My Daughter's Wedding: On Acquiring Flowers

From the beginning, I knew that I didn’t want a ton of flowers as decorations for my wedding. My reasoning was thus:

Flowers are expensive (especially out-of-season ones, which, as it was a February wedding, included most blooms) and we had a limited budget.
I thought that the sparkle created with candles and mirrors was more elegant and fit a winter wedding better.
The Now-Beloved Husband is allergic to most plant life and I wanted him to survive the day.
I didn’t want to contend with a professional florist.

That last one may seem a little cantankerous, but I’d heard/read enough horror stories about florists bringing the flowers late, substituting different flowers without consulting the bride, or failing to produce what the bride had wanted that I decided that I’d be safer doing it myself.

My decision was vindicated by one of our local florist’s flat refusal to do business with me. Every time I’d go in, asking about ordering flowers for a wedding, I’d get confused or pained looks and mumbled responses. The one woman who knew what I was asking made it clear that she didn’t want to help me, and every time I phoned, I was told that the woman who handled such things was “out”. The lesson here: if a vendor won’t cooperate with you, go to a different one. Even if I had been able to get this shop to finally work with me, who knows what sort of stress I’d have had getting them to create what I wanted, since it felt obvious to me that they didn’t really want my business. I don’t know if it was because I’m young or if they’d had a bad experience with a previous bride, but it was the most surreal experience of the entire eleven-month period leading up to the wedding.

In preparation, I checked out several books on flower arrangement from the library, watched YouTube videos of professionals creating bouquets, and researched the meanings behind individual flowers. I also went to sites that allowed you to “create” your own bouquet using pre-existing flower graphics.

One of the first Virtual Bouquets I designed.

It turned out that The Flowers were an area where Mom and I were speaking two different languages. I would describe what I was picturing – a cluster of white and lavender roses and mini calla lilies with sword ferns framing the whole thing – and Mom would frown as she was picturing something completely different. Finally, on one of our trips to our local craft store, I gathered up the silk flowers that I wanted and made a mock-up of my bouquet. Upon seeing an actual version of what I wanted, Mom’s eyes lit up and she agreed that it was very pretty and would work well with our dresses. At this point, I’d like to reiterate: if at first you fail to verbally communicate, get a visual.

Now in agreement, Mom and I went to a local wholesale floral shop and began seeing which flowers were constantly in stock and which ones rotated in and out; this way we would know what we’d need to order ahead of time and what we could just go in and buy.

Over the course of several months, we learned several important things about dealing with florists and flowers:

Know the names of the plants you want. Seems pretty basic, but we learned the hard way that what we’ve always called Sword Ferns are actually Leatherleaf Ferns – at least, according to the shop we were at.
Be open to asking the florist for advice. I had wanted Sterling Silver Roses, but the flower shop didn’t carry them because they wilted too quickly. Luckily, the florist suggested a flower, Lisianthus, which looked almost identical and would last.
Be aware of your flowers’ strengths and weaknesses. For example, Calla Lilies are gorgeous, but bruise and wilt easily, therefore they need to be handled carefully and used promptly.
Know how to keep your flowers alive and looking pretty. If you tackle doing your own flowers, make sure you look into how to care for them or they'll wilt and droop before Wedding Day. I put mine in tubs of tepid water mixed with a pinch of Miracle Grow and kept them in the garage (the coldest place in the house in February). For non-winter brides, be sure to look into refrigeration space.
Don’t feel pressured to take what you don’t want. The only hitch we had buying the flowers was in a surprise substitution (remember, I mentioned hearing about those?). The wholesaler’s vendor didn’t have the pale green roses that we had ordered so the wholesaler just replaced them with more white roses (of which we had ordered two dozen already). When they called to tell us, we regretfully told them we couldn’t take them, as we had no use for an additional 25 white roses. The wholesaler wasn’t happy, but the flowers were deducted from our order. Luckily, they had several (slightly wilted) bouquets of green roses the day we picked up the order, so I chose the best of those, plucked the wilted petals, and we were good to go.

In the end, my wonderful aunt, who had worked in a florist shop, came over the day before the wedding and helped us make everything. She made five corsages, nine boutonnières, the three bridesmaids’ bouquets and my bridal bouquet (with me directing) in just over six hours. Hooray for Auntie!