Weddingbee

Post Number…something…about the Bluebell wedding will be about: our flowers! We worked with the incredible Danika of Blomma Flicka, based in Greensboro, Vermont. As I posted previously, we came to her through an amazing instance of kismet, but even with my “wow it’s all working out perfectly!!!” overly high expectations, Danika blew me away! The pictures she brought of various weddings she’d done before were all astonishing (and there are a TON that’s not on the website). She was extremely reasonably priced, willing to do only our bouquets & bouts herself and just bring us a zillion loose flowers for the arrangements.

And now, time for a million pictures! At the end, I’ll copy the list that Danika gave me of (most of) the flowers in our bouquets / arrangements, but honestly, I can’t tell you which is which for the majority of them!!

<all photos by the superfantastic Jane Heller unless otherwise noted> 

First, my bouquet:

<above pic is by Jane, but cropped to zoom by Mrs. Bluebell>

Attaching my grandmother’s blue crystal earring to the bouquet, as my something blue.

Hehe, when we first pulled it out, the fridge had been set at too cold a temperature so the water in the bottom of the jug froze! There were a funny few moments as we tried to tug HARD on the bouquet without damaging anything…

And the boutonnieres:

Mr. Bluebell’s:

The Best Man’s:

<above pic is by Jane, but cropped to zoom by Mrs. Bluebell>

My Dad’s:

Mr. Bluebell’s dad, looking freaked out as my sister-in-law pins his on, hehe:

Peonies for the Moms:

Bridesmaids:

The Maid of Honor’s:

The Bridesmaids’:

<above pic is by Jane, but cropped to zoom by Mrs. Bluebell>

Hanging bottles for the ceremony site:

<above picture by the Bluebells’ friend Melisaa, the one who did most of the work on the bottles!>

The Buckets, and us arranging the centerpieces:

<three above photos by Mrs. Bluebell.  That’s why they’re less pretty.>

Centerpieces in the Tents:

Apparently when our caterers put them on the tables in the tent, it was really windy, and our centerpieces kept blowing over! In addition to being bad for the centerpieces, this dumped water all over the tables, so they had to hang the tablecloths up to dry, cut the stems of the flowers a little shorter, dump some of my beautiful river rocks into the bottoms of the vases, fill them up with LOTS of extra water, then put the tablecloths back on…and then some of them fell over again after all that!!

So apparently that was causing quite a commotion down in the tent (but thankfully we had no idea until the reception was almost over and our caterer shared it as an amusing anecdote). Two relevant points: 1) if you’re having an outdoor ceremony/reception make sure your flowers are heavy enough that they won’t get blown over! 2) some of our arrangements look a bit more haphazard here since the caterers were just trying to…get them to stay upright, so the balance of the flowers isn’t quite as artistic as it was originally.

<above photo by my friend Leslie - thanks Les!>

For the price we paid, we got even more flowers than I would have imagined, plus she threw in a gorgeous hanging potted plant, just in case we wanted it! In addition, she was the reason we ended up with two decorative elements which I think had a HUGE impact on our overall wedding look. From her pictures, two not-exactly-floral images popped out at us, and she went out of her way to explain how we could do them, and even arranged for us to purchase some items wholesale so we could do them ourselves!

These two were the arch behind us during the ceremony (she explained how to make one, so my dad and uncle just went out in the woods the day before the wedding, cut some saplings, and made it for us), and the glass milk bottles hung in the trees with copper wire (which she arranged for us to buy at wholesale prices through a vendor of hers). The picture we saw of the bottles had floating candles in them, but that seemed like such a logistical nightmare to get them lit, plus the ceremony was in broad daylight…and Danika gave us SO many more flowers than we knew what to do with…so we enlisted a very helpful and artistic friend (shout out to Melissa! You rock!) to put one or two flowers all the way into each bottle with a small amount of water. I think they turned out amazing!! By the number of pictures our average guest took of these bottles, they certainly seem to have been a hit.  We also had so many of these, that in addition to hanging them in the trees, we put some on the fence behind us.

As for the bouquets: they were awesome! So so gorgeous and exactly what I wanted! I just said lots of different blues (but no hydrangea), different textures, in a loose wildflower-yet-elegant style, a few bright pink peonies popping out, and some lamb’s ear type greenery around the outside. I had never even heard of most of the flowers that ended up in the bouquet, but I loved them all!! The maid of honor bouquet was basically the same thing on a smaller scale, and the bridesmaids were again similar, but with no peonies. For the boutonnieres, Mr. Bluebell had grape hyacinth (I think??) with rosemary, and the dads and best man had cedar with lily-of-the-valley leaves. Again - all perfect! And the moms each got a single gorgeous white peony encircled with lamb’s ear type stuff.

Then there were buckets and buckets and buckets of loose flowers!!! Honestly, putting these into vases is one of my best wedding-week memories. We took over the entire dining room and pulled out every antique vase we could find and just jam-packed them all with gorgeous flowers! The best part was that after we had filled each vase with “enough” flowers, we saw that the buckets were still at least half full, so we just kept stuffing more and more and more into each vase, so they ended up looking incredibly abundant! My only flower-related-problem is that we didn’t explain the situation to my photographer…so she saw all the “extra” flowers up around the house in smaller glass vases, and took pictures almost exclusively of them, not of the “real” flowers down in the tent.

And, as promised, the (incomplete) flower list!

Bouquet:
delphinium
nigella
muscari
coral peonies
hyacinth

Tables:
goat’s beard (or aruncus)
hosta leaves
white peony
coral bells
delphinium
dusty miller
rosemary
lady’s mantle
iris
ranunculus
yarrow
poppy pod
salvia
tweedia
scabiosa
cobalt lobelia

Boutonnieres:
lily-of-the-valley leaves
cedar greens
rosemary

Final Review for Blomma Flicka Flowers: A++++++

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