DIY Detail: Flowers - Part 3

I lied, I have one last DIY detail. This one was really my mom's project, though, and she did an absolutely FABULOUS job. Back in February my friend J (who I've talked about before and who is getting married THIS Saturday!) and I found some huge vases at TJ Maxx to use for the arrangements at the front of the church. We each bought one and I used them for our ceremony and she's using them this weekend for her's! 

I don't really have step by step instructions for this project, but I did want to share some tips for artificial floral arrangements. We saved SO much money by doing these ourselves and using artificial flowers. And my mom was able to finish them the week before the wedding, which saved everyone some stress!

• When using a tall vase, you need something in the bottom of it to keep it from being top heavy. We used black river rocks from Dollar Tree - It was inexpensive and they looked great. I'm planning on selling them on Craigslist (so I don't have to ship them)

 

• For arrangements at the front of the church/ceremony, you can use lower quality/cheaper flowers because no one will see them up close. Some of the 'filler' flowers were from Dollar Tree and people were still asking us if they were real!  

 You can see them in the background here - More explanation of the actual picture during recaps! 

Lola Jo

• To save yourself time and money, you can make the back of the arrangement flat. No one will see it from the back, so there's no need to add flowers facing that way.

•  Repurpose the arrangements by moving them to the reception and using them as decor there - We placed ours on either side of the head table. You can see one of them on the right side of the picture.

Lola Jo

I would defnitely recommend using artificial flowers for your big arrangements if you have plans to DIY them! I know lots of brides are against fake flowers, but they saved us lots of time and stress and they looked great! 

Are you using any artificial flowers?

*I'm officially finished with my DIY details! Tomorrow I'll finally get to start our honeymoon recaps, and as soon as I'm done with those I'll start our wedding week and actually wedding recaps. Our pictures are online and we should have the CD within the next few days!!*

More Flower Goodness

I mentioned that I have a wonderful, generous friend who is willing to provide you guys with even more flower goodness! Kari is giving away an order of her gorgeous teardrop crystal baubles (the ones I used in my bouquet!) to one lucky reader!

source

The baubles are about 5" long and are made with 8mm teardrop shaped irridescent beads and silver wire. They're a great addition to any color bouquet! 

source

To enter, comment on this post telling me what your bouquet will look like!

For additional entries (separate comments, please!):

1. Heart Kari's shop on etsy

2. Like Kari's Facebook page
3. Make a purchase from Kari's shop (5 additional entries)

4. Become a follower of my blog :)

You can see the baubles in action in my bouquet here:

Lola Jo

The giveaway will end Sunday, August 1st at 5 PM CST and the winner will be announced Monday morning. Good luck!

DIY Detail: Flowers - Part 2

The Thursday evening before the wedding we had my mom, FMIL, and both of my FSILs (David's younger sister and his brother's wife) over to my parents' house to work on assembling the bouquets. I blogged about my inspiration for the bouquets and mentioned using feathers in the bridesmaids bouquets. We were actually able to find perfect feather picks in the floral department at Hobby Lobby and they were 50% off, making them only 50 cents each! We also had the black baubles from my friend Kari to add to them. (You should visit her etsy shop right now - They are SO well made and she's basically awesome!) Aside from that, our other supplies were floral wire, floral tape, wire cutters, ribbon, scissors, and pearl head corsage pins (also from Hobby Lobby).

There are all kinds of tutorials online (and even youtube videos) and wedding flower books that give in depth instructions for hand tied bouquets. Honestly, you just arrange the flowers in a circular pattern and move them around until there aren't any gaps. We didn't make all of the bridesmaid bouquets one specific way, and in fact they were almost all made by different people.

JrBM K made her own!

A look of exhaustion and frustration

I wanted to assemble my own bouquet. I worked at it for probably 45 minutes and I just couldn't get it to look quite right. It just wasn't perfectly round and I couldn't tell where exactly I needed another flower or what shape it needed to be. My SIL took it from me and slowly turned it so I could see it from further away and from all angles. Sometimes this is exactly what you need - Don't get frustrated if you have to hand over a bouquet to someone else because they can see something you can't. It's so much easier with several pair of eyes!

Please excuse the awful look on my face

Eventually my mom took it and was able to figure out exactly what it was missing. As soon as you have it the way you want it, the tricky part is wrapping the stems with wire without it falling apart. We found that the easiest way to do this was to have one person hold the bouquet near the flower heads while the other person wrapped the stems (tightly, but not tight enough to cut into the stem) with wire and floral tape. After the stems are wrapped, you can start wrapping with ribbon. David stopped by around this time, and he got sucked into helping cut wire. :) 

My mom loves this picture of us - I'm working on wrapping my bouquet

For my bouquet I used thick damask ribbon and secured it with the corsage pins (you'll have to cut the ends of them with wire cutters because they go all the way through) and then criss crossed thin pink ribbon around it. For the bridesmaids I used hot pink ribbon and then tied a knot at the top with a coordinating black and pink ribbon. I used a piece of the thin pink ribbon to attach the bridesmaids' bouquet charms, but hid it under the thicker ribbon.

Lola Jo

Stamp of Life Photography

I don't have a great picture of my bouquet individually, but you can kind of see how it turned out in these: (And it gives me another excuse to post one of my favorite pictures!)

Lola Jo

Lola Jo

Photo by my cousin, M - Funny story behind this one that I'll tell in our recaps!

We made small bouquets for the moms, boutonnieres for my dad, FIL, grandpas, and ushers, and a couple corsages. For some reason I don't have pictures of any of them. I'll be sure to update this post once I get our pro pics of them!

After the bouquets were all assembled we put them back in the buckets and put them in the fridge. (Make sure that you don't wrap the stems with ribbon all the way to the bottom so that they can still be in water.) We kept them refridgerated as long as possible, and the boys (who got ready at our house) brought them with them, still in water, to pictures. 

I would definitely recommend DIYing your flowers! We saved so much money, and I was able to get exactly what I wanted. My mom was really stressed about it leading up to the wedding, but even she says now that it was all worth it and that she'd do it again. And I love that I got to spend the Thursday night before the wedding with my mom and soon-to-be family - It was really fun, and I think a couple of them realized they're more crafty than they think! :) (Thank you to all of you!!) 

I'll leave you with my tips or suggestions for choosing to DIY your flowers:

• Be flexible! Things might look a little different than you envisioned. Maybe one type of flowers is a different shade than you expected - It'll be fine and no one will even know!
• Allow more time for assembly than you think. I figured we'd be finished within a couple hours, especially with several people helping. We worked from about 6:30 to midnight (although a couple of our helpers did leave before then) to finish everything. Thank you, L, for staying up half the night with us!
• Ask for help! You more than likely know someone who has an inner florist dying to get out. And people (especially family!) are usually more than willing to help. 
• Find lots of inspiration. It's so much easier for people to help you if they know what kind of look you're going for. For the longest time my mom and I just weren't on the same page, but I showed her my flower inspiration board (with 5-6 bouquets that I absolutely loved) and after that she could envision what I wanted.
• If possible, try to determine how many stems you want in each bouquet before hand. We ended up with WAY too many flowers. It was nice that we were able to pick and choose the best ones, but we really didn't have anything to do with the leftovers. We could've saved even more money had we not ordered one of the boxes. 
• Have multiple wire cutters and scissors on hand. It makes things flow a lot more smoothly and quickly when you're not always waiting on someone. 
• If you're getting frustrated, take a step back or have someone else look at the bouquet. Sometimes you just need a different angle or a second set of eyes to see what's not quite right. 
• Take a deep breath. They're flowers - They're going to be pretty! And chances are you're doing this a couple days before your wedding and the important part is that you're about to be a wife, not that you have a perfect bouquet. 

I'm sorry this turned into a novel, but hopefully it's helpful for those of you that said you planned to DIY your flowers! It's a lot of fun, and it's so rewarding when someone compliments your work! :)

Because it's Monday (and because I have a fabulous, generous friend!) I have an added flower related bonus for you guys. Be sure to check back later today for a giveaway!

DIY Detail: Flowers - Part 1

I've finally gotten to my last (and biggest!) DIY detail! Thanks for sticking with me through all of them - I guess I saved more projects for the last couple weeks than I thought!

I told you guys all about my plans to DIY our flowers with the help of my mom, and I'm so happy to tell you that they turned out great! The bouquets were exactly what I wanted for a fraction of the price the florist wanted to charge (for MUCH smaller bouquets - as in like 5 roses per bridesmaid) and the process was a lot of fun too! I know there are several tutorials out there for actually assembling the bouquets, but I really didn't see many posts that detailed the process leading up to that. And believe me, it's definitely a process. 

For us, the process started in the middle of May. We had planned to use some of the peonies from my parents front yard, but they usually bloom mid to late May. We searched online for instructions on how to preserve the peonies (keep them from opening) until closer to the wedding, but we really didn't find any detailed instructions. Having to 'wing' something like that was a little intimidating, but my mom did a great job. While the peonies were still closed (but the heads were soft like a marshmallow) my mom cut them off the bush. When the heads are soft it means the petals have formed and they're about to open. She took bunches of them, removed the leaves, and then wrapped them in newspaper and put them inside of a paper grocery bag. Then they were put in the fridge (thankfully my parents have two!) for the next several weeks. She spread out the cutting over several days so that at least some of them would open - It was hard to know when exactly was the right time to cut them. Depending on when you cut them off of the bush, they'll either open faster or take longer to open once you put them in water. 

We took the peonies out of the fridge the Monday before the wedding and put them in water. Again, we didn't really have anything to go off of when it came to a time frame for them opening, so we took a guess. They were almost open by Thursday when we assembled the bouquets and were pretty much completely open by Saturday. When we took them out of the fridge they looked like this:

We put them in buckets of water with tape across the top (to keep them from falling over and crushing each other) and put them in a decently warm room (not the basement). We were able to get several buckets for free from Sams that they use in the bakery for frosting, but this particular one is just from Dollar Tree, so that's another option. You'll need several buckets.

We also ordered the other flowers in bulk around the same time. We bought them through Sams Club and I know the lady at the floral desk was a little frustrated with us for waiting so long to place our order, so you probably want to do that further in advance. Everything worked out fine, though. We ordered a box of hot pink roses, a box of hot pink mini roses, a box of pink carnations, and a box of baby pink carnations. We spent around $200 for all of the flowers. 

We picked up the flowers from Sams on Tuesday and once we got the boxes home the flowers needed to immediately have the leaves taken off, the ends cut, and be put in water. The woman told us that using scissors on rose stems will make the heads droop, so we cut every. single. one. individually with a knife. 

Be sure to cut the stem at an angle rather than straight across and avoid touching the rose petals as they'll turn black more easily. As soon as the stem is cut the flower needs to be placed in water. Thankfully we were able to use floral scissors for the carnations, and after an hour or so, we had this:

The roses were supossed to be kept somewhere cooler, so we just kept all of the flowers in the basement. We actually ended up moving the peonies down there too, because they were opening up faster than we thought they would. We let all of them sit and slowly open until Thursday when we assembled the bouquets and boutonneires. But I'll save the assembling party for Part 2!

Are you thinking about DIYing your flowers?

Notice Some Changes?

Since I'm no longer technically a 'bride blogger' and will soon be moving onto newlywed/house/craft topics, I thought it was probably time for a little change. I'll be changing my address from 'soontobemrsf' to 'theluckiestinlove' as soon as I can figure out how to do that without losing all of you. (This probably goes without saying, but my new name will be a play on 'The Luckiest' by Ben Folds - a song we had sung in our ceremony - and my old blog name, 'Lucky in Love'.) Hopefully you'll just have to update your readers to the new link!

I've been playing around with the template for hours, but I'm still not happy with it. I'd love to pay someone way more talented than I am to design my blog, but I figure I should probably be more concerned with finding a job than paying someone to make my blog look pretty. ;) Someday I'll have a cute custom background and header, but until then let me know if you can help me out!

Just wanted to give you all a heads up! I'll be finishing my DIY details with the biggest one of them all - Our DIY flowers! As soon as I'm done with those I'll start recapping our fabulous honeymoon, and by the time I'm finished with that we *should* have all of our pro pics. I can't wait to start recapping the days leading up to the wedding and our day - It was so special, and I'm really excited to share it with you guys! 

Hope everyone's having a great week!

DIY Detail: Favors

Our favors were actually one of the first decisions I made in the planning process. I blogged all about what we planned to do in September, but didn't actually start worrying about the logistics of it until the week before the wedding. I knew I wanted to use tokens, but I just couldn't find any that were reasonably priced. It felt silly spending the money that would be going to charity on $45 tokens. Finally I came up with cardstock tokens. I already had a 2" circle punch and all kinds of cardstock and patterned scrapbook paper in our colors, so I punched 600 circles and glued two back to back to form our tokens. 

The process was a bit tedious, but David helped a lot. And we ended up with tokens that not only matched our color scheme exactly, but that also cost next to nothing. After the tokens were finished I slipped each of them into a small jewelry storage bag.

Next I printed off dozens of pages of the cards they'd be attached to. I was able to fit them 4 to a page, thankfully, but it still required quite a bit of cutting and corner rounding. 

I just used double stick tape to attach the token to the card, and ended up with 300 of these:

We put one at each place at the table. I figured everyone would see them this way, and since we had a buffet dinner, they made the tables look less empty without place settings. I wish I had a better picture of the little pop of color they added!

I made a scrapbook page that described both of the charities and had pictures of David and I with our loved ones that we chose to do this in memory of. It made it easier to see why these foundations in particular are so close to our hearts. We had a vase for each of them with signs in front.

Looking back, I wish we would've had the DJ announce what exactly our guests were supposed to do with them like I had planned to. It totally slipped my mind to ask him to say something, so I think fewer people 'voted' than we would've liked. I'm still so happy we did it, though, and that some of our favorite people were able to be at our reception in spirit.

Photo by BM S

What did you do for your favors? Was it something meaningful to you as a couple?

DIY Detail: Groom's Gifts

I blogged previously about the small gifts that I planned on giving to David before the wedding. Here's how they turned out!

When I went to order the cuff links I had planned on getting him, they were unavailable. He actually ended up picking out his own (and a matching tie tack) but I'm glad that they're something he'll wear again!

I don't have a picture of the cuff links, but you can see his tie tack in this picture!

And lastly, the canvas print of KU's basketball arena, Allen Fieldhouse

I can't get a very good picture of it, but it turned out awesome!

Ok, if you're reading and you're related to me (besides you, mom) or know me in real life and don't already know what this is about, you should probably just stop here. If you're not, you should check out my big gift for David!