First DIY Bouquet Results

Well, I stumbled across some cymbidium orchid stems at the grocery store this weekend, which I have NEVER seen there before, so I bought one and decided to do a test run on making a bouquet. I also picked up roses and peruvian lillies (I'd rather have calla lillies, but they didn't have any near me that weren't special order). Here's what everything looks like trimmed and ready to go:



The cymbidium orchid stem had 12 heads on it, there were a dozen roses and ten stems of peruvian lillies. Trimming the roses and lillies went pretty quickly using floral shears, about 15 minutes being lazy with it. The orchids took longer. First I cut the heads off the main stem and laid them out like so:

Then I took 15" lengths of 22 gauge floral wire and poked it through the top of each stem, right underneath the petals. Wrap that around the stem and use floral tape to secure it. Wrap the tape all the way down to the ends of the wire so you won't poke yourself with the wire later on. Apparently, I forgot to get a picture of them all wrapped up. Anyway, that took me a good half hour. Next time I'll buy precut floral wire; that will save a few minutes.

Then, I just started grabbing a few flowers and making a loose bouquet. The first one I started with a few roses, then a few peruvian lillies, then more roses, and so on and so forth. I used all the roses and all the lillies for this one:

This one I stripped all the green leaves from the lillies:

And here's one with the orchids included:

The orchids are a little overpowering because they're so pink and the other flowers are so white, and I should probably pull them down just a little bit so they look smaller, but overall it doesn't look too bad. Bigger roses that are more full would work better, and calla lillies would be better too. The real thing would be monochromatic in whatever color I decide to go with.

Side note about peruvian lillies, I like the look of them, but I don't think I'll be planning on using them again. They are surprisingly fragile; the flower heads kept falling off the stems if you work with them too much. I must have lost a dozen or so flower heads during the course of two bouquet trials. They will work as a filler because you won't see the broken head stems, but I'd use them sparingly.

The roses and orchids were pretty easy to work with. You just have to have a firm but gentle hand; I ended up breaking one rose stem because I put too much pressure on it to fit where I wanted it to go.

As far as storing the flowers, the roses and lillies have been in room temp water for a day already and are just dandy. The orchids were on the stem at room temp for 3 days before I cut them up. They are now in a vase with water to the brim at room temp. I'm pretty sure all the stem ends are in water; there's only a few inches so a wide bucket would work best for keeping them in water. Here's what they look like tonight, I'll post some more pics up of how they look over the next few days:

I've read that orchids are quite hardy actually, and can handle being out of water for several hours without wilting or looking sad. I'll see how they do in water for a few days, then see how long they look nice out of water. I would put them in the fridge to keep them all cool, but flowers and veggies don't mix in the fridge, so room temp will have to do :)

Pics of the estate

Well, they're not my pics, but I found some that another Knottie took, mdjs. I'll be anxiously waiting to see more in mid-May hopefully!

This would work for the ceremony.

And this one is the outside of the house. I love those big windows. We could easily move everything indoors if rain threatens.

Venue booked, check!

We have a venue now, yay! We're actually moving forward with this whole thing, which is refreshing.



We booked the Fanger Estates on the North Shore of Oahu. It's only by sheer luck that I found it. After someone posted about it on the Hawaii board on theknot forums, I had to check it out. It's in the final stages of construction, so we got one heck of a deal. I hope that most of our wedding party will stay with us in the estate; we booked the larger one with 6 bedrooms so we'll have ample room. Aside from being somewhat secluded and having a private beach, the whole deposit is refundable, a huge bonus in the unstable economic environment. This way, if things really start to go south in the next 12 months or so, we can cancel and go with plan B (still not sure what that is yet...). I think this is the only way that I got my other half to agree to booking something this early.



I think the plan will be to have most, if not all, of the wedding related activities happen at the estate. Welcome/Rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception, possibly a morning after brunch. There is a private chef that can be hired; if there's money available I'd like to have someone cook us a nice brunch. For the other events, we'll have a caterer come and take care of things. We should be able to take care of the alcohol ourselves also; we can hire a bartender or two and pick up cases at Costco.



The whole area looks like it will be a blank slate for us. I like this, because I'm a bit of a picky control freak about decorating. I won't have to try and work around any preexisting items. I'd love to be able to make a scouting trip in the fall to see what it really looks like. We'll have to see how the finances pan out over the summer before committing to that.

Pretty white dress

I had my dress bought a year ago. I love it! Great price on ebay for exactly what I wanted. My advice to anyone buying on ebay, go to a salon and try on different dresses and take note of the designers, styles and fabrics that you like. Then you'll have an idea of what works, so it's easier to buy something without trying it on. Better yet if you get the style name so you know exactly what dress to look for, which is what I did. Took 6 months of stalking ebay, but totally worth it.

The shoes. Oh, my shoes, how I love thee... I never intended to buy designer shoes, but I saw them when I was looking for a different pair, and couldn't resist. Since I got such a deal on the dress, there was room in the budget for them. When I bought them, we were still doing the local wedding, so now I have to figure out how to incorporate them in the Hawaii wedding, which will likely be on the beach or a garden. Heels and soft ground never mix. Maybe they'll have to be saved for the afterparty.

The inspiration board

I tried my hand at making an inspiration board a la Kathryn at Snippet & Ink. I think it turned out pretty good so far. We're going to do a casual, sophisticated island feeling event. I really would like to do it at an estate that we can rent for a week to house the wedding party and whatever friends are able to make the trip. Near or on the beach would be best; for a bunch of landlocked Minnesotan's, easy access to a beach is highly desired. I love plumeria's (stupid winter means I can't have some here), so that's where my color scheme is coming from. That and the ocean, with a bit of pink because it's pretty. So yellow, blue, white and pink. The guest turnout may be small (probably), so the reception will probably be on the shorter side and more intimate. Overall, there definately has to be an island feel to it, but not dripping in sand and seashells and fish. Island feel, but not ridiculous looking if we replicated it in Minnesota for an at home reception.

And it begins...again...

I guess you could consider this my second go around at planning our wedding. Originally, we were planning a Minnesota wedding in Sept 2009. A year into planning that, life happened so we decided to have a destination wedding in Hawaii. Exciting, yes. A lot of work to plan, yes. I'm a bit of a control freak. And I get nervous about not actually seeing something before I book it, like venues.

So a few weeks after deciding on Hawaii the economy crashed, and a few weeks after that I was informed that the company I work for will be closing in June due to budget cuts. Great, we can bail out Wall Street execs who have everything but have to cut back on mental health funding for those who have almost nothing...? But I digress... With all this stress and frustration, the wedding got put off to 2010 (still in Hawaii, got people excited about it), and we took a 6 month sabbatical from wedding planning. Probably a good thing, and frankly I was bored with weddings at the time.

Now here we are. A few random posts on theknot got my attention for various things, so planning started again. Even with my looming unemployment and the unending economic doom and gloom, it's time to either do this or scrap the whole idea and do a JOP and dinner at a nice restaurant by ourselves. Definately not what I would like, but we're still married in the end and that's what's important.

(hopefully I stick with this blog, I have a tendency to start things and never finish or maintain them. if I quit updating and anybody cares, feel free to email me.)