Flowers: Fake It 'Til You Make It

I like flowers. Does anyone not like flowers? I like to think about flowers, I like to look at flowers, I like to violently rip flowers out of the ground and domesticate them in vases in my home. But I have never understood the deal with weddings and flowers. When did the two become like peas and carrots? The root of it (and so many other things for me, as you'll come to find) is that I'm cheap, and I never got why flowers for weddings were so expensive. As much as I like flowers, I could never see paying so much for something that would be dead shortly after the party. Plus, there's the scary part of having to trust someone else on the day of the wedding; if they show up and the flowers are orange and yellow and brown, what can you do? Nothing. Scaaaaary for an opinionated girl (read: control freak) like me.

So when the time came to plan our wedding, we got creative. First, we picked a date where our church is already full of flowers- the Saturday after Easter.



Doesn't it look nice? I am so glad we will be able to have our wedding at such a joyful time in the church calendar, that just happens to provide me with a fully flowered sanctuary.

Once that was out of the way, I had to think about bouquets, corsages, etc. Etsy.com has been a godsend to me during the whole wedding planning process, because I love love love love LOVE shopping online. Being able to work directly with an artist on something that is custom made to my specifications from the comfort of my broken, crooked desk chair? Sign me UP. There are lots of really talented silk floral designers on Etsy- I stumbled across Ardesign's work window-shopping on the site one night, and I instantly fell in love. She was putting together the things I was imagining in my head. And shortly thereafter, I received her beautiful creations:





I'm glad to have flowers done and done. And I'm so glad that we'll be able to keep some of the arrangements used at our wedding for the future. I can just imagine our kids playing with them one day, the same way my sisters and I all snuck into our mother's closet to secretly try on her wedding dress (glad we did it then; it'd be way too small now!).