detail post #6: flowers

I should say up front that flowers were not high on our list of priorities for the wedding. I just couldn't justify plunking down tons of cash for something that would only last for a day. Plus, we knew that we wanted to keep them fun and simple, so we decided to do them ourselves

The Centerpieces

I mentioned our decision earlier to place individual stems in vintage glass bottles. Jesse and I are thrift store fiends and collected most of our bottles for $1 or less. His mother even found a table full of really awesome old ones at a garage sale for $25. I really wanted to fill the bottles with dahlias since they would be in season in July and I love the modern shape of their full-petaled heads.


We ordered the 75 yellow ones wholesale from fiftyflowers.com to be delivered two days before the wedding. They arrived early that Thursday with no problem (I highly recommend their site). I trimmed each flower down and stored them in buckets full of water with plant food until later that evening when some really kind neighbor ladies helped me start arranging them in the jars.


I thought the centerpieces might need some accent colors, so Jesse and I ran to the lawn + garden section of the local grocery store that evening and bought a potted lantana and a couple of small potted kalanchoes in peach, pink, and orange for about $30 total and added their trimmed buds to our smaller jars.

a photo taken by my friend Jen. This was our "chemistry set" inspired centerpiece.

Luckily we were allowed to set up our centerpieces at our reception site the day beforehand which was made even easier by the assistance of several friend and family members. Arranging and storing our centerpiece jar groupings in advance also helped to save time. I was pleased with how they turned out and they weren't terribly hard to do ourselves, especially with so much wonderful help. Plus, now we have a really fantastic collection of vintage bottles!

The Bouquets

Although I'd been collecting clippings for months of tons of different beautful, full bouquets, even a week before the wedding I didn't know what I wanted to do for mine. I seethed with jealousy of brides who got to carry peonies or daffodils, and tried to figure out every possible way to find them in mid-July, but buying them out-of-season would have cost me a small fortune. I finally decided I just didn't really care. I'd only be holding my own bouquet for a few minutes while I walked down the aisle. It wasn't worth worrying about and I really just wanted something small, monochromatic and hand-tied, so I did the unthinkable in bride-land....I bought my bouquet flowers from a grocery store.

We only needed three bouquets - one for me, one for my sister, and one to toss during the reception. So, I bought white, yellow and pink roses, some mixed zinneas and snap dragons, lots of ribbon and called it a day. My mom helped me to arrange the flowers the evening before the wedding and I finished tying their ribbons later that night while hanging out with girlfriends in my hotel room, so it turned into a fun bonding experience. Sure, they were far from perfect and it's obvious that they weren't professionally arranged, but they suited me fantastically for the day.

My sister's bouquet turned into a wildflower mix of zinneas and snow peas tied with a thicker red and white striped ribbon with a thin salmon-colored ribbon on top. I initially wanted to go monochromatic with all three bouquets, but her dress (although absolutely beautiful) was a little bit darker and more purpl-y than the rest of the wedding colors, so I mixed darker, lighter, and brighter flowers in an effort to tie everything together.

The toss bouquet consisted of large yellow roses tied with a thin yellow and white ribbon. In the photos, the flowers actually almost look a tiny bit like yellow peonies (at least in my imagination) because they were so full.


I ended up using the white roses and the same yellow ribbon for my own bouquet. I used to label roses, and especially white roses, as "boring" for a bridal bouquet, but the day I bought them I decided to re-label them in my mind as "classic". It's amazing what a difference a tiny little mind trick like that can make.

(all photos taken by Mariano Delgado unless specified. Click any of them to enlarge)

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