DIY Bride Part VIII: Flowers

This is the DIY project I am most worried about.  To relieve some stress, I actually tried to hire a friend of a friend to do my flowers, but he basically turned me down and convinced me I should just do it on my own!  He was really nice and helpful, but I was a little disappointed because I was eager to hand this job off to a professional.  Instead, my wedding coordinator found a couple friends who are good with flowers and offered to help.  I really hope they can work some magic because I know next to nothing about floral arrangements.

I thought it'd be nice to have a "green" wedding, and my way of contributing to that was to grow my own plants and flowers.  That didn't turn out quite as expected, though, and despite our rustic wedding theme, I did want a romantic and pretty setting, rather than a sparsely decorated bar, as a wedding venue.  Plus, I rarely buy or receive cut flowers, so why not get a little wild for our wedding?!  All this led to several visits to various flower shops around town to check out their flowers and prices.

Budget and Purchasing Advice

The task of creating a budget for flowers and purchasing them was pretty intimidating and more complicated than it needed to be in order to save money.  We were going through that friend of a friend mentioned above to purchase flowers at wholesale, but he needed to authorize every order and purchase.  That required some coordination of schedules, clarification about the rules, etc.  After that, just deciding which flowers to purchase was intimidating.  I had no idea which flowers would last, look good together, be easily arranged, etc.  I still don't.  We just spent some time in the freezing refrigerator with all the bulk flowers and chose things we thought would work.  

If you are DIYing flowers, I'd recommend asking the florists lots of questions about how hardy the flowers are and how far in advance you should pick them up (some flowers, like roses, need to warm up to open).  If you have friends who do floral arrangements, bring them along when you go flower shopping.  They can probably tell you which flowers are easier to work with, which ones to avoid, which colors and textures might go together, etc.  

I had pinned a bunch of bouquet and floral arrangement photos on Pinterest, but they didn't help much.  The flowers available were so different from the ones pictured, and since price was a big issue for me, I was really trying to work with what was available at reasonable prices.  My only "splurge" was the ranunculus.  I love peonies, but since they're out of season, ranunculus was the next best option, and I was swooning over one bunch in particular that had a range of peaches and pinks.  The flowers themselves are much smaller than I was hoping, but I'm praying they'll be full enough and the right colors.  They are rather delicate, though, so I'm not sure how good they'll look by the time of the wedding.  I suppose I can just substitute hardier roses in if it doesn't work out.

Another option, which I mentioned above, is to grow your own flowers or plants.  My wildflowers didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but there are some zinnias I may be able to cut and use and potted wildflowers and herbs I could use as supplemental live decor.  I love the idea of using live plants that don't have to be cut down and can continue to grow after the wedding.

I really had no idea how much I should spend on flowers.  I like lots of greens, so I figured I could get away with filling my bouquet and centerpieces with lots of greens, but I also wanted some floral femininity throughout.  I started out with a $500 budget.  After ordering everything listed below, I'm just over $600.  I think that's still a lot cheaper than what most people spend on wedding flowers, but we might need more.  I think I'll be fine picking up a few more bunches of roses, greens, and affordable filler flowers if we need them.  I learned about a possible way to save about 20% on flowers, but I need to guarantee it works first.  I predict final flowers cost will be around $600, and I can definitely live with that.

The List

Here's what we ended up ordering:

Ranunculus (2 bunches) - $21.99 per bunch

Tulips (12 bunches, half cream, half light pink) - $9.50 per bunch

Sweetheart roses (8 bunches, half white/cream, half sweetheart peach) - $20 per bunch

Nigella/Love-in-a-Mist (7 bunches) - $6.50 per bunch

Butterfly aster (2 bunches, white)

Mini carnations (3 bunches, white) - $6.50 per bunch
Millionstar (6 bunches) - $10.75 per bunch
Baby's Breath (6 bunches) - $10.75 per bunch

For greens, I saw these mixed greens bouquets at Safeway for $4.99 and loved them (well, the healthy looking ones, anyway):

Looks like there's some seeded eucalyptus, eucalyptus, mini myrtle(?), and other shades of green and textures.  I ordered 12 bunches.

My wedding coordinator wanted 1 bunch of bay laurel (in the bucket on the right), at $14.99 per bunch, to make ties for both ends of the table runners:

I also saw this for the first time and loved it.  It's called knifeblade acacia, and it's $7.99 per bunch.  It has those little yellow seeds, similar to the seeded eucalyptus, but these are tall stems.  I don't know how we'll use them, but I'm sure we'll put them to use somewhere.