Crafting spree: hair flowers

I'll be taking my veil off for the reception in exchange for flowers in my hair. Of course, that required a little bit of crafting. A clear comb, some clear thread (so difficult to sew with!) and some silk hydrangea blooms, and this is what I came up with:

What do you say? Yea or Nay? Too big?

Flower Power

I've mentioned before my flowers ideas, how Harrison provides no options for vendors, and how my Grandmother is our florist. Mom and I have continued to discuss bloomage for the past months, and I think we're on the right track.

The concept (note that I didn’t say “plan”) right now is to order flowers to be delivered to our house in Harrison. This way we avoid someone having to run into Coeur d’Alene to Costco for flowers the day of. Because I don’t need to add to the stress of the day by needing to spend 100 minutes in a car (this basic statement applies to hair and makeup as well).

So I asked around, and found a couple of whole sale flower places that deliver using Fed Ex or UPS. We’ll order flowers though something like FiftyFlowers.com Once they arrive on Thursday morning we’ll let them sit in the air conditioned house in order to let them open up a bit (they always ship with the buds not totally open). We’ll assemble the bouquets and boutonnieres Friday morning.

Which begs the question, what kind of flowers do we want? (Note: the truth is, I don’t really care. But someone has to make a decision, so I guess it’s me?) (is that how Mr. Bush got into Iraq? By being the last Decider?)

Well, I've already mentioned that I like hydrangeas. And the color scheme for this shin-dig is blues and whites:

Photographers: how do white flowers on a white dress work?

I liked this image so much I have it saved twice. I love the blue tinting at the ends fo the hydrangea blossoms!

Simple, makes a statement, and looks relatively easy to assemble.

And frankly, hydrangea only bouquets seem to be the easiest way to go for us DIY-ers. Buuuutttt, a giant hydrangea as a boutonniere might be a little out of scale. Or just weird.

Thus, after searching the internets high and low, I think I’ve decided to add sweet peas to our floral mix. You might remember that I grew sweet peas in pots last summer:

I can't wait to grow these again next summer!

Fresh flowers in a house is always fun.

And used them for a Oh-My-Gosh-We’ve-Been-Engaged-14-Hours-And-I-Must-Take-Glamour-Shots-Of-My-Ring photo session.

My ring is so shiny you can see the blue of my shirt in the left side of this photo!

Let me show you some sweet pea/ hydrangea inspiration inspiration…

I like the muted colors of this boquet. Not overwhelming.

Blue hydrangeas and with sweet peas mixed in.

This is absolutely gorgeous, but we want to keep the floral order simple. This has too many different kinds of flowers. Boo.

Sweet peas!

Oh, hello. Hydrangeas? Check. Sweet peas? Check. Tulips? Probably not possible. White roses? hmm...

I love, love, love, love the simplicity and varied colors of these boquets.

I like how a hydrangea blossom fills out a boquet a little more.

Mostly sweet peas. I wonder what those darker pink leaves are?

In order to avoid giving DJ a giant hydrangea on his chest as decoration, I think we’ll stick with a sweet pea (or maybe white rose) boutonniere format.

Hey sweet peas!

Hmm... white rose and white/ blue sweet peas?

My mom is insistent that I need to choose an accent color to pop out amongst the blues and whites that we’ve already got going on with the color scheme. I’m adamant, absolutely against, hot pink. I’ve seen it too many damn times. And I’m not sure we need an accent color. I kind of like the monochromatic look… (with variations in hydrangeas and sweet peas, of course).

My mom also thinks we should store the flowers, both pre and post-assembly, in the cooler of the local grocery store. I’m a little hesitant; only because, well, how do we know their cooler won’t go out? At least if the flowers are in front of me I’ll know if they’re too hot… right?

Did you DIY flowers? Good idea or bad idea? How did you narrow down your inspiration for flowers?

Flower thoughts

Flowers are one of the things I’ve delegated to my mom. Although I love growing flowers, and gardening (and even considered adding to the madness by growing my own wedding flowers), deciding what flowers to carry during our wedding just isn’t on my “Important to me” list.

One of the “problems” of getting married in a small town like Harrison (population 267 people) is the lack of “vendors”. By this I mean people who make their living as a florist, caterer, hairdresser, etc. The solution was to ask my grandmother, who loves nothing more than to buy out Michaels silk flowers to make arrangements, to put together our (live) flowers together. Sidenote: At one point I counted 27 fake floral arrangements in their 500 square foot lake cabin… that’s a LOT of fake flowers!

We have two options for actually procuring the flowers; buy them at Costco in Coeur d’Alene (a two hour drive, round-trip) the day before or order them into the IGA Grocery in St. Maries (a 40 minute drive, round-trip) the day before or day of. There are, of course, the associated logistics, like where the heck do we store said flowers for 24 hours in July? We don’t have ample fridge space…

The only direction I gave my mom thus far is that I like hydrangeas. She knows that “our colors” (why does that term make me roll my eyes?) thus far are a deep, sapphire/ navy blue and cream- thrilling, I know.

With Gretchen’s Maid of Honor dress in mind, I started looking for flowers inspiration. JCrew now offers  photos of real-life wedding partieswhich used their dresses as part of their online store. While Gretch’s dress isn’t JCrew, I did check through their photos to see what other blue-inspired flowers other people used. Sadly, I couldn’t seem to find much!

I kept digging though, checking through flickr albums and sadly totally not referencing anything as I clicked and saved. Bad Blogger! I’ve sourced what I could!

So here is the inspiration I have so far...
I think I might want to go with wither an all white or white tinged with blue boquet for me.

And maybe something with a combo of blue and white for Gretchen; I don’t want the blue flowers to get lost against the background of her dress.

 Is that way too boring? Do we need an accent color (Not hot pink)?

I also like the idea of lavender, like this all lavender one:

I wonder if some people are allergic? It’d probably be my sister!

I also stumbled across this photo of a table piece. Very Cool. We probably can’t afford it.

So that’s my flowers inspiration, but I think it’ll be truly driven by what we can get into the St. Marie’s IGA or the Coeur d’Alene Costco. And frankly, I don’t really care!

And as for the man-flowers, oh sheesh- I haven't even thought of it!