Don't Tell the Guests - Flowers

How are gorgeous are these? LOVE the colours!

I love everything about flowers; the aromic smells, the beautiful patterns in the leaves, the soft feeling of the delicate petals, and the amazing rush of excitement that you get when sending or receiving them to or from someone special to you.

So when it came to choosing the wedding flowers, it should've been a no brainer; my favourite oriental lillies, freshly cut, arranged and tied together with a beautiful ribbon by a wonderful florist.

But unfortunately my experience wasn't quite like that. It wasn't that the florists weren't helpful and lovely, nor that I doubted my flowers of choice, it was just the cost that shocked us. A couple of quotes later soon taught us that flowers were a whole lot more expensive then you'd think!!!

Just stunning!!!

As I learnt more about the whole arranging technique, I came to appreciate just what goes into making a bouquet look beautiful, including having to wire the stems to stop them from wilting and breaking easily. So we could definitely see where the money went in terms of the time that it took the florist to make our flowers perfect.

Mick and I just couldn't justify paying an arm and a leg for something that was going to wilt, lose it's leaves and petals and eventually die (sounds morbid, but hey, when you're planning a wedding you soon learn to prioritise spending money on things you really care about it, and cutting costs on things you don't!)

And that's when we started to think about different alternatives.

Love love love these! Would you believe that they are fake?

I have to laugh when writing this because at one point, my partner had even googled how to arrange a wedding bouquet, and had sourced the different flowers that I wanted, explaining to me that it'd be easy to grow them and tie them together ourselves!!!

Many different ideas were going through my brain; should the girls just hold parasols or umbrellas instead or should I order live, love, laugh, dream, cherish, honesty, family, respect, believe and relax painted wooden signs for the girls to carry down the aisle?

Decisions, decisions.

We are looking at oriental lilies, babies breath, and a couple extra little secrets!!!

In the end, one of my lovely bridesmaids asked me if I had thought about fake flowers. My aunty, who runs a bridal business, had mentioned them, but I hadn't really given it a second thought.

Being open to suggestions, I thought I'd give it a go.

It turned out that the lady was so lovely. My bridesmaid and I were welcomed into her home, and spend a good hour or more, flicking through her photo albums, feeling the different types of 'real to touch' flowers on offer, gawking at flower displays that she had, and then selecting the flowers that I wanted.

Luckily for me, the florist had the fake flowers that I wanted on hand, and was amount to mould, bend, and design the flowers into an arrangement that tickled my fancy!!!

Her creativity opened my mind to the idea of having different textures within my bouquet, including beads and pearls; something my limited imaginative brain wouldn't have thought of.

Just so simple yet elegant!

By the end of it, I was sitting on her carpet rug, owwwing and adding over just how clever she was, and the never ending possibilities for my flowers.

My bridesmaid even got to practice a mock walking down the aisle, holding the arrangement in her hands!!!

It was loads of fun.

In the end, I scored 8 bouquets for the bridesmaids, a giant one for me, 5 button holes for the groomsmen, a slightly different button hole for my sexy groom, and 6 delicate button holes that differentiate from the bridal parties for our parents all for $612!!!!

One of the best parts? We'll get to keep the flowers forever, we don't have to worry about the flowers wilting, dying and looking dehydrated in the photos, we can use the flowers at the reception on the bridal, cake and present table, and I get to see the flowers in advance, and don't have to worry about sending someone to drive around like a mad person on the morikng of the wedding to deliver them safely.

I'd highly recommend Karen's business, and fake flowers to anyone.

Of course, everyone is different, and some people simply want real ones, but this is just another option to keep in mind!

Check out all of the different textures that you can have in your bouquet!

I can't wait to see them all carefully arranged and ready to walk down the aisle with!!!

What flowers did you use for your special day?

Fake or real?

Check out Artificial Wedding Bouquets facebook page! All photos used in this blog post are carefully crafted by this amazing lady!!!

The oriental lillies and little white babies breath is what we're going with (doesn't look like this at all, but the flowers are the same apart from the roses!!!) Via

Look after yourself and those around you,

Kirsty xxx