If you remember, and if you don't, I decided to have the florist put together the corsages and boutonnieres and left the remaining burden on myself. I ordered 200 white roses, 150 white carnations and 150 white pompons/cushion/mums from Sam's Club and needed to make 5 bouquets and 8 centerpieces. I had previously tried the whole shipping-flowers-thing with my high school students for prom earlier that year with great success and the savings was pretty big ($300 total for all those flowers)!
Once the flowers arrive at your door, they need to hydrate for at least a day before you want to start working with them so I had them set for delivery on Thursday and they appeared on my doorstep, perfectly on time, like this:
Once inside, they come packaged together in clumps, usually in two layers to help protect the buds:
Carnations
Mums
Roses
They have you cut the stems at the bottom and then hydrate/feed them in buckets of water. I had previously gone to Wal-Mart and bought a few buckets, but the bakery also gave me some for free, you just have to ask!
And there you have 500 flowers in my bathroom!
I let them hydrate over night and then come Friday morning we started assembling everything. My mom was there to help me and she started working on the centerpieces.
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
I started with my bouquet and then worked my way through the bridesmaids'. The hardest part was definitely putting the ribbon on there, but Adam surprisingly ended up being very talented at this and became head ribbon-on-bouquet man:
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
And the bridesmaids' slightly smaller versions, with peacock blue ribbon instead.
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
All in all I definitely over-ordered, but I was more afraid of not having enough flowers and having to scramble at the last minute and that just wasn't worth it! We ended up having over a bucket of mums left and then I put the extra roses in a large vase on the cake table (which the bridesmaids ended up stealing some to make me a bouquet to use in the toss (sealed with electrical tape instead of ribbon though).
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
We'll talk about cake and the bouquet toss later...
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
Photo Credit: Grant Watkins Photography
After the wedding, Adam's mom ended up taking the leftover flowers since we couldn't really enjoy them on the honeymoon and all worked out splendidly. Considering that the florist quoted me $300 on just the centerpieces alone, I was very proud that I was able to squeeze the bouquets in that price and also have the stamp of my handiwork on one more element.
Anyone else attempt/are thinking about the DIY flower route, do share! Any readers still out there...? Stop by and say hi!
Doing your own flowers is certainly a risk, but it really pays off here!
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