Weddingbee Blog

I’ve wanted to share this with you long before I even thought my blogging would take me this far.

I “met” Ashley and Daniel in September when Ashley updated our LiveJournal group on her wedding plans. I fell head over heels with her flowers.

Daniel has been folding paper since he was a toddler. His Aunt Marilyn realized he always had to keep his hands busy, so she gave him paper to do just that. Throughout his childhood he learned to create very detailed origami models, all using one piece of paper folded multiple times. When I met him in high school, I learned how talented he was at this. Later, he taught me how to make basic origami. When we were dating, he would always fold me little things out of paper at restaurants or other places we would go. I ended up with tons of little origami pieces he created during our relationship over the years.

Daniel proposed to me two days before our five-year anniversary (5/19/01 was our “dating” anniversary). He laid out a trail of 519 origami cranes, with rose petals in the middle, and candles at the end of the trail. He waited at the end of the trail. I came home to a great surprise, and the proposal was so beautiful.

(photos by Daniel)

When we started planning our wedding, we really didn’t think of incorporating origami. I did think it would be special to use the 519 cranes in some way, but it wouldn’t match with the rest of the decor. Since we set our date for November 15, 2008, we had plenty of time to figure things out. Wedding planning goes by so fast! Once we booked our venue and caterer, everything else just fell into place. We knew exactly what kind of style we wanted for the wedding. The only problem was the flowers.

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

Flowers. I never really liked fancy flowers. Sure, I like getting flowers as a surprise or picking fresh flowers from my dad’s garden as a kid, but I never really cared for fancy floral arrangements or bouquets. I wanted something simple, and the florists I researched just didn’t give me the feeling I wanted. DIYing the flowers through a greenhouse wasn’t as great to me as it seemed initially. I even thought about having my dad grow the flowers in his garden, but then I was concerned with how they might look in November. The florists didn’t seem personal enough for me, and my dad’s garden just would not have worked with the way weather can be around here.

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

One day I was in our kitchen, and on our freezer door I saw our red origami rose magnet. It is really tiny (quarter sized); it was a rose Daniel made for me when we were dating. I glued a magnet to the back of it and for years it’s been on our refrigerator. The idea came to me and I felt like I had a little light bulb hanging over my head. I told Daniel it would be neat if we could make origami roses and use them in the wedding. He thought about it and agreed. He made this his project during the entire planning process. He tried out different types of paper and finally came across some red paper (just the right color, too) at a local art store that was closing. He bought all they had left (at a discount, too!) and cut it into individual squares. We later learned that the paper was handmade Italian paper, Fabriano Ingres, which makes it all even better. The plan was for me to do all of the pre-folding, and once that was done, he would do all of the rest. He worked his magic and the result was over 1,400 origami roses. Each rose took about 5 minutes to make. There were plenty of times when I fell behind, but we made well over our initial goal of 1,000. Daniel always made sure to remind me to do my pre-folding. Sometimes he was actually annoying about it, but it was so worth it.

(Photo by Daniel)

The first things we made were the centerpieces. These were rose ball topiaries. Daniel made the first one as an example and I approved it. We painted the pot brown, the dowel rod gold, added some moss, and put the table number on it. Success! We made 14 more.

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

I came up with the structure for the bouquets. Basically it was the same idea as the topiary, except with no pot and a thick stem. I used a Styrofoam ball and about 5 dowel rods for the stems on each one. The rods were wrapped with floral tape and hot glued into a hole in the ball. The ball was painted red. Brown ribbon was wrapped around the “stem” and the roses were all stuck into the ball. (We used lots of hot glue and toothpicks for this part). For the bridesmaids’ bouquets, we used the same steps, except used white paint on the ball and white paper for the roses. They were smaller versions of my bouquet and the tossing bouquet.

Then we made boutonnieres for all of the guys. We just used a single rose and Daniel folded a nice little leaf for each of them. We glued those together and glued safety pins to the backs so they could be worn easily.

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

Then there was the cake topper. Same idea as the rose balls, except it was half of a ball. It worked out perfectly. We also made sure we had a single rose for each individual place setting at the reception. The guests loved them!

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

We made everything for our wedding, except for the cake, food, and attire. We wanted it to be personal and unique, and for it to represent everything that our love for each other stood for. Daniel is a pianist so he pre-recorded all of our ceremony music. We wrote our ceremony and made our entire playlist. We are so lucky and thankful to have so many loved ones who helped us with our wedding. Our officiant was my brother-in-law, the DJ was a close friend to my sister (who is in radio). Our photographer was also a close friend of ours. Our “guestbook” was a quilt made with love by a cousin in the family, which everyone signed. We have no regrets about anything, and all of the people who came to our wedding tell us how personal and special our wedding was, and how much fun they had at the reception. Out of everything we made, the origami roses were the biggest and most time consuming project, but we never once thought about quitting the idea. It was a total success and we could not be happier with the way it turned out!

(Photos by Dave Anderl)

Ashley plans to put tutorials up on her blog soon. She also has more pictures from the planning stages there. Aren’t those the most fantastic DIY flowers ever?!