Flowers

I like to receive flowers, I like the way the smell, I am actually one of those people who will stop and smell the flowers, and flowers usually make me smile. The funny thing is I don't have a favorite type of flower. I didn't even know where to begin when I started looking at bouquets. I just knew that flowers out of season = expensive so I told the two flower shops I looked at that I wanted something in season. I began my search online. I dare you just type in flowers in season for (insert month), you won't come up with very much information. I'm thinking this is some secret squirrel stuff why wouldn't this information be available. All those wedding websites weren't helpful either; they just talked about different flower shops in the area. So to begin my search I just started looking through pictures of bouquets, I looked at a ton of pictures and eventually decided that the deep purple color I was looking for would probably best be displayed in calla lilies. I was a little hesitant about getting calla lilies because I had always heard that they were really expensive.
Florist # 1 meeting day comes along and I just crossed my fingers and told the florist what color I was looking for. They started talking about roses these were special roses from Mexico and they last longer and they don't cost extra because they grow them all year round blah blah blah. Granted roses are pretty I usually stop to smell the roses that grow at my house. In high school marching band I marched in the Tournament of Roses Parade....I just didn't really want roses. I just felt like they were so common I wanted something that wouldn't be so common. Plus flowers die and I knew I was going to be upset about my flowers dyeing.... (I was). Anyway I almost relinquished the whole flower thing and I probably should have, at least my bouquet part of it. I didn't really need a bouquet and the only time I held it was walking down the isle. It did double duty as a decoration after the ceremony, as well as the bridesmaids flowers. I digress so back to this florist they were cool but I clearly didn't know exactly what I wanted and they didn't have very many suggestions, I don't want to include their name because for other brides this might be what they want, it just wasn't what I wanted, the price for what I would have gotten from them was outstanding as well.
Florist # 2, Jackie's Flowers out of Elk Grove, was AWESOME!! She had great pictures her shop was full of different props I could rent to place flowers on or candles or whatever and she has some wonderful ideas!! She is truly an artist. While looking at her pictures I found this gorgeous bouquet of caramel colored roses and I knew that's what I wanted just modified a bit. So we talked it out and add the deep purple calla lilies to the caramel roses, the bridesmaids would carry a single calla lily with feathers (1920's theme). The backdrop to the ceremony would be a rustic/medieval candelabrum with flowers and candles on it.  Another thing that sold me was she hand picks her flowers at the flower market in San Fran!  Wait until you see the pics! If you have never been to The Firehouse Restaurant back patio you need to check it out. It is very beautiful back there and one of the reasons for picking it was we knew it would require very little decoration. I had some ideas about other things I wanted from Jackie but they were putting my flower budget out the window so I had to scale back. Jackie is awesome though (as I 've said) and the day of the wedding she surprised me with some of the things we had talked about that were out of my reach because of my budget.
Anyway some ideas that I had that didn't come to fruition were to have some carved pumpkins around with Mike and I initials and things like that, it was Halloween after all, but that was going to be too time consuming and was out of my budget.  I didn't want my bridesmaids and groomsmen sitting around carving pumpkins the night before the wedding (although that could have been fun). I also had ideas to have small pumpkins be part of the table centerpieces that were just scattered around. What we ended up doing instead was free and only took some time of some very good friends. I bought gold, silver, and ivory with various design's scrapbook paper, placed two wine bottles with white ostrich feathers, candle's and ivory rose petals on the table. This was very inexpensive and looked fabulous!
In closing flowers are beautiful but, not necessary and I really really had to twist Mike’s arm to get him to wear a boutonnière. I just knew that my grandma, mother and mother in-law would appreciate the touch of flowers so I bit that bullet instead of fighting it. I did see some pretty cool looking homemade flower ideas on etsy.com while browsing there so if you are against flowers then that’s the way to go!