...ceremony details: the flowers...

I have been hesitating to write about this for the last few days because I need to tread lightly as I tell this story.  As with every wedding, ours was not without its snafus.  The situation surrounding our floral needs definitely became one of them.  This is kind of what happened in a nutshell…

DG’s sister got married a little less than a year before we did.  Her wedding was gorgeous, to say the least.  Largely due to the efforts of a distant cousin who does event design and floral for a living (and beautifully, I might add).  He was willing to basically donate his time and my SIL covered his costs and purchased the flowers at wholesale.  This equation worked really well for her, so it made perfect sense for us to do the same. 

Well, somewhere between a naïvely planned floral budget, a couple of assumptions, and some severe miscommunication…that arrangement completely fell apart, and we learned that said cousin would not be coming….PRECISELY TWO WEEKS BEFORE OUR WEDDING.  I don’t want to speak badly about him because he is family and because if I had been much smarter….I could have prevented every ounce of heartache and panic we suffered when DG and I looked at each other like WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?  In the end, everything worked out for the better.  We were able to spend less money and I could not have been happier about the way our flowers looked.

So the absolute hero in this story???  Our dear friend Troy.  Troy just so happened to arrange all the flowers for my MOH’s wedding back in October, and they were perfect.  He has a 9-5 just like everyone else, but he’ll do weddings here and there simply because he’s talented and he can.  So Troy had ZERO notice, but we called him up one night and said, “We need a florist.  We have $1,000.”  He was more than happy to jump in and take over.  I was blown away by how he pulled it all together.  I won’t spoil all the surprise of our details for the reception, but here’s what he did for our ceremony.

This display, welcoming our guests in the entryway, was a bit of a sneak peak of our reception decor.

Altar arrangements.

And a close up.

My bouquet.

He did a lovely job incorporating the picture of my grandma who passed away last Thanksgiving.

DG's boutonniere, #1.  Troy is so smart.  He always makes two boutonnieres for the groom, knowing that inevitably the first one will be crushed at some point by an unstoppable hugger.  DG's didn't even make it to the ceremony if I remember correctly.

More pretty bouquets for all my girls.

And here's a close up of the cute little carnation pomander Troy made for our flower girl.

Now, what have we learned?  If you are in the thick of planning and need a little guidance, learn from our mistakes and follow this advice…

1.       The first thing out of your mouth after, “Hello, my name is bride-to-be,” should be “We’re working with a budget of $X.XX, and this is what we need from that money.”  Whether you’ve gathered a group of friends to accomplish a certain task or a family member is handling a project or you’re working with a bonafide professional vendor.  DO. NOT. SKIP. THIS. STEP.  Maybe you’ll learn that you haven’t yet found the right person for the job, or maybe you’ll give that person an opportunity to find creative ways to cut extra cost.  Either way, you’ll be grateful you talked about it up front.  Like I said before, I could have prevented a lot of crying…

2.       Work with talented, creative people and set them free to create.  I know very little about flowers.  I just know what I think is pretty.  When it came to the actual design for our flowers, I gave Troy an idea of the overall aesthetic theme we were shooting for and a color palette and left the rest to him.  I understand that, to some brides, flowers are the one thing that has to be just so.  They weren’t a huge priority for me.  I didn’t have to have any one certain bloom.  I just wanted them to look nice and fit in with the other décor.  So when Troy came to me with suggestions, I said yes to every one and just let him do what he does.  That’s why we called him in the first place.  The result was SO MUCH BETTER than anything I could have dictated to him!

Finally, if you’re a bride looking for an affordable florist who is talented, oh-so-easy to work with, and is willing to work within ANY budget…please consider Troy.  He and his wife are great people and so much fun, and I promise, he’s fantastic.  In our case, he came in under our budget, even after he’d added fees for himself, but we decided to give him the full $1,000 anyway because we were so grateful and so impressed.  Troy isn’t exactly running a floral business, but he has given me permission to give out his email address to anyone who may be interested, so shoot me an email at enoughforeverafter(at)gmail.com if you want his contact info! 

As always, thanks to Will at Will Knowles Weddings for all these pretty pictures.