Beautiful Bliss

I had never really thought about my wedding before getting engaged. All I knew is that I wanted it DRIPPING IN FLOWERS. I love roses. I love pink. And I wanted a flower crown bar so everyone could celebrate in a flower crown. I also knew I wanted to arrange them with my maids because I love playing with flowers. My husband's uncle has a beautiful high tunnel and he wanted to grow some of the flowers. So we got to work in deciding what he would grow and what I would order. Through that and coming up with formulas for all my arrangements was when I decided I wanted all the flowers to be some variation of pink. No more trying to balance out pink and white. I was already wearing a white gown for the day, and wanted to have the color be a fun factor of the decor. Going with a variation of pink allowed me to have more flexibility if things didn't work out and made the decorations work better together even if they were all totally different flowers and varying colors. My uncle-in-law grew celosia (much like the raspberry burgundy feather celosia variation sold here) hops on a vine, amaranthus, and something similar to gerberas. Everything else was ordered here! I had three bridesmaids, a bridesman, and two adult flower ladies. By choosing the flowers I wanted it helped figure out the outfits I wanted everyone to wear! The maids were in an English rose velvet and the ladies were in a flowy pale green- all inspired from the flowers!

I wanted a lower waste wedding. Obviously this is hard to figure out when buying flowers, gowns, decor, people coming into visit the list goes on, but I was determined clever solutions were possible! After getting a lot of glassware from Goodwill, I learned I didn't want to deal with glass for every single table, transporting them with water, and I really didn't want to be forced to use Oasis for each arrangement on every table. I learned through this process that Oasis is a huge contributor to micro plastics! Who knew? I ended up choosing a free standing hand tied bouquet for every table. It. Was. STUNNING. I achieved this by watching a lot of Michel Gaffney's youtube videos and hosting a training session for my family that was available to help! About five people knocked out 25 handtieds in about an hour. Even when no one had ever done arrangements before. I laid out the 'formula' with the flowers I wanted in buckets in a circle they just walked around while arranging and they all nailed it! I sealed the flowers with Crowning Glory wax sealer once they were at the 'bloom level' I wanted. I found at the end of the night it was super easy to get guests to take home arrangements as a gift because they also weren't laden with a bowl full of water and flowers. I told everyone all you have to do is cut them under water and they lasted some couples three more weeks! I am still happy with my solution. My family felt more involved and not having the glassware for every table was a huge cost saver as an added bonus!

Next, my bridesmaid and I took on a challenge of making a flower chandelier. Here I used Oasis because I simply couldn't find anything else to accomplish this task. We started by hanging amaranthus (grown from the uncle!) in the center and built our way out and up from there with many many of the light pink roses and spray roses left over from the arrangements. I don't know how many flowers we used but I know at the end of it all it weighed easily over 40 pounds! It was a challenge but it turned out just incredible. It got set up over our sweetheart table and I would just stare at it because it was so amazing!

Lastly, I had a flower crown bar. I loved having flowers that others got to wear. My maid's, flower ladies, and I all made ours ahead of time and it was a great activity for me while getting ready! We all wore them for the reception and it spurred the interest for the guests to want to make their own.

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