Mrs. Tulip, DC
Age and Occupation: 36, Retired
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Counsel/DOO for Small Gov't Contractor
Engagement Date: August 8, 2007
Wedding Date: March, 2008
Venue: Still Looking!
About Me: In all my dreams of the man I'd someday marry, I never pictured anyone as perfect for me as Mr. Tulip. So now we just have to make it through the craziness of the wedding and the moving in together! I love crafts, sewing, jewelry making, and photography, so am looking forward to this chance for DIY fun. When not wedding planning, I'm playing with our dog and 4 cats, Ebay shopping, or watching too much TV (often simultaneously!).
“But People Will Talk!”
September 5th, 2007 @ 3:40 pm by Mrs. Tulip
One summer in college, I worked as a country club banquet waitress. Most weekends were spent serving weddings, and I have no doubt that the brides at those weddings spent many months and many thousands of dollars to ensure that every last detail of those weddings reflected their fantasies of an absolutely perfect day.
What did we staff members do in the back room during slow times? Trash talk every last detail of the weddings!
Granted, at this country club, many people acted as though treating “the help” poorly would somehow enhance their social status, and it did little to turn us into well-wishers. But everyone has different tastes, and any bride’s idea of perfection won’t always be equally beloved by all her wedding guests. Also, even if everything is planned with the precision of a military campaign, things inevitably go wrong. Thinking of the last several weddings I personally attended, there was The Freezing Outdoor Wedding, The One Where They Ran Out of Cake, The One With the Fainting MOH, The One Where I Got Food Poisoning…. You get the picture. Luckily, people who love you focus on the joy of the event and the wonder of seeing you and your beloved start your married lives together, and the little bumps in the road generally glide by unnoticed. But there’s always some flaw for anyone who’s truly determined to find one.
I was thinking of this issue recently because I plan to use silk flowers for our wedding. I have always planned to go the DIY route for flowers as a way to save on florist costs. But I worried about the stress and energy drain of creating live floral arrangements so close to the wedding, when there are many other details competing for time and attention. With silk flowers, the task can be done weeks or even months ahead of time. As a bonus, I originally wrote off orchids as outside my price range, but I found lovely silk orchids through Sav-on-Crafts that we’ll use for at least the boutenierres and bridesmaid bouquets.
I am 95% thrilled with the silk flower idea. (With the remaining 5% being mostly for the complete lack of smell…. Then again, for hundreds and hundreds of dollars saved, I’ll buy some perfume and get over it!!) But I couldn’t get over a lingering worry that other people will think using silk flowers is strange. Will my wedding become The One With the Fake Flowers?
And then I decided this: So what? People talk. Why should it matter as long as you yourself are confident about the choices you’ve made?
In wedding planning, as in everything else in life, our most basic responsibility is to ensure that we aren’t rude. Hopefully most of us go beyond that and do what we can to make the people around us comfortable and happy. But in simple matters of aesthetic taste that affect nothing but appearances? This is our wedding, and darn it, we’re going to choose what works for us!
22 Responses to ““But People Will Talk!””
You are right…people will ALWAYS talk so if they didn’t talk about the silk flowers then they’d talk about how they can’t believe you spent so much money on REAL flowers. I think it’s just in the nature of people to be slightly critical even if overall they are happy with the event. Even at “perfect” weddings people will talk about the one thing that went wrong or which thing they would have done differently. Can’t please em’ all.
I don’t know much about how people talk. I only did it when comparing what they did to what I was doing (and only very quietly to one or two others), but I guess it happens. I would hope that most people would not let it come to the attention of anyone involved in the wedding. I wanted to use fakes for the same reasons, but my FI vetoed the idea. Even though he wasn’t even aware that the wedding we had gone to right before had fake flowers. DIYing real flowers was a definite stress though.
i agree, using silk flowers isn’t treating anyone badly, so why not? though, i definitely understand the nagging feeling that people might be snooty about it.
for my wedding, i felt bad about making people wait between the ceremony and reception while we took pictures, possibly making them bored or uncomfortable. but silk flowers do neither, so no worries!
I agree with the previous posters - if it weren’t the flowers, people would find something else to talk about!
I had the unfortunate experience of having people talk to an entire table of my friends, as well as myself and my hubby, at our wedding: about how much more formal their wedding would be, about how they would dance more, you get the idea. This incident made me realize the true nature of this couple.
i used to work for a caterer in hs and also worked a bunch of weddings. i had less of a problem w/ snootiness than drunkenness. and we definitely critiqued the weddings…
so yeah, people will talk but your flowers will look great.
I was thinking of going this route too, but was also unsure. I’m also unsure of my artistic ability and sanity. But I still have a little while. Thanks for posting on the subject, because it is a good reminder. At least the people can be thankful that we splurged on the food in front of them, not the flowers!
A friend of mine used artificial flowers for her centerpieces, and they looked beautiful. She got so many compliments since she made them herself, and everyone wanted to take one home! My FH is against the artificial flowers idea, but it seems more wasteful to me to spend so much money on flowers that won’t last but a day or two. (We’re still deciding what to do.) I’m sure your flowers will look great!
PS, one bonus of using silks is that it’s so much easier to preserve your bouquet, if you’re so inclined! I still have my aunt’s (silk) toss bouquet from her wedding 16 years ago.
I purchased two dozens of silk buttonieres from the same vendors and it worked. It lasted and my family were able to keep it as a souvenir.
People didn’t care and the pics came out great.
Go for it.
I used to work a lot in hotels and food & beverage departments or restaurants, so I can attest first hand that the staff do trash talk the customers. But my opinion of that is that I’m not trying to impress the staff; rather, they should be trying to impress me, the paying customer. They can say what they want about me in the kitchen, as long as they attend to all the needs of my guests!
i’ve seen silk flowers done even as pew decorations and they looked great! if you really really inspected, sure, you could see some of the glue strings left by the glue gun, but otherwise, they loooked real and awesome!
I worked at a country club too and also worked tons of weddings. I got about 4 pairs of really great shoes from drunk bridesmaids who took them off and left them. No one ever came back for them!
I constantly have to remind myself that I can’t please everyone with this wedding and yes people will talk!
We did silk flowers at our wedding: brides bouquet, bridesmaids bouquet, boutennieres, pew decorations, the whole thing. My mom made them, and I helped out a bit. They looked WONDERFUL and we have my bouqet on display in our new apartment. Another nice thing? During the rehearsal, you can practice carrying your flowers, and you can set them down practically anywhere and not worry about them getting smushed. We made all the flowers for the wedding two months ahead of time; they sat in air-tight containers and were perfect for the wedding. Maybe you can do the same thing, put them in air-tight containers with some scented candles, or perfume sachet? They may pick up the scent if you leave them for a few weeks, and then it won’t be like “whoa these are sprayed with perfume” flowers.
Well, to make you feel better about your 5% reservation on your decision, I expressed my concern about the smell of Easter lilies in my centerpieces - they smell like boiled hot dogs to me! The florist said that the flowers are so chemically altered that they probably won’t have any scent. So there you go!
We have a saying in our family: “If people are going to look that hard, they deserve to find something.”
Don’t worry about what “they” will say. Please yourself. It’s your wedding. We did crepe paper flowers at my daughter’s wedding and then gave them away as favors. Everyone we talked to loved them! Surely there were those who didn’t, but they didn’t say anything to us.
I guess that when, in the past, I felt reservations about silk flowers, it was because I didn’t think it was what my friend really wanted. She seemed to be compromising on something that she wasn’t certain of, so I encouraged the real flowers route. Then, of course, we were up until 2 a.m. the night before the wedding, making the bouts and the bouquets.
Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson!
I think I’ll do fake flowers for pew decorations. That’ll save a lot of money and no one gets close enough to inspect it anyway.
You’re absolutely right, who cares what people say? When I saw the price of real flowers, I wanted to do silk (from the same source!). They’ll look just as great in photos.
My fiance wanted to get the real flowers though, so oh well.
i like your attitude about it. makes life a lot easier. i say go for the silks, there’ve been plenty of good recs and advice from the commenter here, especially from jessicamay about storing them with a sachet. nice!
Thanks to everyone for your support in using the silks!!
I wavered a bit in my enthusiasm when I read a discussion thread where everyone’s response was basically “ew, tacky”…. BUT, most of those responses were from around 2005, and I think people’s opinions have come a loooooong way since then. And of course it doesn’t hurt that I’ve already got the bridesmaids’ bouquets decorating my mantle, and they’re SO PRETTY!!! 
P.S. From some of these comments, I’m struck how often it’s the GUYS who want real flowers! 
I’m laughing as I read your post Miss Tulip, as well as some of the posters’ replies.
Yes, ppl will always find something to talk about; its human nature as annoying as it may be.
And JenniferB, scoring the shoes? Too funny!
