholesale online flower mart that I plan to use, Blooms by the Box (an APW sponsor).  And I've pretty much settled on the flowers I want, and it's within our budget.

Purple lisianthus, lavender Cool Water roses, mini green hydrangeas, green hypericum, pink waxflowers, white peonies, light pink ranunculus, cream lisianthus, and purple larkspur (probably just for centerpieces).

And, at least for right now, I'm kind of liking the idea of wrapping the bouquets with twine or something kind of natural looking.  I don't really care for satin ribbon...it looks too formal to me.

For the centerpieces we've been collecting an assortment of small/medium sized glass jars from wherever we can find them (old mason jars, old peanut butter jars, etc).  We're planning on trying out this tutorial that uses Krylon Looking Glass spray paint to create faux mercury glass.  I think the purple/pink/green/white palette of the flowers will look very pretty against the silvery faux mercury glass.  Most of our tables at our reception will be two to four seaters, so small centerpieces that people can talk over are ideal.

So, that's the plan.  Any wise words or suggestions from people out there who've done their own flowers would be much appreciated!  Is there anything you wish you would have known before you started?  Things that I've learned through reading APW and Bloom by the Box's DIY Wedding Flowers e-book include:  1.) we will be doing all of this arranging the day before the wedding not the day of, 2.) I plan on asking our reception venue if we can store the centerpieces there the night before (actually, I'm going to see if they'll let us assemble the centerpieces upstairs the day before...after we've done the bouquets at home or at my sister's), 3.) Flower prep takes time, especially with wholesale flowers; different flowers needs different types of attention when you're unpacking them (that's why I opted out of tulips, because they can be temperamental), 4.) I do intend to do a dry run before the wedding.

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Do you have any TWINE?!?!?! Because I have some you can use!! HAHAHAHA

Anonymous said...

I think your flower choices are great! Peonies and ranunculus are both so beautiful and give so much impact with just a few blooms esp. in bouquets. The color palette you picked out is really lovely too.

The faux mercury glass idea is so brilliant! I think that will look great with your flower colors especially but also with any cool-toned flower colors.

I used some of the same flowers you plan to - lisianthus (cream) & larkspur (pink shades). I was very happy with those flowers! I used the larkspur as ceremony flowers and in wrist corsages since they are big and showy. I ordered a lot of them and the lisianthus since they were both very reasonable. I used lisianthus in the bouquets, they held up beautifully and helped make the bouquets look really full. I also had roses but I went with little roses. The lisianthus looked great with the roses, they really complement each other.

We did assemble all the ceremony arrangements, centerpieces, and bouquets the day before the wedding, putting them in their own vases/containers but not tying up the bouquets. That worked out very well and the flowers held up fine even though it was very hot out. We did the boutonnieres & corsages & tied up the bouquets the morning of while primping and it was fun.

I think the only problem I encountered was confusion getting all the flowers placed for the ceremony and the centerpieces on the tables. When I arrived at the location I got dressed then I realized too late that I could not go out to do that and there were MANY bridesmaid and my Mother problems so they couldn't either. Jon's sisters helped out with it and possibly Michelle and my friend Lisa. Michelle & Lisa also very kindly took charge of distributing the boutonnieres and corsages and that was great. If you are able to have the centerpieces placed in advance or have the restaurant do that for you that will be great and avoid that difficulty. You'll also have Michelle there and she is super helpful in all things! Yay!

SusanM