wedding wednesday: the flowers

it makes me really sad that the average wedding costs $27,000.

i just don't think that more money necessarily equals a better wedding. 

for instance: the lady who we had coordinate things on the actual day of our wedding had recently gone to a wedding out on Orcas Island. I have heard GREAT things about it and ready for this? It cost $800.

while I can definitely say my wedding cost a little more than $800, it was no where NEAR that thirty grand amount. 

that being said, I am not crafty. I am good at copying ideas, but coming up with things on my own?

no way. which is why it was SUCH a blessing I had so much help with my wedding from my artsy family and friends.

Part 1:

our wedding

the flowers

credit: auntie sue, grandma, annie

bridesmaids, the James ladies

Gene from the dahlia farm :) 

DAD!

so. i went and met with a florist, described to her what I wanted and then realized that with 6 bridesmaids and all the centerpieces I wanted, having the florist do all the flowers was going to cost half the budget. and that wasn't worth it to me. 

after throwing a few fits ("come on daddy, I don't understand what the problem is with a $200 bouquet! I am your first daughter! waaaahhhhhh.")

i realized I wasn't getting anywhere. okay, reluctantly onto Plan B.

my dad was getting his teeth cleaned at the dentist when a nice dental hygentist in training started chatting with him. they got on the topic of summer weddings, and come to find out she had gotten married last summer at our same venue! they got talking about flowers and she gave my dad the name of the place she got all her flowers from. 

psshh. a dahlia farm? i do NOT like dahlias. Yellow and purple and maroon are pretty, but NOT for me. 

end of story. 

i don't care that they are 10 cents a stem. 

i dunno how I came around to the idea, but one day we ventured out to visit Gene at her dahlia farm. 

you guys, this place was AMAZING.

we picked a sample bouquet for ONE DOLLAR and I was hooked.

then my dad made these awesome planter boxes. You would think that "whitewashing" is easy.

umm.. it is like the hardest thing EVER to get 25 things whitewashed the same color.

and THEN we tried to figure out what we wanted on the boxes. We tried painting on our initials. we tried taking sheets of copper, cutting them into hearts and etching our intials into them.

i feel like with planning this wedding, I kept trying to make things WAY more complex.

my dad had the brilliant idea of getting a stamp made with a logo we wanted and then use it is a reoccuring theme throughout the wedding.


so friday morning we met at starbucks and then trekked out to the dahlia farm. it was one of the most fun parts of my wedding weekend I thought :) :)

throw in some million packets of that stay-alive flower powder stuff and

then my grandma and auntie sun and my auntie and my moms cousin sat under the deck ALL afternoon and started working away. :) my auntie sue was very nice making sure NO green stems were showing. that is not the look i wanted. i wanted more of the "poof" ball look. :)

ta daaaa

so we hired a florist to make my bouquet and the bridesmaids bouquets. looking back, I wish I would have had my auntie sue make them because she did SUCH a great job and the styles would have matched a little better. you could really tell that the decoration flowers and the boquets were made by different people with different styles. oh the problems of a bride, right? :)

i liked the bouquets i suppose.

we had also ordered some babys' breath(much to my mom's hatred) from a wholesale and were going to use it in stainless steel containers for simple decorations at the ceremony.

now here is where my auntie sue becomes a savior.

this lovely lady took the baby's breath, the dahlias and some other plants she had brought from her yard (including these awesome rustic wooden planters) and just whipped these together.
(because maybe the venue had MUMS that were dead all over the place. my grandma still cannot stop talking about the hideous mums. :)

I didn't even see their arrangements  until the wedding had started and they made me SO happy.

they set some up by where we got married and lined the dock with some planter boxes as well.

so there ya go. our wedding flowers (not including bouquets) were $60 plus the labor and love of auntie sue :)

pays to have some smart talents ladies in the family! :)

love you auntie sue and flower helpers! :)

moral of the story: don't be scared to do a little DIY. :) 

next wedding wednesday we will discuss the venue and decorations.

i know y'all can hardly contain your excitment, but I just have soo many pictures I want to share for my memory :)