Let's Talk Wedding: Flowers

Are the flowers where you are supposed to "cheap"? Well, this was the stress of all stresses to me. I'm sure our florist was SO ready to be done with me. I was SO mad at how expensive flowers are! ICK! Made me so mad!!!! Anyway----I tried VERY hard to cut corners and save money here. I thought I did an okay job, but I just NEVER in my life thought that flowers and decorations would cost as much as they did. I had more meetings with these ladies than any other vendor. I am NOT a flower person, so pictures definitely came in handy!

However, I will be forever thankful that we didn't have to MAKE everything. And, on a positive note....all the flowers turned out GORGEOUS! So, I am very thankful for that! I had no complaints and I absolutely LOVED everything!!!! It was just perfect (can't wait for you to see the reception...GORGEOUS!)!

Bride - All white. A friend (she's actually a blogger friend, but I knew her husband in high school) of mine had the most beautiful white bouquet and I took a picture of it to my florist.

Sadly, getting married in the fall limited peonies...so we went with hydrangeas which gave a beautiful FULL look to my bouquet, which is how I wanted it to look. The roses gave it some texture and it was just BEAUTIFUL! It was wrapped with white satin. Loved it!!!!Groom - White handkerchief

Bridesmaids - Bouquets with orange and burgundy roses with fall leaves and berries. I wanted their bouquets to be very "fall" looking. The first of the two pictures below is almost identical to what I gave the florists, but I never got the pictures from them back...so this is as close I as could get. They did a great job of making them look like the picture though!

This is a picture of one my bridesmaids' bouquets. This picture was taken at the reception:

From this picture you can see the flowers I used for the bridal party. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the girls' bouquets!!!! They were probably my favorite! And, they were just perfect fall colors! The groomsmen didn't wear any flowers. I like the clean look of just the handkerchief. They all wore dark purple to match the girls, except for Ken who wore white to match me. :)
Jr. Bridesmaids - Smaller version of the bridesmaids bouquet.

Jr. Groomsmen - Single, dark purple calla lily.

Flower Girl - A flower ball made of white carnations and had white ribbon coming out of it. It was so cute!Ring Bearer - Single, dark purple calla lily. Caleb was so excited to wear a "purple flower". I almost got rid of the boutineers all together, but he kept asking if could wear it, that I just left them alone. It was so cute! Looking at the pictures of him and Tyler (Jr. Ring Bearer) just crack me up b/c the flower is almost as big as they are! ha!Jr. Flower Girl - A HUGE long-stemmed flower that matched her dress. We got it from Hobby Lobby. Finley was at that age where she actually liked carrying things around....and if I remember correctly, she was already carrying this big flower around the house, so we just went with it. :)Jr. Ring Bearer - A single, dark purple calla lily. He was SOOOO cute!!!!! I love seeing little kids with flowers!Mother of the Bride - I thought about having my mom carry a bouquet of flowers b/c I don't really like corsages. I don't like that we pay so much money for our dresses and then we stick a pin through it...just not a fan. And, my mom doesn't like the wrist corsages, so we just looked at it an area where we could save some money!

Father of the Bride - Dark purple handkerchief.

Mother and Father of the Groom - I was so thankful that Ken's mom was okay with not having any flowers. Our moms stand out on their own...they didn't need anything to make them stand out or show they are someone "special" in the wedding. Terry wore a dark purple handkerchief.

Grandmothers - I had a similar thought with our grandmothers as I had with our moms. My thought was that they could each carry one long-stem flower, each carrying a different color. After my mom and I talked, we realized it was just one more thing that our grandmothers would have to keep up with, so we decided they wouldn't carry anything.

Ushers - I did want our ushers to stand out, so they each wore a single, dark purple calla lily. If they didn't have something on, they would just look like any other man in a suit at the wedding. It helped the guests distinguish who they were.

Musicians - I didn't have the musicians wear anything. Mainly b/c I don't like pinning things to my nice clothes when I'm in a wedding.Pastor - Boutineer. I wanted our sweet pastor to stand out and wear something that had our wedding colors in it since he would be on stage with us.