DIY: Flower Power

I've been really inspired by flower accessories lately. I am already going to wear a flower in my hair, so I didn't want to add any more flowers to my outfit, but I thought it might be nice to give some flower accessories as thank you presents. I hope to come up with a different flower accessory for each of my bridesmaid, but that might be too ambitious. I started off with a present for the flower girl and junior bridesmaid. I decided to make a flower headband for both of them because it seemed like an easy project and I had most of the materials. Here is an inspirational picture:

http://www.jcrew.com/

I had some left over white petals from making my hair flower and I picked up two headbands at the dollar store. A before picture of the headbands:

 

I used about 3 petals for each headband and decided against sewing the petals together. I grouped the petals with the smallest one in front and then hot glued them together. The petals were laying flat, so to make them more flower-like, I bunched the sides in until it looked right, then I hot glued the folded parts to hold the petals up. Once the flower looked right, I hot glued it to the side of the headband and was done!

It only cost me $2 to make two headbands, I hope Olivia and Sarah like them!

Wedding Dreams

Last night, I had the third of my wedding related dreams, all were bad and all focused on the wedding flowers. In the first dream, it was my wedding day and my bouquet was made out of lillies and orchids, neither of which I want in my bouquet. After the ceremony, the flowers were all dead, so I decided to go to this community garden and pick flowers to make a new bouquet. The only problem was there were so many bees on those flowers and they kept stinging me.

The second dream I had took place the morning before the wedding. We had flowers but couldn't find any vases to put the flowers in. I was searching through someone's attic trying to find something to put the flowers in but couldn't find anything. I just remember being really stressed and thinking we weren't going to be able to have any centerpieces.

In the dream last night, I was getting ready for the wedding and was already in my dress when I realized we didn't have any flowers and had never booked a florist. At first, I wasn't upset because I thought we could just make the bouquets ourselves from the flowers we had cut for the centerpieces. Then I remembered, that we had forgotten to cut the flowers and were now missing all our wedding flowers. Luckily, we happened to be in a building lobby that had a florist and my bridesmaid Donna knew him. She asked him to make all the bouquets but he made them all with white roses. I hated them and refused to use them. After that, I realized that we never booked a band for our reception. Thankfully, the ever helpful florist knew the number for the band I wanted to book. I called them right away and they were able to play that night! All they needed was a credit card to secure them. I asked my mom for one and she handed me a Verizon rebate credit card but the first three digits of the card number were electronically displayed and keep changing, so I couldn't give them a credit card number. I thought maybe the musicians for our ceremony could play for the reception as well but then I didn't think my mom had booked them either and I could no longer find her to ask. Finally, Donna suggested I go get a pedicure and manicure to calm down, but I was already in my dress. She said she would hold it up for me so it didn't get ruined. Luckily, I woke up before we went to the salon.

I think the dreams all stem from the trouble we've had booking a florist. The first one never called back and then we found an awesome florist who could do all we wanted for a great price but then they went out of business. I keep asking my mom to find a new one, as well as book the ceremony and reception music, but she hasn't done it yet. I called her this morning to tell her the latest dream, hoping it would hurry her along. She promises to have it worked out next week. The weird thing is I don't think I'm worried about the flowers but I can't stop dreaming about them!

My first DIY!

I love pomanders. And I have two cute girls in my wedding, so I knew I had to make pomanders for them to carry. I looked forever online to find daisies that weren't super expensive. I ended up getting these from Save On Crafts for $5.99 for 72 flowers. I really liked the ones from Save On Crafts because they had detachable heads and I had no desire to cut all the flowers off the stems. I ordered two bunches to use on the two pomanders and a flower R that I want to do for our reception.

Source

Once they came, I made a trip to Michaels and managed to find the cutest yellow polka dot ribbon in the $1 bin! My roommate Amanda and I actually took every spool of ribbon out of that bin trying to find another polka dot one, but had no luck. I also picked up one four inch styrofoam ball and one three inch styrofoam ball. My flower girl will be 4 and my junior bridesmaid will be 9, so I wanted them to have different size pomanders.

As soon as I got home from Michaels, I busted out the glue gun. I followed this tutorial, so I won't repeat all the instructions but I did modify a few things. I put the ribbon in the styrofoam ball before attaching the flowers. To do this, I cut the ribbon to the size loop I wanted, then I knotted the end. I used a screw driver to make a hole in the top of the ball, filled it with hot glue and then stuck the knot in. After I put the ribbon on, I just took each daisy, stuck it in the styrofoam ball to make a hole, then removed the daisy, filled the hole with glue, and the stuck the daisy back in. I kept doing that until the entire ball was covered. My roommate Amanda then tied the bows and we hot glued them at the base of the ribbon handle. I think I used a little over one bunch of daisies to do both pomanders and it took me maybe 20 minutes. Here is the finished product!!

(Personal picture)

Florist- Take One

Will, Will's parents and I down to the mountains on labor day weekend so we could see what the site was like at the same time of year as the wedding. Will's parents had never been to Franklin before, so we also wanted to show it to them. Will and I stayed the whole week so we could do some planning and meet with some vendors. One of the meeting we had while we were there was with meet with a potential florist, April at East Side Florists.

I had already decided to do the centerpieces with the help of my family, so we were only looking to get bouquets and bouttonniers.

I decided I wanted all yellow for my bouquet and I have completely fallen in love with dahlias and billy buttons, so I'm hoping to incorporate both:

Something like this but in all yellow

For the bridesmaids, I wanted all white with pops of yellow since their dresses would be yellow:

This is exactly what I want, but as a bouquet.

Will had one request when it came to flowers, he wanted a sunflower and he only wanted one sunflower:

For the groomsmen, I thought these would be perfect to coordinate with the bridesmaids:

I found the cutest billy button bouttonniere and decided it would be perfect for the dad's and minister:

Finally, for the mothers, grandmother and female minister, daisies:

April seemed pretty optimistic about these choices and finding all the flowers. I had high hopes that she would come in under budget. But then, 3 months went by and we still haven't heard back from her with a price estimate. I even called the store trying to talk to her and she was out.