More on DIY flowers …
A few weeks I posted an entry about making my own flowers for the wedding.
Yesterday I bought a bouquet of mixed flowers from Raj, the guy who stops by our office from time to time to sell 24 roses for $18. Sometimes he has mixed bouquets, too.
Last night, I plopped them into a vase before we went out for dinner and didn’t give them much thought. This afternoon, it occurred to me that I might as well practice my DIY flower idea while I had some here.
I took the whole bunch of them into the kitchen and trimmed all the leaves.
After that I bundled them together and secured them with packing tape. Not ideal, of course, but I didn’t happen to have floral tape hanging around the house since this was a spur of the moment idea.
A couple of months ago I bought some ribbon in the darker of our two wedding colors because I found some on sale (this is based on the sea theme colors, not the rustic mountain theme). I wrapped a whole roll around the stems because I didn’t want to cut it (that way I can re-use it several time for practice). I’ll probably buy nicer ribbon for the big day and I’m not sure I want to use a colored ribbon anyway; I may use ivory to match my gown. I secured the ribbon with straight pins. Again, it’s probably better use floral pins, but I don’t keep them in stock. I did cut off a small piece of the ribbon to make a simple square knot instead of a fancy bow.
Because I was working off the sea theme wedding concept, I added a few starfish. IF we end up in Ocean City these will be glued to wooden skewers and treated as flowers stems, but in this picture I just placed a few on the bouquet.
Here’s a close-up:
After I finished photographing the trial bouquet, I unwrapped the ribbon, left the tape in place and put the bouquet in an old milk bottle WITHOUT the starfish. This would make a simple table arrangement at the reception if we decided on the rustic mountain venue. I don’t think I want flowers on every table, but I might place a few arrangements on the bar or the guest book table.
Again, I wasn’t planning on making a trial run this weekend, so I didn’t have all the supplies I needed and I’m not even sure I want a mixed bouquet anyway. All the arrangements in my flower style board were single type flower bouquets. In reality, I probably need a few more stems than this and I’ll probably buy them at the grocery store or farmer’s market. This bouquet has eucalyptus in it. It looks pretty in real life, but in the photos it looks very dark and bushy, probably not appropriate for a wedding bouquet, but it smells nice.
The arrangement took less than 15 minutes to make - and that counts the time it took me to take 15 or so pictures of the process and go down to the basement to show Don. Score!
Next time I’ll try to use just one type of flower and see how it turns out.