#676: the flowers. and kismet.

we used real flowers for only a few things: my bouquet, the bms' bouquets, 3 orchid bouts for our moms and my grandmother, and two flower bundles to present to the parents.

total cost: $50.

so very nice.

my plan all along had been to stop by the whole foods behind my house the night before the wedding and just buy the flowers they had available there.

but a couple of weeks before the wedding, i found out that the flower mart was literally two blocks from where i worked. i always knew it was close, but having never been, i had no idea it was THAT close. so i walked myself over during lunch one day to check it out and promptly scrapped the whole foods idea. it'd be so silly to go retail when the wholesale route was staring at me in the face.

the day before the wedding, the hubs and i went to the mart to select and purchase our wedding flowers. and we had 1.5 hours to do it.

i didn't have any colors in mind or the names of the types of flowers i wanted to use for our bouquets. and no pictures of inspiration with me. instead, i was hoping really really hard to be inspired by whatever was there that day. (flexibility is cool like that.)

we weren't walking around for more than a few minutes when i came to a place that had an assortment of peonies. light pink peonies, bright pink peonies, and lavender-pink peonies. they were all blooming differently and i thought they were amazing looking. so i began to look through the bunches to pick the best ones. of course.

when all of a sudden, the owner was like "hey!"

turns out, the shop owner was my dad's friend. someone i hadn't seen in over ten years. i was like WHAT?! and he wouldn't take more than $50 from us for the 10 bunches or so that we bought. and then he threw in 3 orchid bouts for the moms and grandma for free. i was like WHAT?! but there was no saying no. and so we graciously said thank you and left the flower mart feeling uberly lucky and happy.

sometimes, when it's meant to be, it's just meant to be i guess.



the bouquets look pretty homemade, huh. my bms and i wrapped them up the night before the wedding with flower tape and some ribbon i had laying around at home. i will never know how florists make the bottom of bouquets so perfectly round and lavishly thick. mine was far from round. and way far from thick.



see what i mean? the bottom was all jaggedy and triangular.

but i don't know. i still loved the way our bouquets looked. the light pink color matched my bms' dresses quite well (my sister, the MOH, in the jeweled green/blue above. one of my bridesmaids in coral below.) and, well, i wore white, so anything would've worked. but the slightly darker lavender pink color was nice.




oh, and then here's one of the two bundles i made with the bright pink peonies for our parents. wrapped with a cut up ralph's paper shopping bag.



all pinks. all peonies. all DIY.

who knew.

all photos by max wanger. some given an extra crop by me.