The second edition of my awkwardly titled series is about FLOWERS! (This is Part One, in case you missed it.)
Back when I started planning, I was in the “I don’t know what the hell to do about flowers camp,” and was waffling between hiring someone to do my bouquets and having a friend arrange them for me. Then there was the whole flower alternative idea floating in my head where you make flowers out of paper (thank you Miss Gray Wolf and Miss Panda for the awesome inspiration), but considering I gave up on making boutonnieres after a whole 1.5 minutes, I think I lack both the desire and skill to DIY anything so grand. I also decided that I’d rather have my friends simply be guests on the wedding day instead of friendors.
Consequently, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and order my flowers through a flower shop.
And boy, was it EASY. Too easy. In fact, maybe it was all dream. No wait, the crappier part of the weekend most DEFINITELY happened so then all good stuff must be true as well! 🙂
My flight into the Twin Cities landed at 9:30 AM and by 10 AM I was seated at a table with BM L Dawg and meeting with C for our first appointment of the day.*
C was a dream to work with, and as L Dawg told Mom Sword, “we were a bit high maintenance” and she still gave us great customer service. She hopped up so many times to show me flowers that I finally told her it wasn’t necessary, and she could just stay seated!
Get this Hive: I went in with ZERO inspiration photos. BRIDE FAIL. But it wasn’t a big deal, I did have a vision and I had a budget.
I’m actually going to share our budget with you because not only is it a great point of reference for those in the Midwest looking for flowers, but it’s also nice to know the actual numbers sometimes if only for comparison sake and curiosity! In case you’ve forgotten, our centerpieces will be flower free, which means we only needed 5 bouquets and four corsages.
The budget Mr. Sword and I decided on pre-MN trip was 500.00 dollars for all things floral.
When we first sat down I turned to C and said, “I know very little about flowers and what they cost, but our budget is 500.00 dollars, can you help us get all that we want for that amount?” And she said, “yes.” Immediately, my heart soared and we got to work picking flowers.
Umm, I think I’m holding stock but don’t quote me on that!
For my bridal bouquet BM L Dawg and C helped me choose white hydrangea, ivory roses, white heather (as a nod to Mr. Sword’s Scottish culture), and mini calla lilies in eggplant as accents.
image via Fifty Flowers
I’m also incorporating some fiddlehead ferns in my bouquet to add in some darkness and drama (they are the curly-q things sticking out of the bouquet shown below).
Source: luxefinds.com via Jessica on Pinterest
And finally we decided to cradle the flowers in these big leaves known as aspidistra (I’d never heard of it before). The bouquet featured below has leaves at the bottom of it that appear to be aspidistra (although hopefully they’ll be a bit darker), and this is the overall look we are going for in all of the bouquets.
image via The Flirty Guide/ Photo by Karen Hsu
Suddenly, all four wedding colors are represented in my bouquet: eggplant purple, chocolate brown, forest green, and ivory. Insert happy bride dance here!
Cut to the maid’s bouquets. Since the bridesmaids are wearing the color eggplant…
Thank you MOH Big Eyes for modeling
it didn’t make sense to have their bouquets dark purple as well, so instead they are going to have a mixture of different shades of purple flowers (I love purple so much), ranging from really pale to lavender to the dark eggplant calla lilies like in my bouquet. MOH/Sister Big Eyes will also get a splash of spray ivory roses in her bouquet to make it stand out.
Finally, we ordered wrist corsages using what else but a purple flower (of which I have forgotten the name).
Here is our numbers breakdown in case you’re interested (while calla lilies are expensive, we also incorporated some inexpensive flowers so all in all I think we did good):
Brides bouquet 135.00
Bridesmaids (3) ea, 80.00 240.00
Maid of honor (1) 95.00
Wrist corsages (4) ea. 20.00 80.00
This comes to $550.00 less 15% discount (-82.50) = 467.50 x 7.775% sales tax 36.35 = 503.85
Did you notice the 15% discount? Isn’t C amazing? I can’t speak highly enough of her as she worked within my budget, was flexible in offering different types of flowers, and super easy to converse with! We even showed C some of the tartan fabric and she agreed to wrap all of the bouquet stems in it as well! Success!
Table of my stuff including a swatch of the tartan
After BM L Dawg and I left the shop, we promptly got into the car and canceled our next floral appointment (this was pre-estimate btw) because we were confident with C and lesbihonest, we just wanted to get to our movie. (Random movie plug: Go see Pitch Perfect, you won’t regret!) Aca-believe me.
(all photos personal)
*I have no problem sharing my vendors and linking back to their websites once everything is fully signed and dotted, but private message me if you are a MN bride in need of great service!
What do you think of our floral prices based on our Midwest location? Am I crazy for not getting a second opinion? What can I say, I was going on instinct!
Journey to "i do" 