Wedding Flowers

My niece celebrated with her east coast family and friends this past weekend in Chattanooga, TN. We had worked on the elements of the table decor since last year about this time when I found some driftwood that when cut up for the firepit revealed a really cool design. Shortly after that, I found a large sculptural piece that was striking. Katie decided that she liked the driftwood idea, and my husband and I started collecting driftwood in earnest.

Since the party was going to be in the fall, my niece wanted to use russets, wines, purples, and deep oranges in the flowers. She and her husband live in California which inspired the use of shells on the tables (which also repeated the colors of the flowers.) She found a website for bulk flowers because eucalyptus was what we wanted to use for the greenery (and it also appeared in the flowers on her invitations–nice tie in.) I put together flowers that were the right colors and asked her about them. She wanted more orange, so we changed the alstroemeria to orange.

The flowers arrived on the Thursday before the party on Saturday and I have to admit that I was a little concerned about them.

I trimmed the ends of all the flowers and put them in water that had some sugar and a tiny bit of bleach in it. They perked up nicely after a couple of hours.

My niece wanted low centerpieces for the tables, so I bought some cookie tins at the thrift store for $.35 and painted them with brown satin spray paint. Because she wanted structured arrangements, I bought round floral foam and soaked them thoroughly. I also painted some large glass cylinder vases with copper spray paint for the tables at the entrances to the venue. We were ready to start putting together arrangements.

My kitchen looked like a florist’s shop. My SIL from Germany worked on the 9 centerpieces for the tables. My niece worked on the statement centerpiece for the table with the schedule of events cards and I worked on the large arrangements in the copper vases.