- missmonsterjeep
- 6 years ago
- Wedding: August 2015
Hi, bees!
For the longest time, I was dead-set on having carnations, roses and baby’s breath for both my girls’ (and my) bouquets as well as for the centerpieces. I’m going to DIY them all, but now I’m getting nervous about how many carnations it will take to make up my centerpieces. The vases provided at the venue are VERY tall. I’d say 2-3 feet (closer to 3) and wide — likely about 5 inches in diameter, and a straight cylindrical shape.
I’m very nervous about a few things:
1. I don’t have a lot to spend on the centerpieces.
2. I want them to be easily put-together (the venue doesn’t have space to refrigerate them, so I’ll be housing them half pre-made in my house OR hotel room at the venue the night before and plopping them in that morning, I think).
I want to potentially use branches of some type (willow or birch?) and spraying them silver (my colors are black, silver/gray, and white), so I’m trying to find the simplest mix of flowers. Up until now, I thought the price of hydrangeas would keep them out of my reach. Now I’m realizing that I might be underestimating how many carnations I’d need, and that the cost due to quantity might just be the same or more.
I’m also thinking hydrangeas like this would be easier than trying to bunch together carnations and roses:
For those of you who have DIYed your flowers or plan to — here are my questions:
1. Will the hydrangeas be more cost effective in terms of needing fewer blooms per centerpiece? I’m planning on buying them from BJ’s (59.99 for 30 blooms that are said to be about 7″ in diameter). Otherwise, carnations would run $89.99 for 200 stems. I have about 13 tables, methinks.
2. Will the hydrangeas be uber difficult to work with? I know they require more watering attention, but other than that, anybody with experience with hydrangeas vs. carnations in respect to handling issues?
3. Will the hydrangeas be easier for me to “plop” together into an arrangement like the one above, considering the type of vase I’m looking at, or am I idealizing the way that arrangement is put together? I feel like I’d have a lot more taping-together of carnations to bunch them, therefore making my job much more labor-intensive.
I think that vase looks about as wide in diameter as the ones my venue provides. However, it’s not nearly as tall. I don’t want to have to fill the vase with too much crap — lol. I can’t afford it. If anything, I’m looking at water beads or “found” and painted stones.
If not, should I just get dollar-store, shorter vases and glitter-spray the outside? I really like the look of the taller vases in my venue, but if it’s going to be a GIANT pain to get a hold of them to put the centerpieces together, I may just forfeit the “cool” factor of the tall ones for sake of ease and sanity. If I get dollar store ones, I can just put them together the night before and transport… What do you girls think?
Please, please, please help me, bees! I’m losing my little indecisive mind right now. It seems like the closer to the wedding I get (four months! Ah!), the more things that I already decided seem to unravel and turn into previously unforseen, and much vaster arrays of, options!