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For our wedding we used a mixture of real and silk flowers. The table centerpieces were real, and the larger arrangements, including the altar arrangements, were silk. We did use pretty high-end silk flowers, as I didn't want them to look cheesy, but in the general profusion of flowers you couldn't really pick out the artificial ones. And that's not just my opinion - the week after the wedding we had to sort out flower arrangements, because my mom didn't realize until they were taking them out of the car after the wedding that not all the flowers were real - which made her think that the silk ones somehow belonged to the venue rather than to us, so she took them back. They were pretty sure they were actually mine, and so luckily locked them in an office for me!!
Anyway - I would shop around for your silk flowers. The cheap ones you get at Joanne's are not the best - and even stores that sell nice ones will sell different quality/price points. IMO you can absolutely put together a nice bouquet from artifical flowers. There are also florists that will work with silk flowers for you, if you want to search one out, and they might have more idea what is available wholesale and be able to do something quite fabulous for you.
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i LOVE fresh flowers, and arranging them is actually my favorite craft. But for my own wedding i'm doing silks just because of practicality and because i can't afford florists that can make me happy because i'm sooo picky! it hurts me so that i can't do fresh arrangements for my own wedding but i think my sanity will be worth the sacrifice.
you can definitely find silks that are of higher quality that will look much better than the cheap ones, and can certainly look very close to the real thing in photos. i personally went with more textures rather than floral imitations. if you have other specific questions you can pm me and i'll try my best to help ya. i hope to finish them up soon so i can take pics and blog about it, so keep an eye out for the post :)
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For ours (in FOUR DAYS!!) we're doing a mixture of silk and real in the centerpieces. My dad actually found some really good looking silk long-stemmed cala lillies at Wal-mart of all places, so there are no stores in Southern Wisconsin with them left in stock :). Our florist is actually going to buy them from us after the wedding. So I think it's perfectly fine.
We forgot to remind my father about ordering orchids for our centerpieces the week before the wedding, and he was strangely calm about that fact. I, however, was not. The day BEFORE the wedding, when we found out, I was forced to visit Hobby Lobby and purchase some bright pink and fushia fake orchids. They were on sale, and instead of spending $160 on perishable flowers, we just spent $36, and the set-up was easy. Thankfully... it turned out okay. The situation was unexpected and un-nerving, but I was happy about being able to set up the flowers beforehand (and the faux orchids didn't wilt like the real ones did in my trial!). If I had thought of it before/had the time, I would have also done fake flowers for things like bridesmaids bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres. They last longer, and you can really make it look nice long before the wedding. Plus, since you're having a destination wedding, using fake flowers will give you the ability to use flowers not available to the area.
It was supposed to look like this...
But it ended up like this...
My cousin used silk flowers at her wedding and I'm pretty sure the only person that noticed was my mother, the avid gardener : )
Nice silk flowers will look beautiful, not only on your wedding day but for years afterward. Even if you weren't getting married in remote India, it would still be fine to use them!
Silk can be beautiful, also some brides are using crystal sprays HOWEVER, have you been to a wedding in India? It is likely you will have a truckload of assorted carnations--I have literally seen the tables and lawn covered with them! Do whatever makes you happy but be realistic--YOU ARE IN INDIA so who in the world is going to expect you to have access to a greenhouse? It might even look out of place. I would really try to get some local flavour and if that means even (gasp) carnations--anyone looking at your pictures would think-OF COURSE. My best advice to you is take a prescription of Cipro with you.
Thanks for the Cipro advice. I've been to India already and I'm highly aware of the need to carry certain precautionary drugs with me, and Cipro is not the only one.
Weddings in India generally feature orange marigolds, not carnations, and that is because it is a Hindu tradition, and Hindus do constitute a majority of the population in most areas. Seeing as my FH, his entire family, and the majority of the Darjeeling area where we're having our wedding is Catholic and greatly affected by hundres of years of British influence in the area, marigolds, or carnations, as I guess you mistook them to be, would be far more out of place.
Thanks for your advice, but perhaps you should be realistic in understanding that India is a very large, diverse country, and a single set of traditions, especially when it comes to weddings, is not applicable to everyone, just like here in the United States.
Telling me I should be aware of and in tune with a culture that you yourself obviously have no grasp on is both irritating and insulting.
Thank you, everyone else, whose given me advice about the subject I posted on, and trusting me to be informed about and respectful of the unique place where we've decided to celebrate our marriage.
Hi! We are planning on using silk flowers for our wedding mainly because I'm a control freak and I don't want to be surprised at all on my wedding day when my flowers arrive.
If you give me your email address, I can send you pictures of the flower centerpieces that I have so far. I can also point you in the direction of where I purchased the flowers from. Some of the flowers I used were even more expensive that real flowers, but I didnt' have the over priced labor changes that a flower would normally charge.
Good luck with your wedding. I will be happy to help you! 
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I lived in India for 2 years, you said simply it is where your fiancee grew up. If you are so familiar I guess I dont understand your question. The British are the first to assimilate and the last to try and re-create every aspect that is not indigenous. It is a predominantly a british trait. I did not mean marigolds. I do wish you luck with your destination wedding as well as everything else. I will also be the first to apologise if you feel I insulted you by my ignorance. It certainly was not my intent. Weddings can be so stressful, especially on a bride and clearly I would not have wanted to add any more than you are already burdened with
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I don't even think you need dire circumstances, silk flowers can be beautiful! I remember one of my favorite things to play with as a little girl was my mom's silk bouquet from her wedding, and silk flowers have come a long way since then! I'm even considering using them just to have lasting souvenirs.
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what about www.hibiscusflorals.com? do you think they could do some flowers for you? they do some incredibly high quality silk flowers that look very REAL....I ordered an orchid hairpiece for my wedding and people could not tell the difference. it was really beautiful! didn't have to worry bout wilting or anything along those lines. plus the quality was great! they were also able to rush order it to me ......several of the bees have blogged about them. check it out! good luck!
We used silks in our wedding, just for practicality. I was afraid that with the heat and humidity, they would look wilted, etc. They were gorgeous, and I still get compliments when people see wedding pictures. We were able to use really high end silks that I was able to buy wholesale, and the funny thing is DH had no clue that they were silk until after the ceremony, and he was wearing one!!!
The best part for me was that I still get to look at my beautiful bouquet 2 years later, just as it was the day I got married. My grandparents were also able to keep their flowers, which really means a lot to them also!
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One of my best friends used silk flowers in her wedding. She was very sad not to use real flowers...but I think she was unintentionally brilliant! Every bookshelf, side table, and dresser in her house now has a cute little flower arrangement on it that won't wilt. Also, when she wanted to show me examples of a flower she loved in her DH's bout, she didn't have to show me a picture- she just whipped out the bout!
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I think you should have what you want. The idea that you should use a specific flower (the photos and movies I have seen ARE always marigolds by the way) just because that's what everybody does... is not appealing to me - unless that's the look and feel you're going for. That's like saying every bride should use white roses, because that's pretty traditional too. In fact, you should have something that reflects YOUR likes and personality, and your idea of what you want. If you can't easily get that in live flowers, I would totally go with silks. And no, it won't look cheesy at all. I am looking today at photos of both our real centerpieces and silk large arrangements, and you can't tell that one is going to be dead in a week and the other is still in my entryway.
You can get some beautiful artificial calla lillies called "Real Touch". They are not silk but a sort of rubber which makes them feel and look like the real thing. They have that fleshy feel of the real ones.
http://www.save-on-crafts.com/geretofl.html
They aren't cheap but do look very realistic. I have seen just a bunch of them held together with just a ribbon as the brides bouquet. The only reson I realised they were fake was at the reception when they were in a vase with no water and I mentioned it to the MOH as I was worried they were going to wilt.
I am going to be using some silk and artificial flowers and leaves at my wedding for centrepieces. I would have probably gone the Real Touch calla lilly route for my bouquet as I did think they looked rather pretty but my MIL does flower arranging. She has an arrangement where she gets a bucket full of assorted fresh flowers from the local florists every few weeks to decorate he house with and she wants to make up a bouquet for me.
Silk flowers can be gorgeous. Dire circumstances or not. I covet peonies for my wedding, but my florist warned me that she has ordered them in the fall and they've come with brown spots and were totally unuseable...my decision - find really good silks. I assembled my own and took photos and showed teh actual bouquet to various family members and friends - not one person realized it was silk. I ordered all of mine (wedding and for decor in my home) from fiori belli - www.fioribelli.com (I feel like an advertiser for them lol - theyre just that good IMO!)
We are using mostly silk flowers for our wedding. I found some gorgeous bm bouquets that were silk right after I became engaged, and picked them up then for half price. That is actually where my color scheme came from. We are getting married in the fall, so I did want some mums to be sitting around in containers and I wanted my bouquet to be fresh flowers, but besides these two, the rest are silk. I found my corsages and bouts on ebay and showed them to my florist and she said there was no way she could compete with the prices and they are gorgeous. So instead of spending $250 on them, I spent just under $ 115. And the good thing is they will never die!!! Good luck with your decision!
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My FH and I are having our wedding in the remote township of Kurseong, West Bengal India. It's his birthplace and the childhood home of both his parents. We love our location and it's the only place we've ever dreamt of being married, even though sometimes I think we're crazy for choosing a far away place that's honestly rather cut off from the world. I think in a way that's going to add to the romance of our wedding, but it does provide its challenges.
For example, flowers. I really want to have a bouquet and some sort of arrangements as decorations at the teeny reception we're going to throw. We could have flowers delivered a few days before hand, but there aren't many options aside from red and yellow roses, which I don't really want. Often times they show up pretty damaged, too, according to FH. And, I would have to do all the arrangements and my bouquet with the help of only a few other people, which might get super stressful.
I am considering making arrangements and my bouquet out of artificial calla lillies (OR ANY OTHER PRETTY WHITE FLOWER YOU COULD SUGGEST!) while I'm still here in the states.
What do you think? Is there any way they can look good in photographs, and are fake flowers worth saving my sanity? Has anyone out there seen or done this? You can see pictures of our location on my blog @ http://bamboo-bride.blogspot.com for ideas.
Any suggestions would be great! I'd love to see pics of fake (but attractive) arrangements!