I only just realized I haven’t discussed flowers yet!

We were fortunate to find someone who would do them out of her home. She only charged us for the cost of the flowers and ended up being able to do the reception entirely from her garden – so we didn’t pay much! I didn’t have a preference what these small arrangements looked like, so she just used whatever bright colored (mostly pink) flowers she could find for free.

We really hit the jackpot with the little girls’ flower baskets! The florist had these old baskets in her barn she spray painted white. I knew I wanted a potted plant for them because it would be inexpensive and hold up better. The florist ended up finding the Sweet William plants and they were perfect!

The trickiest part was the bouquets and the guys’ boutonnieres. I couldn’t decide until several weeks before the wedding. I had originally wanted daisies and roses, but then I decided that combination wasn’t the right aesthetic style we were seeking for the English Tea type wedding and reception. I wanted something formal, but also relaxed. Then I thought of calla lilies and roses (the smaller calla lilies). But, the lilies ended up being way more expensive than we were willing to pay. In the end, I stumbled upon a picture of hydrangeas and roses. That was it!

The next problem was the color. Since my colors were brown and pink, blue hydrangeas weren’t really going to cut it (they were in season at the time). So, our florist looked up prices of pink hydrangeas, and they were $25 a stem!!!! That most definitely wasn’t in the budget :o )
Don’t worry…this isn’t the end of the story!
In a stroke of brilliance, the florist got some white hydrangeas from her backyard and sprayed them with a pink floral spray. When I saw them I had no idea they weren’t grown pink. We ended up doing pink hydrangea and white roses for the bridesmaids and I had white hydrangea with pink roses.

We designed the boutonnieres together. We did a small closed rose bud (the roses in the bouquets were loose and open) with some sprayed hydrangea (the small petal kind found on our florist’s bush) with a backing of a dark greenish leaf (from another bush). They turned out great and held up the whole day!
The funny thing is, friends of our used the same florist for their wedding in August (ours was in July) and they wanted blue hydrangea (pink was in season then). They ended up having sprayed flowers as well — too bad we didn’t switch months to get married!

So, the moral of this story is: be willing to be flexible in your ideas, but be creative – you can probably get what you want for much less!

**Tip: in season flowers are always the cheapest – if you can’t find the color you like, go with white and then spray them with floral spray.
**Tip: find a local farmers market or flower market and buy plants of the flowers you want for arrangements. Find a florist that will use those. We did that and then forgot to use them! My parents have beautiful pink daisies in their garden still!
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