Weddingbee Blog

After hastily deciding we had. to. have. succulents. for our wedding, Mr. Pony and I decided to start investing in our own plants as soon as possible. The great thing about succulents is that one plant can sprout several baby plants, which then grow up and sprout their own baby plants, and so on. Our thinking was that if we invested in several plants in the summer of 2010, we would have more than enough plants to use for decoration, favors, or whatever else by the time our wedding rolls around in September 2011.

As luck would have it, we came across a guy selling healthy succulents for cheap at a garage sale. (I love garage sales.) We scooped up every plant he had for sale, excited for our great deal and future in horticulture.

High on our first succulent purchase, we also purchased a pot full of succulents from our local we-sell-everything-under-the-sun superstore. The plants were drowning in water (despite the sign on the plant that said “do not water”—sigh), so we went home and immediately replanted them in well-draining rock, sand, and soil.

Garage-sale plants on top, mega-store brand on bottom

Our “test” pot—none of these survived

Baby succulent

We lost a few plants right away, mostly due to the over-watering that occurred before we purchased them. We lost a few more in the late summer/early fall from attacks from hungry birds and bugs, but for the most part our plants were growing and some were even sprouting offshoot plants.

Around September 2010, they looked like this:

See the baby plant shooting off the left plant?

As the nights grew longer and colder, we decided to move our plants inside to protect them from the harsh central Illinois winters. Mr. Pony bought some grow lights with timers so that our plants would get light 16 hours a day and set them in our basement. (Bonus—our basement now has a club vibe from the florescent grow lights.)

So today, our succulents look like this (please excuse our nasty basement wall/floor):

They look normal from the top. (You can see how many died off.)

Alien plants!

For some reason our succulents have decided to grow up, up, and away instead of out. Mr. Pony seems to think that once we put them back outside where the light source is in the sky rather than a foot away they will go back to their normal, short selves. At least they look healthy for now, right?…Right?

Can anyone tell me if this is normal? Do you think we could still use our succulent plants for our wedding?

*all personal photos*