Weddingbee Boards

Hi Bees!

I've never really posted but I read lots and lots before my wedding, which was 10/17, I especially spent a lot of time pouring over flower related posts! So I wanted to share my experiences.

I ordered all my flowers online - bouquet flowers (mini callas) from flowerbud.com and everything else (carnations and dahlias) from fiftyflowers.com. With both sites the customer services was outstanding, the orders were exactly on time, and the quality of the flowers was AMAZING!! I was confident the quality would be high (obviously since I ordered them!) but I was still shocked!! They were beautiful! And they lived for (no joke!) nearly 2 weeks after the wedding! (The dahlias were wilted in about a week however.)

So I'll share these photos with you - they are posted on my photographers blog - because they are better than what I have. But if anyone would like to see photos of how the flowers looked when they shipped or our techinque in storing and handling just let me know and I'll figure out how to post them!

Let me know if I can answer questions! DIY flowers was a great decision for us - compared to the quotes I received from 3 different florist, we saved $800 on the bouquets alone!

This blog post has lots of flower pics:

http://www.turnercreative.net/problog/?p=434

This post is more bridal party pics, but shows the bouquets:

http://www.turnercreative.net/problog/?p=415

Thanks!! We went with two different sites because fiftyflowers has the best prices on carnations and dahlias but didn't carry the mini calls - flowerbud had the best pricing and rating so i went there for the callas.

my tip would be that working with just one type of flower per arrangement or bouquet made it much easier! The boquets were as easy as starting with 3 flowers, taping those together, adding 3 more, taping, etc. Just be sure to keep your buckets (or whatever you put them in) clean and you'll be fine!

The pumpkins were carved with a power drill and a 1/4 inch drill bit! Crazy easy!

Your wedding was beautiful!  Congratulations and best wishes!  How many calla lilies did you use for each bouquet?

@Foundtheone: For my own bouquet I ordered 40 mini callas, I know I didn't use all of them, probably about 30 - 32. Of the 40 I received though not a single one was damaged, they were all perfect. I just stopped when i looked right! For the bmaids I ordered 60 mini callas for 4 bouquets and I think I ended up using about 12 in each one. Again they were all usable!

@Irish: Congrats! That year will go fast! We did make the boxes (my dad built them, I stuck the flowers in them!) I actually just put these directions on the DIY board so I'll just paste them here for you. Let me know if some thing isn't clear! We also used these boxes by filling them with gourds and tiny pumpkins. And we sent them home with guests after and now they're using them for all sorts of things!!

We used sections of pre-cut fencing, what you would use to make a 6-foot privacy fence, and just cut off the angled top portion. Then we cut lengths of it to make the size box we wanted and nailed them together. There was a small section of board nailed inside as well, a little less than half way up, to make a partial bottom. Then we used aluminum pie tins from the grocery store and set those inside (the inside board gave them some support and held them up higher, meaning we had less space to fill with flowers. Then we put 2 rectangle shaped pieces of wet floral foam in each tin. So the Friday morning before the wedding we soaked the foam, put it in the tins and cut then carnation stems down to about 3 inches. Then it was as easy as setting the pillar candles on the foam, and sticking the carnations into the foam to fill up the space! We tried it using roses originally but fuller flowers like carnations and dahlias worked better because they filled the entire space and were easier to arrange. 300 carnations filled 7 boxes I believe, and our boxes were built to go around 9x9 pie tins...so they were probably close to 12x12.

I hope that's clear! Let me know if not!

What beautiful flowers and pictures! The wedding was fabulous! The I Do pumpkins were also a favorite of mine. Love the flowers and the recomendation on the wendors, thank you! Congrats!

WOW! Your wedding looks incredibly beautiful. I love the rustic feel, and its definitely what I'm hoping to do with my wedding.

I love the orange dahlias in mason jars - what exactly did you use those for, was it a sort of accent decoration? I'm thinking about doing something similar for my centerpieces.

Also, did you DIY those fantastic wheat/berry bouts for the guys? Any tips there?

All in all, well done. So excited to try some of your tips for my June 26 wedding!

@jennajean16: 

Thanks! We used the mason jars with dahlias as a second variety of centerpieces. Those tables had 3 mason jars in 3 different sizes. The middle size held the dahlias and the others had sand in the bottom with candles inside. So we just grouped the three together on the table.

We did make the bouts, I actually just used left over materials from the pew decorations : )  It was all just stuff I got at Michaels the berries were cut off of those little berry picks they always sell (you can probably find them this time of year, they are popular for sticking into christmas tree branches also). But I just cut sections off and paired it with the pieces of wheat and then wrapped floral tape around it all. We used those flat-backed pins that you can get at craft stores...what you might use if you were making a pin for a shirt or a name tag...so that they were super easy for the guys to put on and they stayed in place better that way!