Wedding Plans

In the early Spring, I volunteered to do the flowers for my dearest friend, Michelle's, daughter's wedding.  I had envisioned a few bouquets and planted a little plot of "wild" looking cut flowers, and then started several things in cell packs, hoping that I might get an assortment to put in a few arrangements.


As time went on, I begin to see how I would need more arrangements (unity table, guest book, reception, front of the church) then I thought I would plus corsages, boutonnieres, the bridal party bouquets.  

I begin to worry about having enough fresh flowers for all those bouquets so I started picking and drying flower bunches so I would be able to create some dried arrangements.

(a packed car)








What flashbacks to my childhood!  My mom owned a wholesale business where she grew and bunched fresh flowers during the season for florists and then dried flowers for wreaths and arrangements in the off season.  I know the flowers, have picked them, dried them, and helped a little with her business.  I remember well the rows rows of flowers drying on the beams in our ceiling and later in the barn/shed built for her business.

Flower confetti was a simple way to add color and decor to the table centerpieces.  The food dryer has been full!


(a gallon of flowers to date)

When I found out the tables were an assortment of banquet and rounds, I realized that the style of the centerpieces would have to change.  I knew I would never be able to bring down fresh flowers and try and pop them into the assorted vases from the church so I put out a plea on two community groups via social media using the picture above (In Search Of...).  I had at least 10 people offer vases and Phil spent the entire day driving around from pick up location to pick up location plus a trip to Portland where we purchased a small lot off of Facebook Marketplace.  I was now able to supplement the plan I had already had for the centerpieces to include 58 additional vases with flowers to span the banquet tables.

Ready for the dishwasher


Made some practice bouquets to get an idea of how many flowers I would need. (Empty vases are floating candles or floating flowers)




A trip to JoAnn's for ribbons and raffia.  They didn't go far, so I ordered more on Amazon.  You can't have too much ribbon!



I collected jelly jars with the idea of wrapping in ribbon and making tussy mussy fresh flower bouquets.  I had sort of planned to do one of these at each table but realized how sparse so I went on the glass vase hunt!

This is one of my favorite pitchers and I just so happened to have this burlap scrap which was a perfect, nearly made for, wrap!  

The girls are so excited to come down with me.  Glorielle made a packing list.

The playroom is a wedding prep mess (versus its normal homeschool mess).

Packing and transporting had me a bit worried but I put my fiber art in plastic bags so I could borrow these storage totes.  I will be able to stack some and hopefully fit the others nice and tight so they don't get jostled.

I have earmarked this week for making all the dried arrangements and next Wednesday will a busy day wild harvesting, picking my garden clean, and making arrangements.  My mom and my sister in law's mom are going to help me with the arrangements.  I have two sources for people that grow flowers as their business, I have order dahlias from one and an assortment for the other just to ensure that I have enough.

Thursday, is my catch day.  If something doesn't go right, particularly if I don't end up with enough flowers, I have this day to fix it.

Friday, we load up and head down and set up all dried flowers on the tables and then Saturday morning, I will set up the fresh.  

I am a smidge nervous.  Mostly, I just want everything to turn out beautifully and be something the bride loves.  Second, I want to make sure everything gets down in one piece and that I have enough items so that it doesn't look sparse.  Third, I hope I will have collected, dried, wild harvested, stripped my garden and my mom's with enough things to make 147 arrangements, 11 corsage/boutonnieres and 7 bouquets!  Fourth, this is site unseen so I am guessing on colors from the pictures back and forth and the set up is unknown so when I get there, I will need to put things together with what I have and what I planned and hope it all looks cohesive.  I am really organized and I have planned ahead quite a bit so I think, (at least most of the time), I should be able to pull this off LOL!  

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