What happens to the flowers after the wedding?

While I am not the biggest fan of flowers, I decided that since we are spending money on them for the wedding I would like to do something with them after the night is over.

Originally Mama Elephant wanted to send them to our church, but since it will be Easter Sunday we already know that the sanctuary will be filled with lilies. There are now talks of reusing some of the centerpieces at our send off brunch the morning after the wedding.  I told mom if she could keep from guests taking them home, they're all hers!

I'm really only interested in saving my bouquet, but how?

Option 1: Preservation - Air Dry
A popular, easy and cheap way to preserve the bouquet would be to hang it upside down and let it air dry.  I used this method on my bouquet from MOH Navy's wedding, then placed it in a vase to decorate our dinning room table.

I have heard that these dried flowers (in particular roses and peonies) may attract little moths, so you may want to bag up the bouquet and place it in the freezer for a week.

Option 2: Preservation - Freeze Dried
According to this site "The process for freeze dried flowers is the state-of-the-art and most effective method for flower preservation today.  It is an innovative vacuum process that takes approximately four weeks depending on the flower.  Freeze dried flowers go through a process in which water is removed as vapor directly from ice, without passing through the liquid state."


Freeze drying the bouquet would be the best method if I wanted to keep the bouquet in a shadow box after the wedding.

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Option 3: Flowers Into Art
I originally saw this idea in an issue of Brides magazine, where companies like Flowers into Paintings will preserve your wedding bouquet and turn it into art.  This is a pricey option, but how awesome and sentimental would that art piece be in your house?  They use canvas wraps as the base for the art and we all know how much I have grown to love canvas wraps!

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Are there any other ideas out there? Will you be saving your bridal bouquet?  

Flowers That Made Me Cry

No joke hive, I cried when I saw these flowers.

I previously mentioned that our planner Kathie, with Grand Events, is also doing all of the floral elements for our wedding.  Since flowers were the least important part of the wedding for us, I was completely surprised by my reaction when Mama Elephant and I headed over to Kathie's house to see mock ups for our centerpieces.  I was blown away by how beautiful they were.  They were everything I didn't know that I wanted!

Here are some pictures of the shorter arrangement.

And here are some shots of the taller centerpiece

Close up of the gorgeous flowers in the tall centerpiece 

 Mama E couldn't get over how beautiful these mock ups were.

We also decided to upgrade from the linens offered with the venue.  We'll have blue floor length linens, white chair covers (which come free with the venue), blue chair sashes and green napkins.  

Each setting will have a silver charger, green napkin, and my DIY menus wrapped in ribbon and topped off with a little kermit mum.

After we nailed down the linens and gave the A-OK on the centerpieces, we began to discuss the personal flowers.  With the bridesmaid's dresses being blue, we decided to go with simple bouquets of green hydrangeas and you're going to kill me because I can't remember the name of the other green plant but here's a picture of it.

There will be pieces of that green plant mixed in with the hydrangeas 

My bouquet will be one big daddy with a mix of hydrangeas, roses, delphinium and various other flowers.

Getting a visual of the mix of flowers

We're going to try and keep the boutineers simple.  Mr. E will have more white and blue in his, and the rest of the guys will be more green with a pop of blue which I think will look awesome with the dark suits and blue ties.

Mock up for Mr. E's

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Picture from another wedding shot by our photographer, inspiration for GM bouts.

The moms, house party, and readers will have a beautiful mix of flowers surrounding a couple of roses.  Kathie will make them as corsages, but if they would rather pin it on their dress she'll be able to do a quick change up to the backing.

I am beyond excited to see all of these flower arrangements on our wedding day!  We're just a smidgen over our original budget once you throw in all of the candles, and the fabric we're going to incorporate into the outdoor ceremony area, but I think it's so well worth it!!  If our total guest count comes in on the lower end, then we'll be able to nix one or two of the centerpieces before the flowers are ordered.

Were you able to see a floral mock up before your wedding?  Did seeing your flowers (before or on the wedding day) have you a little emotional?

Something Old

We all know how the saying goes: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. While there are some obvious items for my something new (dress, hairpin) and I love my somethings blue (shoes, earrings), I haven't nailed down my something old or borrowed yet.

Sadly, I will not be able to share this momentous occasion with any of my grandparents, as they have all passed on. There will be a memory page in the programs, but I knew I wanted to incorporate their memory with something more.

Picture of me and my two grandmothers at my first tap recital. Mom Mom is the one I am looking up at.

Thankfully my mom still has several pieces of jewelry from her mom (my grandmother more affectionately known as Mom-Mom to all of her grand kids). When I mentioned to her that I would love to use a piece of Mom-Mom's jewelry for my wedding bouquet, Mama Elephant came to the rescue with this brooch. (Doesn't it look very similar to icon of our very own Miss Brooch? minus the green)

Is that Gypsy looking on?

I love it! My plan is to have it pinned to the front of my bouquet similar to this.

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Did you incorporate any family jewelry pieces into your wedding?

Floral inspiration

When meeting with our planner to sign our contract, she asked a ton of questions to get a better idea of what we want in a wedding. Two questions that stuck out to me were: “If you had to rank the different aspects of your wedding, what would be the top three? And what would be the bottom three?” Without hesitation, I said that the most important thing was photography and the least important was flowers. (It did take me a little while with help from Mr. E to come up with the rest of the top 3 and bottom 3). I’ve already mentioned our amazing photographer, so let’s talk about the floral aspect.

I was never a huge flower person, which is funny because Mama Elephant LOVES to have fresh flowers and plants around her house. I always tried to get out of watering those things! When I started dating Mr. E and we reached one of our first special occasions (my birthday) I told him I didn’t want any flowers. Honestly, I think they can be pretty and smell great, but they always die so quickly and therefore seem like a waste of money to me. The only times that Mr. E has sent me flowers were for Valentine’s Day (each one that we’ve spent together) and I did feel special when they arrived at my office. Those star gazer lilies lasted a good couple of weeks! Which I have no doubt had to do with the company that Mr. E ordered them from since they come pre-bloom.

As you may have guessed from my DIY posts, not all of the flowers will be real (another attempt to save some money). I have already made the flower girl pomander out of silk flowers and will be making the aisle pomanders out of tissue paper for the ceremony.

Figuring that we would need at least some real flowers for the wedding, (although I have seen tons of beautiful weddings without any expensive floral arrangements) I started to search the magazines and websites for inspiration pictures. I’m picturing blues, greens and a little yellow for the bouquets as well as the centerpieces, and have become a big fan of the hydrangeas. They are very pretty, and you get a lot of flower for one stem (which may or may not cut down on the cost of making full arrangements).

I’m in love with this picture as an idea for the shorter centerpieces

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And some pictures of blue/green bouquets ideas.

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We’re kinda stuck on some ideas for taller centerpieces. I don’t want to run up the tab on taller arrangements, but believe that they will make the pin spot lighting on the tables worth it.

Were flowers a top priority to you when it came to wedding planning?