Mmm, flowers...

After taking another tour of our venue, we headed to the office of the in-house florist. We aren’t required to use Richard, but if we like him, it makes sense for three reasons: a) we get a discount for using him, b) we won’t have to pay a delivery fee because the flowers will already be at our venue, and c) if anything goes wrong with the flowers, the florist is right there on wedding day to fix it.

With months worth of wedding blog obsessing behind me, I pretty much know what I want our flowers to look like. I brought a few inspiration photos to the meeting. When we got to Richard’s office, he had us look through a binder of his past floral arrangements to see what interested us, but because I came prepared with my own images, he focused on those.

Hello again, my cran-lemony love!
Image found here.

Of course, I know exactly what I want my bouquet to look like. When Richard saw my inspiration photo, he told me that these flowers are konfetti roses, high and bonita roses and peach miniature calla lillies. It makes sense that he would know what flowers they are, seeing how he is a professional florist, but it made me extra excited to know that my cranberry lemonade bouquet dream can be made a reality! He even said he could add the yellow crystals. At first, I said that it wasn’t that important to have the crystals, but Richard made a good point: the bride’s bouquet is the most important (and most photographed) set of flowers of the wedding, so it should be all that I dream of. Alright, then. Bring on the yellow crystals!

In terms of bridesmaids bouquets, I thought at first that they should contain just the peach calla lilies. Richard kindly deterred me from that idea, pointing out that calla lilies are expensive flowers (side note: he gets points for helping a girl stay within budget!) and suggested instead that we have bouquets made with the yellow roses. For some reason, roses aren’t my favorite flower but the yellow ones in my bouquet inspiration are so pretty, I'm open to the idea. Especially if we use the ones with those gorgeous peach edges...

My man will have a boutonniere made with the peach calla lilies, and the groomsmen will have yellow roses. We’ll also give bouts to the dads and my grandfather, and some sort of corsage to our moms. Yay!

For the centerpieces, I told Richard I want them to be low. While tall centerpieces are great, I feel like they’d be too dramatic for our daytime affair. I want the flowers to match the cranberry lemonade color scheme of my bouquet, but I showed him a bunch of inspiration photos, including these:

Images from here.

What I particularly love about these two arrangements is that they have a wild look about them, like they’d been recently plucked out of a garden and put together, even though they were probably arranged carefully and purposefully. I want the same look for our centerpieces. This is a daytime wedding, so even though we’ll be indoors, the light shining through the skylights will almost make it seem like we’re outside. So, our centerpieces will likely have the yellow and berry-colored roses, plus some berries thrown in somehow (I'd seen a photo on the Knot that had berries in the vase itself.) Also, there will be some hydrangeas! (Remember when I said how much I loved them but didn’t think they came in fall colors? Well there’s a tan-ish color hydrangea that will make a good filler. Hooray!)

One nice thing about having our ceremony at the venue is that included in their flat ceremony fee are flowers for the ceremony and cocktail hour. The ceremony flowers will be all white, and there will be simple bud vases with red roses on the cocktail hour tables. Richard also told us that the flowers on our sweetheart table, cake, place card table and even an extra bouquet for throwing (if I end up doing that) would be included for no extra cost if we use him as our florist. Sweet!

Another cool element of working with Richard is that we'd get to pick out our own flowers! Meaning, we'll go with Richard to a flower wholesale place near the venue to pick out the exact flowers we want included in the bouquets and centerpieces. (I'm saying "we," but let's be serious--Steve wants no part in this process.) So, I'll be able to make sure the flowers are the exact shade of berry-red and yellow I want. I don’t think this is something all brides get to do with their florists, so I thought that was pretty cool.

Overall, I was really pleased with Richard. I love how every idea I presented, he said he would find a way to make it work. That’s the kind of vendor you want to have! Of course, if we choose him, we'll see a mock-up of all of the flowers before wedding day.

I was also happy that the cost wasn’t extraordinarily high. I was surprised by how much we'd be getting for such a reasonable price. I think we’ll speak to at least one other florist just to compare, but as of right now, I’d be excited to work with Richard!