Wedding Flowers

 I spent much of last evening cursing this wretched heat and sitting on the floor playing with silk flowers.  Our wedding is not until the end of September but getting this done will be one less thing to worry about later.  Plus we have a wedding pile in the corner of our living room and it is getting larger and more unorganized so this helped a little.  As happy as I am to be getting married to Dave, I can't help but feel this wedding business is for the birds.  I have never wanted a royal wedding and I have been to enough weddings in the last few years to know that they involve months and even years of planning and they're over in minutes.  When it comes down to it, I'm also very cheap!  I refuse to pay someone to plan it for me and I cannot justify spending a fortune on a cake, a party, and a dress which is really what a wedding is when you boil things down.  I think what I do love the most about weddings, at least in our family, is getting to see people you haven't seen since the last family wedding or funeral.  That being said and working within the tightness of my pursestrings, I am trying to pull together a wedding that won't look shabby and will bring our extended family together.

I am the last unwed cousin in my family and I never put much thought into wedding planning/costs because it never loomed on my horizon until now.  I have actually been brought to tears in researching venue rates, catering expenses, photography packages, florist fees, DJ's, etc.  All that and THEN you will spend the most money you've ever spent in your life on a single garment that is the wedding dress.  It goes on and on.  Needless to say, we are chipping away at different things and trying to do as much ourselves as possible.  Case in point, flowers.  I went to Joann Fabrics around Memorial Day when they were having sales on silk flowers and still spent around $120.  I see absolutely nothing wrong with silk flowers but quality silk blooms can be pricey.  I am willing to spend the money though because I don't want people to be able to tell from across the street that my flowers are silk.  After last night, I can see why florists charge what they do.  I sat down with my flowers and stripped all the leaves off and cut them apart and trimmed the stems and then you have to reattach leaves closer to the bloom and tape up the stems.  After all that fussing you start arranging them together with your greenery that you've also cut up and separated and start wiring and taping together your stems.  I made corsages for our mothers, boutonnieres for Dave, his groomsman and our fathers, and bouquets for myself and my sister who is my matron of honor.  They really looked nice enough on their own but I wrapped them in a little ribbon to perpetuate our chosen colors and that put a nice finishing touch on them.  I can't imagine doing this the day before an event with perishable blooms and praying they'll hold up throughout the day.

I wrapped the large bouquets with some blue Czech ribbon I got when we went to the Festival of Nations.  His family is Czech and mine is Norwegian so this was a nice way to add some of his ethnicity into the trimmings.  I have some wider Czech ribbon that I bought years ago with Melissa at the National Czech and Slovak Museum in Cedar Rapids.  I will decorate our guest book with that and I'll post pictures of that when I get around to it.  I just got off the phone with my sister and she teased me that by posting pictures of my flowers, I am giving away all my secrets!  I am just so proud of these that I couldn't help but share them.  Also, I am taking knitting to the Ramsey County Fair on Sunday and I already looked to see if they had a silk flower arranging category and they don't!  I totally would have entered these!