Overdue Wedding Flower Photos

Here are some photos when I played Martha Stewart for a good friend's son and his bride.  (See "What Is It About Weddings?").

Here I am with the bride, pointing out the crystal heart bead I put into her bouquet that corresponded to one in the groom's boutonniere.  Her bouquet was made with hydrangeas, roses, peonies, stefanotis and lemon leaves.

I made the groom, best man and family of the bride and groom's boutonnieres from roses and gave the groomsmen thistles, which perfectly matched the color scheme.  I decided on the thistles hurriedly as I went through the flower market the day before and the mother of the bride -- who wanted final approval on all decisions -- sounded a little doubtful when I told her about them on the telephone.  By that time, there was no time to change our minds, so I assured her she was going to love the look.

Next day when I pinned a thistle on the first groomsman he was kind of steeling himself to wear a flower.  You would have thought that he was going to be giving blood instead of getting a boutonniere pinned on him.  When he opened his eyes and saw the "flower," he looked surprised and said, "Hey, what's that?"  I told him it was a thistle, and he puffed up like a rooster and strutted away, all proud of his boutonniere.

Then, when I pinned the roses on the brothers and best man, they asked why they got roses instead of thistles and I explained it was because they were family (and did not explain that it was what the mother of the bride insisted on).  They seemed to feel like they'd been shortchanged rather than honored. 

Note to self:  make boutonnieres out of the manliest "flower" you can find!

The bridesmaids carried bouquets of hydrangeas with a deep purple calla lily in the center.  This allowed me to tie the bouquets into the bride's bouquet and still make them different and less elaborate than the bride's bouquet.  We were really lucky with the hydrangeas.  I'd had the bouquets in the refrigerator overnight, but I took them out and put them into flower vases with a little water in the bottom to wait for the wedding party.  As in all weddings, there were some glitches and the wedding party was over an hour late.  Hydrangeas won't last for much over three hours.  I am happy to report that these lasted through the wedding and until the last photo was shot.  By the time the bridesmaids made it to the reception, their bouquets were very droopy and even spritzing them with water didn't help much.

I made wrist corsages for both the mothers.

The bride also wanted me to decorate the top of the cake with flowers, sight unseen.  She ordered it plain but I only had a description of what it would look like.

The mother of the bride insisted that she wanted hydrangeas on the cake to match the bride's bouquet.  I had to explain to her firmly that there would be no hydrangeas on the cake because hydrangeas are highly toxic and we wouldn't want the wedding day to turn tragic.  We opted for silk hydrangeas with roses.

Unfortunately, with little funds and no time to experiment, I followed a tip I found online to freeze fresh flowers the night before if they were to go onto the cake.  By the time the white roses thawed, they had begun to brown.  No one noticed but me, it seems, but I will never freeze roses for a cake again without testing the result the week before.

The photographer was a friend of the couple's and she did a fantastic job on the photos.  I have her to thank for allowing me permission to use the photos on my blog.  (Thanks, J!)