Weddingbee Blog

I love flowers… plain and simple! Since I was little I was always fascinated by flowers. I decided to use roses, gerbera daisies and orchids to spice up the wedding. I wasn’t into roses very much until I worked at Central Market. I saw this beautiful intuition rose and from that point forward I loved that particular kind of rose. I used this all over our wedding and it added a wonderful texture to my bouquet. Roses and gerbera daisies are the most common flowers that people see and they are less expensive than other kinds of flowers such as peonies and orchids. It’s all about how you use the flowers and how they fit into your personality. I added some feathers and beads to my bouquet, which made it a little bit more special than the normal bouquets that I saw. I also added the bead sprays to boutonnieres and hand corsages to make everything fit together.

I let my bridesmaids do their own flowers so they could have some fun, too! I decided to do my own flowers, and my florist friend Michael helped me with this, as well. He ended up helping me a lot more than I expected. I only did my bouquet and left the rest to him (the pro!). I just showed him my vision and he helped me bring it to life. I had another florist do my taller centerpieces since I didn’t want to bother Michael too much, but they didn’t turn out very well – oops! Luckily Michael was there to help me fix those pieces and they turned out great. He totally saved my day!

I would recommend that brides check out real flowers and see what you like and don’t like. You can have your bouquet as special as you can afford and do less with other flowers to keep your budget down. Centerpieces can be fancy but you don’t have to make them all uniform. By using fewer flowers you can save some money. I decided to use only three flowers to submerge inside tall vases and they turned out beautifully. Hire a florist you can trust, and take their suggestions. They’ve done it for many years and will be able to help you make your vision come true.

I looked into fake flowers too, to see if it was a better option. I would suggest getting real flowers. Fake flowers cost quite a bit too, if you want nice ones, so it didn’t make sense for me not to use real flowers. If you have a small budget for flowers, just get your bouquet and small bouquets for the girls and boutonnieres only. You can skip the centerpieces and just use a nice vase with a single flower to keep your costs down. By having nice vases, you don’t need to dress your tables up very much… just put single flowers in the vases. Of course, you can replace flowers with candles, as well.

I had so many other details that could take a whole book to cover but I won’t bore you with that. I’ll just shower you with pictures, instead.

The hearts made out of ribbons were a great childhood memory for me. My sister taught me how to make them when I was young, and that’s the only origami thing I could do nicely. I used them in our wedding as a thank you to my sister, who influenced me in so many artistic ways.

My groom… uhmm… he’s very unique and nerdy. Of course, that’s one of the many things that I love about him. He loves Batman, so he decided to go with a Batman cake. Throughout the planning process, we couldn’t find any good inspiration, so I finally asked him what he wanted on the cake. He tried to do some sketches and I was a bit unsure of what he wanted, so I decided to jump on the computer to design one to see if he would like it. We finally narrowed down what he wanted: a mix of 1966 Adam West Batman, and the Michael Keaton Batman symbol. We then handed the sketch over to Delicious Cakes. We were very pleased and couldn’t have been happier with the way the cake turned out.

And of course, the Batman garter:

Cake wasn’t my thing, really. I didn’t think much of it, at first. My husband is a big fan of sweets, so he was more excited about the process. Make sure you take your groom to the cake tasting! I didn’t know what to do with my cake until I saw a wedding special on Food Network. They were showing Marina Sousa making a wedding cake. I loved the cake, and thought it fit our style perfectly! I decided to substitute some of the elements to fit my tastes a little better. Instead of using just pearls, I added some glass beads and made the cake topper out of real flowers.

When I looked into having our cake made, the sugar flowers were extremely expensive. I found one place that orders their flowers online, and of course that made our cake a bit cheaper. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the daisies I wanted, and I was worried about it a lot. I took a huge risk and decided to try my hand at making sugar flowers instead. They turned out pretty good and I handed them over to Delicious Cakes and they certainly made my vision come true.

This process was a lot of fun for us and I found out that I really like baking and cake decorating. Ironically, I’m a horrible cook, yet I made kick butt sugar flowers. I was happy to learn new things about myself. I was a lot more detail oriented than I thought, and a bit of a control freak. LOL. At one point I was thinking of making my own wedding cake, but I knew I wouldn’t have any time to do it. I learned to compromise and let the pro help me execute my vision. I really did like the feeling of “I can do anything if I want to” during this process. I did a lot of projects and would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I also learned that I loved planning a wedding and would like to do any type of event planning. I had a hard time keeping all my ideas under control, and I think it would benefit me greatly one day if I have a chance to plan somebody else’s wedding!