DIY: Flowers

Ok, Ok......I KNOW! It's been forever! But I've been waiting on pictures from my photographer and I needed a little break from wedding stuff. It's been a nice break, but for now I'm back to recaps.

So I took on the brave and stupid idea of doing DIY flowers, bouquets, centerpieces, etc. The good news is it worked! and it was cheap! and I had help!

Originally my inspiration included this:

Ranunculus and anemones and maybe roses?

I ordered my flowers from www.fiftyflowers.com. I placed my order for roses, ranunculus and anemones. I got a call about two weeks before the wedding that they would be unable to fulfill my order for anemones. :( I was really sad....my whole wedding was black and white and those flowers really tied it all together. (Kind of like the rug in The Big Lebowski). So after I pouted for a few days and tried to find black and white anemones I surrendered and decided fine....I just do ranunculus and roses. Well.....they couldn't get me anymore ranunculus! AGHH!! "Oh well. What other white flowers you got then?" They decided tulips are basically just like anemones and sent those. That was fine, except that in all my research I didn't realize that tulips keep growing....this will be important later.

I didn't really get to take pictures of this next part, but I'll tell you about it. My flowers arrived two days before the wedding. I followed the directions from the FiftyFlowers website about prepping the flowers. Cutting the stems in water, adding flower food and putting them in buckets. I kept the roses in the very dark air conditioned room at my mom's house, I kept the tulips and ranunculus in the patio at my mom's. (They needed to open up a bit more).

I have some FABULOUS friends and family! I had about 7-8 girls show up to help me get my flowers done. That was the best thing! They worked their butts off! They stripped flowers, cut stems, made all my centerpieces!

Mo made the cutest centerpieces!

(Ranunculus Doctor)

The ranunculus had VERY weak stems. Hannah spent her time adding wire and floral tape to the stems to make them strong enough to use for bouquets, etc.

My sister and I were pretty freaked out to start the bouquets.....we started small and kept adding.

Don't I look terrified?!

I think we ended up with 15 centerpieces and 4 bridesmaids bouquet, my bouquet and a toss bouquet. We wrapped the bouquets in matching black satin ribbon. I also ordered rose petals from FiftyFlowers.

Here are some pictures where you can see the flowers.

All the following pictures are by my photographer Allison Ruth.

See that rouge tulip? It kept growing!

Here is where I show you how I made the centerpieces.

Anemo-NO!

UGH, major sad face.

I got a dreaded call from FiftyFlowers today that they will be unable to fulfill my order of anemones....some sort of "mother nature" issue.

SO, now I don't know what I'm going to do. I checked with wholeblossoms.com and they said they are unable to guarantee anemones with the dark centers and that you won't know until you get them. I'm not willing to spend mucho dinero on a non-guarantee.

So for now I have roses and ranunculus and have to decide what to do. 11 days.

:(

Flower Trial #1

I've been stalking the local grocery stores lately to see if they have any white flowers on sale so I can practice some centerpieces. Well today I found some roses, spider mums, and daisies (I think). Here is some of my flower inspiration:

So here is my first attempt at DIY flowers. OK I have to confess, I did color the center of the daisies in with black sharpie. LOL I know.....super ghetto, but it's a trial and if you squint they can almost be anemones!

I really want roses, anemones and ranunculus, but alas this is what Safeway had. I'm hoping the roses open up over the next day or so and fill in some of the empty spots.

Anemo-what?

Here is some of my bouquet inspiration. Since I plan on DIYing the bouquets, boutonnieres and centerpieces I want to keep them simple, yet lovely and definitely real.

Anemone. One meaning is that it is used to signify anticipation. Well, that is certainly something I expect will occur on the big day. Oh yeah, AND they perfectly match my black and white wedding.

Ranunculus. I couldn't find a great meaning that I liked. I like how they have a lot of petals and would really "fill-out" a bouquet.

Here are some photos of anemones and ranunculus together.

Another option is garden roses. Some people like to use them instead of peonies because 1. they are cheaper and 2. they are hardier.

I may end up getting all three kinds of flowers and using them in various ways in the centerpieces. I plan on either ordering from Fiftyflowers or Whole Blossoms. I expect if we need more we may need to make a stop to a local flower shop to get more fillers, like white carnations or any other white flower I can find.