Weddingbee Blog

Flowers, that is. Here’s the deal. I love flowers. Love, love, love them! When my sister and I lived together while we were both in grad school, I had more fresh flowers in my life than ever before (or since—ahem, Mr. Bene!). See, my sister loves flowers as much as I do, but the difference is she remembers to actually get them and display them in the house. So every couple of weeks she would come home with a beautiful bouquet, and it would grace our table or find its home on a bookshelf. And she never failed at finding a great bargain for her floral lovelies, so it was never a very expensive endeavor.

I, on the other hand, always forget how much I like to have flowers around until someone else puts them out. So I don’t usually buy them for myself. I also have a hard time buying them when I know that they’re going to die a week later. (Or I keep them longer because I can’t bear to throw them out yet, thus causing me to have to pick up all the dead blooms that have fallen on the table.)

Which brings me to our wedding flowers. I love big, full, fluffy flowers like peonies. I also love the crisp, clean look of calla lilies. But, lest anyone forget, B and I are getting married in February.

So while I would love to have my bouquet look like these…

Found here and here

…or perhaps some lovely calla lily bouquets like these…

Found here and here

…I am fairly confident that none of those bouquets are in the cards for me, for several reasons. Peonies have a pretty short window in which they are in season, and even though I am not smart when it comes to flowers, I’m pretty confident in saying that February is not part of that in-season window (at least not in the Northwest). As for calla lilies, I have no idea when they are actually in season, but I’m pretty sure that they are really expensive per stem. I would love to be corrected if I’m wrong, but it’s OK that these will only be bouquets that I will drool over when I look at pictures on the Interwebs, rather than in my wedding photos.

Because there are other flowers I love that I at least remember seeing in grocery stores last February…though I’m not sure if that was due to our incredibly mild winter or if they’re always around then. What flowers am I talking about? These!

Source

Oh, how I love tulips! They just always seem so bright and happy and cheery—especially when it’s gray and raining outside. And on a bright spring day when the sun is out and their colors are everywhere? Love! However, I have heard that tulips are a difficult flower to work with, as their stems can break pretty easily. So I’m not actually sure that this is a viable option, but it’s an option that could be so pretty! I mean, look how lovely this bouquet is:

Source

So my current plan for the wedding flowers is to have a long talk with my mom and my aunt. See, my aunt is a fabulous decorator/designer/creator of all things beautiful, and she has graciously offered to help figure out a plan of attack (which I am so incredibly grateful for). Part of me wants to order flowers wholesale and put them together ourselves. Another part of me thinks that that will just add stress to what could already be a very stressful few days leading up to the wedding. So I’m not positive that we’re going to go that route yet. But given my propensity toward simpler, single-flower bouquets, I think we could pull it off. I’ll have to look more into that, though…

But what does this “less is more” attitude toward flowers mean for my centerpiece ideas? Well, I’m pretty sure I know how I want the tables to look, but I’m still refining that idea, so I’ll show it to you soon!