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.