Lindsy Plays Florist

I took Monday off from work and had some wedding-related errands that I wanted to run.  My main goal was to get some flowers and with them accomplish a couple of things:

1. Practice making bouquets
2. Decide on whether or not we would have flowers at the altar
3. Practice assembling the floral centerpieces

Kistner's, the floral shop that we I chose to do our wedding bouts and corsages, always has $1 roses.  I grabbed a dozen of those and then 8 carnations @ $1.50 for a pre-tax total of $24.00.  They either come in red or assorted, so I picked assorted, and the carnations that just came in were either yellow or peach.  I went with peach.  

Now, our wedding flowers are going to be all white, but I didn't want to pay $3 a rose to get all white when all I was trying to do was some practice.  And honestly, I think $25 is the most I've ever spent on flowers.

Practice Making Bouquets:

I played around with the assortment of flowers to do the bridesmaids bouquets and came up with several numbers to help me decide how many flowers to order (sorry, no pictures...blogger fail):

• small bouquet = 4 roses / 3 carnations
• medium bouquet = 8 roses / 5 carnations
• large bouquet = 12 roses / 6-7 carnations
• extra large bouquet = 16 roses / 9 carnations

What surprised me the most was that I overestimated the number of carnations needed. I figured it would be equal, but the carnations seem to expand more.  ...And, based off my initial trial, making the bouquets seems like it will be fairly easy (yay!).  I started with 3 flowers in my hand and then just started adding flowers to the outside.  I'll have to maneuver floral tape when I actually do the bouquets, but doing a little practice has given me the confidence to know that it won't be a complete failure!

I plan to order enough flowers to do a large bouquet for each bridesmaid.  I might have to adjust the numbers depending on the flowers, but I plan on ordering some extras anyway.  As for my bouquet, I will have a couple of hydrangea blooms in there too, but I didn't feel like buying them.  I hear they are pretty delicate flowers when it comes to keeping them hydrated, but hopefully they are just as easy to manipulate!

Decide on Whether or Not to Have Flowers at the Altar

I then took the flowers and arranged them into two vases.  

My original vision for the altar was to have two flower arrangements on the sides and then our unity candle in the middle.  After talking to the first florist, she strongly recommended using tall flowers for the altar arrangements because the height of ceiling and the giant stone wall will dwarf the flowers.  While I am not a big fan of some of the typically tall flowers (and didn't want to pay $50 per arrangement), I didn't quite believe her.  I told her that I would check it out and get back to her.  

If you remember, or if not, this is our church:

(Source)

See the altar up there, hiding behind the piano?

Well, she was right.  Adam and I took the flowers and the unity candle set up to the church last night and they looked sooooo tiny!  Adam and I agreed that it looked much better to be flower-less than to have dinky looking flowers up there at the altar.  So there's a few extra flowers that we don't have to order!

Practice Assembling the Floral Centerpieces

As I've said before, we are having two types of centerpieces:  a 7-piece candle set and then the H-Bowls with flowers.  I'm still hard at work on the candles, but will share them soon!  

The floral centerpieces are going to have the same flowers as my bouquet, a combination of roses, carnations and hydrangea.  Thus, what a perfect opportunity we have to practice these as well!

Based on the shape of the bowl, I figured I might have a hard time arranging the flowers.  The flowers were going to need to be short enough to fit in the bowl, but they might be top-heavy because there would be barely any stem to balance the weight out.  Here's a refresher picture:

I recalled seeing this picture from Martha Stewart/Pinterest awhile back that I thought might help me out:

Source

While I knew that I didn't want to use tape on the bowls (because I wanted the flowers to sit deeper in the glass), it did give me an idea:  chicken wire!

I bought a roll of wire at the hardware store for about $6 and made two templates to try.  I just "traced" my pyrex lids.  The blue one is 6" in diameter and the red one is about 7.5" in diameter.   The red one sat pretty high up on the bowl, so I chose the smaller, blue template.

Gloves are highly recommended!  After cutting two of these, my hands were sore.  After I finished the other 8 (with gloves), I found this pretty little thing:

And then we start arranging!  The wire grating moves around a bit at first, so I started by doing the outside edge and then working my way in.  The stems ended up being only 2-3 inches tall to fit in the bowls (and most certainly top-heavy).   I ended up using a total of 16 flowers:  9 roses and 7 carnations.  Since I will be using hydrangea also, my numbers will end up being different, but at least this way I know the maximum number of flowers that I am going to need!

And the finished product:

I did add some flower petals to the mirror.  Like I've said before, I don't know if I'll dye them blue or punch out paper hearts and spread them around.  Needless to say, I will have to do something, otherwise my guests will be seeing this:

(See the evidence of my wire "helper" in the reflection?)

If you are considering this option, the hardware store also sold green, plastic-coated wire exactly like this.  It was going to be $4 dollars more, and I was being cheap, so I didn't buy it.  I think I would recommend it now, but it's too late for me!

Once I figured out the procedure, arranging the flowers went pretty smoothly.  I think I'll be able to do all 8-10 fairly quickly on the Friday before the wedding (like an hour...we'll time it!).  Adam did give me the official seal of approval on the centerpieces, so we are all set on that!  Hooray progress.

I did take pictures of the bowls as I was arranging them, if you want to see the step-by-step process, it is embedded below in a PowerPoint.

So that is the sum of my $25 floral investment.  I managed to get 3 things checked off my to-do list and there's now a little more room in this head of mine for more wedding stuff!

Did you practice with flowers before your wedding or did you just wing it?  Or...did you have a florist take care of everything like a normal person would?!?!