Weddingbee Blog

A few weeks before the wedding, my mom took me to a membership flower wholesale market right here in my hometown.

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I picked out all the flowers I liked, and a week later she ordered the exact opposite of those because she wanted me to have a heart attack on my wedding day.

The flowers came in 3 days before the wedding and we had to prep them to be arranged for the wedding day. Here is some of what we were working with:

First and foremost, it was important to enlist the help of friends to strip the leaves off of each flower.

We stripped the leaves off of the longer flowers, such as the snapdragons and delphiniums. They came off with relative ease in one quick swipe.

For the flowers we would use in bunches for arrangements, we needed to strip all the leaves except for the topmost layer.

To strip the leaves, they should be gripped close to the stem and pulled downwards until they peel off so as not to disturb the flower’s power to suck water.

We did this for the carnations, mums, lilies, roses, tulips, hydrangeas, pompon cushions (used in place of dahlias), and lisianthus.

After the leaves were stripped, we cut an inch to two inches off each stem,

and placed everything in vases with water.

Southern California was experience record high temperatures the week of our wedding so we nixed the plan to keep them outside in the shade. The flowers were stored in different places depending on their delicacy. The tough greenery used to fill in the arrangements were placed in the garage, such as the Queen Anne’s lace, eucalyptus greens, and leather greens, as well as the stronger flowers such as the carnations. Roses, hydrangeas, tulips, snapdragons, lisianthus, and lilies were kept in my mom’s room, where she kept a careful eye on them, watering them religiously and placing wilting flowers in the refrigerator.

On the day, my mom used floral foam sponges in the vases to keep the flowers from drying out and to hold the flowers in place. I wanted very minimal greenery so she only used greens to cover up the space between the flowers and the vase. For the record, this was my tablescape inspiration:

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I loved the varying heights of the flowers and vases and the soft, romantic feel of the whole thing. Since we don’t have pro pics yet, I can’t show you how close we came to this look but I think we achieved it!

Last but not least, I need to tell you about the damn David Austin roses. I’ve seen them mentioned on the boards before, and they are often used to mimic the look of peonies for us fall brides. We had to order these a week in advance of our regular flowers and when they came in they were SO HARD to keep alive. They really were beautiful, but every time one of the heads started drooping and the petals fell off, I died a little inside. They are so delicate and need to be kept in the refrigerator.

I shake my fist at you, David Austin roses!

Are you thinking about DIYing your flowers? Did you DIY them?