Flowers Complete

I had offered to do the flowers for my nephew and niece's wedding, as after  the absolute blast I've had with my few experiences helping florists and doing my own flowers, I couldn't wait to get my hands on flowers again. Unbeknownst to me, at first, they took me up on it. As soon as I found out (about a month and a half ago), I went to town on planning, running flowers by the bride, deciding, creating arrangement and price list spreadsheets, picking up supplies and placing orders.

Monday I went into decision-maker mode and powered out all the arrangements, boutonnieres, corsages, and bouquets with six helpers for six hours and we used every minute. Who knew such attention to detail took SO long? Not to mention the three hours picking them up, filling in any blank spaces, and transporting them the day before, as well as the hours of brainstorming the perfect flower for the bride's taste in style and color, planning, and ordering. Now I realize why florists might go the easy route of a single rosebud for a boutonniere. These things were detailed. I love all the design and thought we put into each one, and when it came down to it, I loved making the final artistic decision on every single detail while putting them together, right down to wrapping the ribbon around the bouquets, and grabbing the leftover flowers, arranging them beautifully in less than five minutes. The bridal bouquet was lavender hued crystal blush calla lilies accented with sprigs of ivy symbolizing friendship. The bridesmaids bouquets were white and lavender calla lilies.

The boutonnieres were lavender calla lilies, grass blades, queen anne's lace, and ivy.

Those calla lilies are troopers--they were still completely fresh this morning. Brando got the above photos of the bouquets and boutonnieres, which gave me a sigh of relief as it was such a family run wedding and I was so busy running around helping out, taking pictures, and making sure flowers got where they needed to go that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the corsages or other arrangements at the wedding. The corsages were gorgeous as well with white hydrangeas, lavender-hued seafoam statice, and ivy.

Updated to add: I realized I took one of the arrangements home, so here are some detail shots a few days after the wedding (thus the slight bruising of the delicate white hydrangeas). The arrangements were hypernicum (green berries) and purple and white hydrangeas, among other small lavender flowers.

Green hydrangea, and lavender statice - this is what the corsages were made of, except it was white hydrangeas

Lavender statice, hypernicum, and Queen Anne's lace

Hypernicum, Queen Anne's lace, and white hydrangeas

Queen Anne's lace, a lavender flower, and a white hydrangea

Queen Anne's lace, lavender statice, and green hydrangeas

This whimsical arrangement of purple turned lavender allium and limes below (again slightly bruised as it is a few days old at this point) was another arrangement I brought home and was designed by two of the people helping out - my niece and a family friend's son. They did an absolutely beautiful job. Even though it didn't match the florals of the rest of the wedding (I had picked up the allium with the other florals because it was too fun to resist), it turned out to be the absolute perfect arrangement for the table that held a Dr. Seuss book called Oh, The Places They Will Go for the weddings guests to sign. As my niece pointed out, the allium looked like Horton Hears a Who flowers.