Tuesday, October 20, 2009

#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.

17 comments:

TBB said...

they were DIY'd beautifully! how cool that your dad's friend happened to own the flower mart!?

talda said...

wow, peonies and orchids for $50?! that's amazing! and they look great.

Cupcake Wedding said...

Your flowers do not look jaggedy or odd or sloppy or homemade. They look perfect.

holly | bijou lovely said...

The flowers are beautiful!

Rachel said...

Yay for fate! The flowers are gorgeous and I love, love your nail color in that last shot.

Meg said...

They actually don't look homemade at alllll... they look more awesome than many a florist made bouquet. Very. Chic.

The Professional Bridesmaid said...

love peonies! i can't believe you knew the owner. awesome.

JD said...

So jealous! I wish we had a flower market near us! or a whole foods for that matter!

Mrs T said...

I cannot believe you did those flowers yourself. They are killer. It was so meant to be with you knowing the flower vender! Small world.

Thanks for the recaps. I am LOVING them.

Missa said...

Absolutely beautiful!! I wish I had the guts to make my own bouquet. Instead I'll be dropping $600 on the bouquests for myself and my bridal party, but am DIYing all the centerpieces.

I also plan to go to the flower market the day before the wedding to find flowers for the entry hallway piece. Thanks for writing this post, because it definitely solidifies my decision to DIY one big vase of flowers that everyone will see when they walk in.

Hope I'm lucky like you :):)

Anonymous said...

Those are beautiful!! You did a fantastic job, and i bet you you're going to remember those for EVER. ;) and hey, now you know who you can go get flowers from whenever you need to. :)

Cara said...

kismet. Seriously -- it's so ridiculously incredible that it's laugh-out-loud *delightful* that (1) you found bunches + bunches + bunches of peonies, but more so that (2) the owner was your dad's friends :)! love it!

Stephanie said...

peonies are my favorite. You picked the perfect time cause they were in season.

P.S. I love your use of uberly. I am stealing it to use in my everyday vocab.

the un-bride said...

They look AMAZING. And yay! We went to the S.F. flower mart, too -- it's fantastic. ($50 for 5 bouquets + extras to make the hotel room pretty.)

You should be tres proud.

Ely In Tx said...

i love peonies, and your flowers looke great, i didn't thik anything was wrong with them. I can't wait to see more of the wedding so far it looks pretty.

the handmade hipster said...

I Was a florist, and I've seen worse work from so called "professionals", luckily peonies are so pretty it's hard to ruin them, they looked great!

Amanda Katherine said...

Your peonies are amazing there are a lot of peonie love brides that are jealous!!