I always loved minty-sage green, and figured it would be a great wedding color because green goes with flowers in any color, any season. And I do love real flowers! When I became engaged, I learned that my fiance loves orange flowers (I think his hair color contributes), and it was a match made in heaven. We were traveling to our wedding location, and doing nearly everything ourselves there without being familiar with on-site florists. So I was extremely happy that we could find roses in exactly the colors we wanted (peachy tangerine and a deeper burgundy-tipped sunset orange rose) among the great selection on FiftyFlowers.
I ordered the flowers and had them sent to the location I was staying the days before the wedding. Emails the week before confirmed the status of my flowers, and when our flight landed, I had texts from FiftyFlowers telling me all the flowers had been delivered. I snipped all the stems and hydrated and fed the flowers, and kept them in a cool, dark basement until ready for showtime. The packing was impressive! The flowers were carefully and tightly packaged and as they opened out, looked more and more beautiful. I was thrilled!
With a suitcase of florist supplies, bridal ribbon from Joann's, and some garden gloves to protect my nails, I arranged a practice bouquet for bridal photos the next day. (But forgot to arrange the groom a corsage, so an orange field poppy stood in with some greens and baby's breath from my bouquet.)
Our wedding was in the morning, with a park reception in the afternoon. So the day before, I arranged the 6 bridesmaids' bouquets and mine--and kept the bridals one, still looking very fresh after a photoshoot and another night in water--for the bouquet toss. Most of the afternoon before my wedding I spent arranging, surrounded by gorgeous flowers and listening to romantic music. The baby's breath and eucalyptus were so wonderfully fragrant, and the roses had a lovely sweet smell too. Heaven! Someone more experienced might have been faster, but it took me the better part of the day. With various hiccups, I didn't have the reinforcements I planned for to help, but with a corsage-skilled future sister-in-law to the rescue and a little instruction of a couple of reinforcement stand-ins hours, we prepared 24 table vases, 2 large centerpieces, 24 small table accent vases, 17 boutonnieres, 2 corsages. (We made a couple of extra boutonnieres in case of casualties--and there was at least one baby-induced corsage casualty!) Another skilled sister-in-law made and decorated a pretty fabulous (and tasty!) cake, just how I'd wanted it! We supplemented the arrangements with about 7 extra grocery store bunches of white daisies, and a couple extra bunches of peach carnations at the park reception. We had more leftover baby's breath than time to decorate with it, since they came with both the greens and the whites. The flowers traveled from the wedding site to a luncheon across the street to an afternoon park reception, and looked fresh and beautiful from early morning until the sun was low after the late afternoon June mountain heat. They were one of my favorite things about my wedding day!
