But, there has been progress! One project I was particularly worried about is now something I am officially excited about - my DIY bouquets!
Dan woke me early Saturday morning with the news that he "mayyyyyyybe" left the freezer door open all night, which meant a morning of tossing no longer frozen food. When we realized this left us with next to nothing for breakfast, I suggested the Farmer's Market for donuts and some wedding flower shopping, and thankfully, Dan was up for it.
After our donuts we took a quick lap to see what was available. Manda and I chatted with one lady a couple months ago about her flowers and I was pretty set on working with her once she mentioned she could just make the bouquets for me thus leaving a whole lot less to do on the big day... but on Saturday I quickly realized that one of the other stands had a MUCH larger selection, cost less, and had a little more of that rough and tough hard working family look behind it. After talking with the farmer it was clear I would be getting my wedding day flowers from him - he was friendly, knowledgeable, willing to work with me, and had gorgeous lilies in a light pink that were exactly what I was looking for. After a bit more chatting, Dan and I left with 5 big bunches of flowers, all for $20. I set them in a bucket of water at home while we ran some errands, and that evening we set to work on my DIY bouquet practice run!
Bucket o' flowers
Sink full of leaves and stem trimmings
I decided to use the 3 stems of lilies as the center base of the bouquet, and simply arranged them so they were nice and close together and wrapped a bit of floral tape around the top half of the stems to secure them together. From there, I grabbed what I referred to as the "filler flowers" one stem at a time and added them in around the lilies in whatever fashion I thought looked good. Using a tip that I read online, I continuously twisted and turned the flowers in my hand making sure the overall shape was maintained and it would look good from all angles.
I quickly realized that it barely took any filler flowers at all to get to a good size bouquet, and within just about 15 minutes of tweaking I was happy with the bunch in my hands! I had Dan hold the stems together while I wrapped more flower tape around in a spiral down about 6 inches and then back up to nearly the underneath of the flowers. I read online that 2" ribbon works best, but didn't want to use up the teal I had that's intended for the cake, so I used a sheer 3/4" pink ribbon that I had laying around. Because of the material and width I had to use WAY more ribbon than I'm assuming is necessary, but either way I was done in minutes and used a couple of pearlhead pins to secure it at the top. Dan trimmed all of the stems uniform and close to the ribbon for me, and we were done!
Finished bouquet!
I had a TON of leftover filler flowers that I brought over to my gramma's for my shower, and they looked great spread around her house in various vases and mason jars (the jars were Manda's idea - she is so my sister).
All the leftovers
After examining the bouquet over and over I decided that for the final product I think I'll stick to the lilies and just one or two types of filler flowers. The white and pinkish-purple carnation looking flowers were pretty, but their petals were delicate and smashed easily, which would be tough to avoid on a busy day of photos, limos and cocktails.
With the farmer's market being on Saturday, us girls will be getting our flowers just hours before the wedding and will have to work quickly to make up all the bouquets before we leave for church. While I'm confident after my trial that this won't be an issue, I'm leaning towards getting the flowers on Thursday (from the same farmer who will be at a different local market that day) and making the bouquets on Friday to sit undisrupted in water until we leave for church Saturday afternoon. Why do them ahead of time you ask? Besides in an effort to keep myself sane, the practice bouquet is currently sitting at my house 4 days later, still looking fresh, and actually almost looking better than when I first made it since the closed lily buds you can spot in the photos above have now opened up! The number of lilies in the bouquet has doubled since Sunday, and they're brand new and gorgeous. I think I'll see if someone can stop by the market Thursday for me, grab a couple lily bunches, trim them down and see how long exactly it takes for the new blooms... regardless, I'm thrilled at the outcome of this project and can't wait to see all of our DIY bouquets side by side in just SEVEN short weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment