Friday, June 17, 2011

Flowers on Friday ... Wedding Flowers

Since we live on a rose farm, it was a foregone conclusion that roses from my gardens would play a big part in the flower designs for our daughter's wedding.  Most of the roses were going to be in full bloom, and we should have had our pick of any sort of wonderful choices for the reception table arrangements.  (The bouquets for our daughter and her bridesmaids were done by a florist friend of mine.)  Mother Nature had other ideas ... sending unseasonably high temperatures during the week before the wedding which fried almost everything in the yard.  We had to quickly switch to Plan B ... florist flowers.



Two days before the wedding, our daughter and I went to Sieck Wholesale in Richmond to choose flowers.  Their selection is superb, and it was a difficult for us to stay on track ... we needed Stargazer lilies and an assortment of roses ... nothing else.



Our daughter had so much fun sorting through the various boxes of roses, choosing her favorites.  We left with ten bunches of roses (with 20-24 in each bunch) and three bunches of lilies.  The lovely folks at Sieck's packaged the flowers for us in a large box with a bag of ice to keep them cool during the one-hour ride home.



As soon as we got home, we began unpacking the flowers.  We had to get them into water and outside in the warm shade for them to start to open so we could work with them the next day to make the arrangements.



Here we have the fruits of a morning's labor ... dozens and dozens of beautiful roses in buckets of warm water.  (The buckets are plastic wastebaskets from the Dollar Store.  We stopped there on the way home when I realized that I didn't have any clean buckets for the flowers.)

At the top right corner of this photo, you can see the throwing bouquet made from silk flowers on top of the corner cupboard.  We put it up there to keep it away from the cats.


I love the colors we chose.  They coordinated beautifully with the lilies.



The next day, before the rehearsal, my mother and our middle daughter took charge of making the arrangements.  We carried the flowers and the containers out to the reception tent, and the two of them went to town.  Each arrangement started with two stems of lilies, and was filled in with a random assortment of roses.



The two of them worked assembly-line style, adding roses to each arrangement in turn until each blue jar couldn't hold another flower.



I love the finished product!  They did such a beautiful job.



Here's a shot of all 18 arrangements, ready to go for when we set the tables on Saturday morning.



Just for fun, here's a photo I took of the Rehearsal Dinner.  Most of the wedding party was leaving shortly after the rehearsal to go see Travis Tritt in concert, so we brought in pizza and beer for dinner.  No plates, no glasses ... we ate pizza straight from the box and drank beer out of cans, and it was perfect!



Saturday morning, with tablecloths in place, and the places set with plates and glasses, the flowers in their blue jars were the star of the show ... at least until the bride arrived, that is.




On Sunday, I took flowers next door to decorate the tasting room at Hartwood Winery, gave some to friends, and spread the rest throughout the house.  The place smelled heavenly!

Hopefully you're not going to get bored with wedding stuff, because I have more.  I'm just now getting the time to sit and gather and format the photos.

24 comments:

  1. I will NEVER get bored with such beauty! LOVE those pictures and savored every one of them. GORGEOUS! But, how sad that you couldn't use your own flowers! Darned old Mother Nature! xo Diana

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  2. Mother Nature has her way, but your family certainly knews how to create beauty in spite of her whims. All looks gorgeous and can't wait to see more. Weddings are always fun! ♥♫

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  3. Bored with gorgeous flowers, a wedding and a beautiful Bride...never! Love how the flowers looked so natural and the blue jars were perfect. Mother Nature is a funny lady sometimes. Still the flowers are magnificent even if not from your gardens.

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  4. Mother Nature has a great way of throwing us for a loop sometimes, especially when it came to that heat wave we had... so glad things worked out. You all were smart cookies for devising a solution. I love the flowers used with the glass jars!!


    DI

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  5. The bouquets for the tables look absolutely lovely! They are in some way simple and unpretentious, but yet so elegant and abundant. Job well done! I really admire that you did so much yourself or were helped by family and friends for the wedding celebration of your daughter. For me it makes a special event in our life so much more memorable, when we get to work ourselves and make the preparation part of the celebration.
    Christina

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  6. The colors are perfect, and the arrangements are wonderful.

    This extreme heat we've had this month has given our blooms a rough time, too. With June this hot, I am not looking forward to August.

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  7. Heck no I'm not bored! Loving every photo uploaded and every word typed. Beautiful arrangements and that's our type of food there.

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  8. I'm so pleased to see that the wedding went well! I had no idea so much went into making flowers do what you need the them to do. And nothing better than pizza and beer.

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  9. Connie, they are gorgeous, everything looks amazing! I could never get bored with ANYTHING you post!

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  10. Roses and Stargazers... a favorite combination. I can imagine the fragrance. The shot of the wholesale house took me back to my florist days. I LOVED going to pick up and pick out flowers for the shop.
    The arrangements turned out beautifully. The mason jars are great!
    Lovely job!
    Sandra

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  11. I love those old ball jars and the roses!!.. oh, the roses :)

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  12. Dearest Connie,

    What a post! Gorgeous roses and it turned out into lovely arrangements.
    By the way, would you have access to the rose Jardins de Bagatelle? We would love to have several of that one.

    Lots of love,

    Mariette

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  13. Who could possibly be bored? I love Stargazer lilies. Not cold enough here for them. The roses were fantastic. My OGR-ness is showing. Are those rose buds unusually long? Keep 'em coming.

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  14. They turned out beautifully. Too bad your roses (well, really, the hot weather) didn't cooperate. But you had a great Plan 'B'. I can imagine it was hard to stay on track with all those lovelies!

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  15. They did a fantastic job of arranging the flowers! Keep the wedding photos coming!

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  16. So, so pretty! They did a great job and I love the colors! How could we ever get tired of wedding pics...I need more I tell ya! ;-)

    Kat :)

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  17. Thanks, Everyone!! It's going to take a while to sift through things (2800 photos from the photographer and 2000+ from a friend, plus other friends who took photos that want to share).

    Mariette, my go-to place to see where roses are available is Helpmefind.com. I find that the rose you are looking for should be available at several US nurseries (Vintage and Rogue Valley come to mind) as well as nurseries in Europe and the UK. Copy and paste this link to see the complete list. http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.18584.2&tab=16&lvl=1
    Connie

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  18. Fabulous! Such gorgeous roses and a wonderful story of the event, too.

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  19. Gorgeous! Makes me want to have a wedding just to decorate! You all did a fabulous job putting that together, and color choices too. Just love it....can almost smell it!

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  20. You take such gorgeous photographs of flowers. Such amazing detail. I
    feel as if I can touch and smell them.

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  21. I LOVE the bouquets in the blue canning jars. :)

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  22. Connie, these are so beautiful. Wonderful combination. The vase choice is awesome! Makes it perfect!

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  23. What a bummer you couldn't use your own roses. Oh well, all's well. There's really nothing prettier than roses for a wedding. I hope my daughter is considering that... but she LOVES hydrangeas.

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