Monday, October 24, 2011

Jaclyn's Wedding Flowers





Jaclyn had 500 people at her wedding.  That was 10 people per table. She needed 50 flower arrangements.  Since the wedding was at a rustic site in the country, when I found these tin pails at a party store, I bought them immediately. They were $2.50 each.  Since she was on a tight budget, I gave the pails to her as her wedding gift. 

In the picture above, you can see the liner inside the pail.  I got these at Home Depot.  I worried about how I was going to soak 50 blocks of oasis.  Off to Walmart I went.  I bought two plastic baby pools for $5 each.  The day before the wedding, I filled them with water on my deck and soaked the oasis all day.  The next morning, I put them in heavy leaf bags to transport to the site--about a 45 minute drive into the country. I placed them in the dry pools in the back of my van.

My daughter is an artist.  She learnedthe art of flower arrangements.  She helps me with the florals for most of my parties I plan. This saves me (and my friends) lots of money.  
                        

We ordered the flowers wholesale through Costco. 

 I spoke with their florist at the store near my house.  I made a spreadsheet of how many flowers of each kind I needed--after getting prices from her and a budget from the bride.  Our budget was $10 a centerpiece. I gave the tins to the bride as a gift. 

I started the project a year ahead of time, by buying two of Costco's $15 mixed bunch arrangements.  For $30 we made 3 arrangements by adding inexpensive lemon leaves as fillers.  We previewed our idea to the bride, and she loved it.  Later, I found out that we could order the specific flowers we wanted in the specific numbers we needed...as long as they were flowers that Costco normally carried.

  I am very proud of our sunflower table markers that I made in Print Master.  I reversed the flowers when I printed them to make them two sided.  

I brought my two best friends, my niece, and my daughter along for assembling them on site.  We started with the lemon leaves along the sides--to cover the oasis.  Then we added the ferns.  We added three sunflowers to each arrangement in varying heights.
Next we added the yellow mums, and white carnations.  You will not see the yellow roses in this picture.  It was 100 degrees.  I kept the roses in my basement refrigerator until the morning of the wedding.  We went early and added them then.


    
          We had lots of extra sunflowers.  The catering company used them on the cakes.  I even had enough left overs to make two large arrangements for the food tables.                       


                                         

  I've known the bride since she was born.  Here she is giving me a big hug. 

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