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.
