Designing + Planning Orange Wedding Bouquets and Centerpieces

I'm at it again!  Some of our good friends are getting married this weekend, and they asked me to be their florist!

I love having the house full of flowers, helping friends save a little cash, and most of all, making them something beautiful that's a part of their wedding day (and about a thousand photos).  The stressful part?  Making them something beautiful that's a part of their wedding day and about a thousand photos!!!

I love their ideas for their wedding - hints of a baseball theme (they did get engaged at a baseball game after all!), casual outdoor feel, and bright colors of royal blue and true orange.  I'm also quite impressed with all the projects the bride has been working on!  Maybe she'll let me write a post about all her hard work...

link

So all that aside, I wanted to share with you what I've been doing to plan for this DIY floral experience. 

First, I started with the bride.

What's the budget?  As reasonable as possible but I still want everything to look pretty.

What do you want the flowers to look like?  True orange, with some blue for mine.  No lilies (a bridesmaid is allergic). 

Aw man, because I was kind of hoping to try these...

We browsed through a number of photos on pinterest and found that she prefers a rounded shape, not too big or too small, avoid the wildflower look, and no flowers that are too crazy.

1,2,3

We also took a trip to the flower wholesaler, but the day we went they were severely lacking in orange flowers!  I hadn't been planning to order ahead for this wedding, but after the selection that day, I decided it would be a better idea.

The following flowers come in orange.  I'm sure there's more, but this is what my flower guy suggested.  I bolded the ones I ultimately chose, and gave reasons why the others wouldn't work

Alstroemeria - too generic
Asiatic Lily - bridesmaid is allergic
Calla Lily - too expensive
Carnations
Celosia - too weird
Cockscomb
Dahlia
Freesia
Gerbera Daisy
Gladiola -not the right shape
Hydrangea - Royal blue for the bride
Hypericum - too expensive
Orchid - too expensive
Proteus - too weird
Roses
Spray Roses
Sunflower
Snapdragon - tips are green, not the right shape
Tulip - not available
Zinnia - not available


By studying the inspiration photos, I got a good idea of how many stems I'd want for each type of arrangement.  The bridal bouquet is of course larger than the bridesmaid bouquets, and the centerpieces don't need as many stems because they can be spread out.

To save money, my bride had the great idea to use the bouquets as centerpieces at the reception.  She's having 15 tables, but I only have to make 8 centerpieces because 7 are covered by the bouquets.  This is awesome, and essentially saved her 30% on the cost of her florals.  I plan to poke some greenery in around the bouquets so everything looks as cohesive as possible on the tables.

Here's the breakdown!

I went with fewer stems than planned for the bridal bouquet since three of them are large hydrangeas.

Also, flowers have to be ordered in bunches, not individually, so I tweaked the counts until I got even numbers for bunches.  Where you see 1.5's in the table, that just means half the bouquets get one flower and half get two.

So how much do flowers cost, anyways?  Carnations are the bargain of the bunch (har har) at less than 50 cents each.  The most expensive thing on my list, aside from the hydrangeas where cost can vary wildly, was the cockscomb at $1.80 each.  Everything else comes in between $1.00 - $1.50 per flower.

It's also helpful to consider the size of a flower.  Sunflowers, gerbera daisies, and dahlias take up a lot of square footage in a bouquet - so even if they're more expensive, you get more bang for your buck. 

My grand estimate for the flower order came to $450.  Y'all, this a BARGAIN for an entire wedding of flowers.  For my wedding, I got estimates of $700 - $1000 for bouquets only (and subsequently told the florists no thanks).

To make myself feel a little more confident in choice of flowers, I threw together some photos to make sure everything would play well together.  Thankfully, they do!

I've also been considering the schedule for the work.  The wedding is Sunday.  Friday I'll pick up the order and "process" the flowers.  Saturday I'll put most of the bouquets and centerpieces together.  Sunday I'll finish any centerpieces, prep the vases for the bouquets, and make the corsages.  I get to have fun in there too - they've planned a bachelorette dinner tonight, a group outing to a Nationals game Friday, and the rehearsal dinner Saturday.  Plus some of our BFFs who are also in the wedding are staying with us all weekend, so I'll have helpers this time around!

I'm super excited to pick up the order tomorrow and get to work!  I love having a house full of friends and flowers :)



You might also be interested in these posts:
Prepping Flowers for DIY Bouquets
DIY Fake Peony and Hydrangea Bouquets
Elegant White and Green Bouquets
Autumn Bouquets and Boutonnieres

Bonnie Projects

Fall Container Gardening

This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.

We received this beautiful sculpture-like planter as a wedding gift.  While I can imagine exactly what I want to plant it in come Spring, I've been uninspired so far this fall.



But when we started cleaning out the basement,  I found some lettuce seeds Mom had sent me last year.  The new planter would be perfect for a small fall lettuce crop!  It's on the deck so I can easily harvest the lettuce, and up off the ground so we know it won't be tainted by dog pee.  I checked out this video by Gardenieres on setting up a container garden, just to make sure I know what I'm doing (and it seems like it do - it's pretty straightforward!).

One of my biggst challenges with container gardening is remembering to water the darn things.  I used to kill plants all the time by forgetting to water them, but that all changed once I started using Miracle Gro's Moisture Control potting mix.  It retains water without keeping the plants soggy, and slowly releases it as the plants need it.  I can now get away with watering the plants about every two weeks, but if I water more often, they're still OK.

I started using it about 10 years ago, and those very first plants are still alive!  Which really says something to me, because it's not like I've learned to water more frequently.

The times they are a changing, because now there's even a Miracle-Gro Facebook page, but I have to say they do have some great tips on there!  I'm sure I'll be back for help from their community if my lettuce-lets get a disease.

I'm excited for the rainy evenings and cool nights to start helping my little seeds along!  I can't wait to enjoy a home-grown salad!

Sweater Pillow with Buttons

It's officially fall, y'all!

I'm really excited about changing our home decor with the seasons - nothing super drastic, just some little touches here and there to give the essence.  A quick, easy, and cheap way to do this is by changing out your throw pillows.

I've been loving the idea of sweater pillows - the coziness of the textures in sweaters just oozes fall warmth for me.

There are plenty of options on the market - just check my pinterest page!  But I thought it would be cool to upcycle old sweaters for pillows instead!

Every time I drop off donations at Goodwill, I also peruse the store to see what treasures might be lurking in there.  On a recent trip, I spotted two sweaters that had great colors and textures for my pillow project.  At $5 each, they were perfectly on-budget.  I brought them home and washed them on hot and with oxiclean to get them nice and sanitized.

I found pillow forms half-off at Hancock's over the weekend, and those were my materials!

I started with the sweater with the buttons - it seemed more fun.  I haven't gotten to the second one yet.

After studying the shape of the sweater, I realized I'd need to cut off kind of a lot of the fabric - the neck, the sleeves, and the pockets.  This would leave me with sort of a small pillow, but since they were for our accent chairs, that was OK.

I started by pinning the right sides together in my shape.  Sweater knit is super forgiving, so I didn't worry about measuring it for size or anything, I pretty much winged it.

I had to remove the top two buttons - one would go to waste, and the other would get caught in the seam.  After I sewed the seam, I sewed the button back in place.  I moved the extra one to a lower spot, creating a nice line of buttons all the way down the pillow.

I sewed the buttoned seam together to take the pressure off the buttons.  This kept the buttoned part from gaping open.

I sewed three sides of the pillow, and also about two inches on either side of the fourth side.  Then I crammed my pillow form in there, and hand-stitched the fourth side closed.  I mushed the pillow around to get the form aligned well.

Upcycled sweater pillow

And that was that!  About an hour of work and $11 per pillow, and I was done!

Autumn Yarn Wreath

Last year I saw this amazing wreath on Pinterest, and vowed I'd make one of my own this year.

Argyle Wreath by Itz Fitz

Because I have a lot of other projects going on right now, I looked into buying it on Etsy.  At $45, it's reasonably priced.  I was really inspired by the other wreaths in the sellers shop - they're beautiful!

Yarn Wreaths by Itz Fitz

My only qualm was that the ones I really liked were only 12" in diameter and I felt like they would be too small for our door.  Solution: DIY!

I started with a 16" extruded styrofoam wreath from Michael's.  These forms are really skinny, so I beefed it up a little with strips I cut from quilt batting.  I used about a yard of quilt batting, cut into 4" strips.  I wound these around the form, making a total of three layers.

Next I gently wrapped a thick, chunky yarn around and around the padded form.  I took the whole skein of yarn to cover the entire wreath!

Yarn wrapped wreath

yarn wrapped wreath

To add some quirky fun to the wreath, I made some flowers from wire-edged ribbon.  I pulled the wire on one edge to gather up the ribbon, then rolled it up to make roses.  This was incredibly easy and required zero sewing.  Score!

roses made from wired ribbon

My spool of ribbon had enough yardage to make three flowers.  I hot glued the flowers onto the wreath.  I nabbed some feathers from a hideous floral arrangement that was left in our house by the last owners and was destined for the trash.

bunched feathers

I accentuated the flowers with the feathers by hot gluing them in place.

yarn wreath with ribbon flowers and feathers

And that was that!  Time for the front door!

autumn yarn wreath with ribbon flowers and feathers

autumn yarn wreath with ribbon flowers and feathers

I'm so happy I tried this project!  It turned out exactly like I had imagined it.  It took about one hour and cost less than $20 for all the materials.  What a great kickoff to the season.

How are you decorating for fall?