Saturday 4 September 2010

Wedding Flowers

Weddings are a big deal, and though mine is already nearly three months behind us (wow, time fly's!) I still have lots to share from the day. I think that I just needed to put a bit of space between me and the wedding before I was ready to dive into all the details again. But, now that I'm feeling nostalgic, I've got a couple little things that I'd like to share with you all. Today, I'd like to tell you all about the flowers. I'm quite proud of the flowers for being both beautiful and super thrifty!

The centerpieces for the reception were a total DIY project. First off, we scoured the big box garden centers for reasonably priced orchids. Orchids, though gorgeous, are super expensive if bought at a high end nursery or florist. Chris and I both love orchids, as is proven by the numerous blog posts I've already done featuring our favorite flower... so we wanted the look without the price tag. We were able to find all the potted orchids we needed (pots included!) for under $20 a pop. Since we were able to find our orchids already in terra cotta pots, all that was left was for my sister and I to spend a half hour painting them my favorite colour blue, and ta-dah!
They looked great! We had several different colours, from white, to yellow to fuchsia and even deep purple. And the best part is, this gorgeous specimen shown below still lives in my dining room. Bouquet's of cut flowers are stunning, but it seems like a sin to spend all that money on beautiful flowers that will only last a week. This way, we and a few select guests, are able to enjoy our centerpieces for (hopefully) years to come!

Our table numbers were also a DIY project. We cut butterflies out of white card stock and then glued navy blue numbers on their wings. We then tied the butterflies to the stems of the orchids using the same blue ribbon that we used in the invites and the programs, hoping it would look like the butterfly had just sort of perched himself on the flowers. I don't have a professional shot of it, but we do have a sample butterfly (sans table number) still tied to our test subject. Cute right?
So, that about covers the centerpieces, next up is the bouquets. This is the one area of our wedding that caused me to panic and almost have a meltdown the morning of the wedding. I was a very calm, cool and collected bride. We were so busy in every area of our lives that stressing out over every detail and over planning just wasn't an option for me, which was terrific! Until my my family came home after having picked up the flowers.... we were trying to be frugal and keep the wedding flowers reasonable. We picked a florist who worked from home and was very affordable. We picked the most basic bridal package. All that I asked was that all the flowers be white. I had flirted with having pink flowers, but in the end we decided to go all white. It was simple, easy, affordable, I was thrilled!

And then the flowers showed up... and they weren't white. Parts were sort of lime-green, other parts were peachy. I hated them. I didn't take any photos of them because I was kind of freaking out. But the photographers did snap a shot of the flower girl's basket.
I don't know why, but this "non-white" flower situation nearly pushed me over the edge. I almost cried! But without skipping a beat my mother and my friend Suz grabbed a vase of white peonies that had been brought to the rehearsal dinner BBQ that my parents had hosted the night before, they took a bunch of white ribbon that had come on some wedding gifts that we had already opened, and they started making bouquets. They were stunning!

I love these bouquets! I love that my mom and Suz made them, I loved that they came from my mom's best friend and cousin who cut them from her garden from a shrub that my great aunt (my grandmother's sister) had given her. They were just so much more special. They were perfect! So though there was a bit of drama involved, and I'm ashamed to say that for a split second I thought that my peach flowers were going to ruin my wedding day! In the end, the flowers are one of my favorite memories.


photos by supa studios