Flowers

I'm not sure how it started but somehow weddings just have to have flowers and from what I've heard from some sources, flowers usually makes up a large chunk of your overall budget. Don't get me wrong, I wanted my wedding to look pretty but there was no way I was spending £1000 or more on flowers.

Not only that but my colour scheme was blue and there aren't many  blue flowers to choose from. In fact, it turns out that in early May the only blue flowers (worth mentioning) in season are hydrangeas. I had issues with that because I wanted cornflowers. I also wanted (white) tulips but was told they weren't in season either. Maybe it was the especially long and cold winter we had but there were definitely tulips for sale the day before my wedding!

I got around the cornflower issue by buying some artificial cornflowers from Hobbycraft. I wasn't too keen on the idea of using artificial flowers for the whole wedding though so I started looking into florists. A quick google search brought me to the conclusion that wedding florists all charge pretty much the same. You can't do a true price comparison without having a consultation with each because the prices they quote on their websites are a guide only. The final cost depends on the types of flowers you want and the complexity and sizes of the arrangements.

As I had minimum time in the UK in which to have consultations I decided to just choose a florist recommended by the venue and go with it. So I went down to Bristol to meet this florist and have a chat about what I wanted. Since the only aspects I had in mind were the colours, this turned out to be a rather awkward conversation. I think I was expecting far more from her in the way of suggestions and ideas, rather than me reel off a list of what I wanted and for her to put together some numbers. We got along better once I had a look at her portfolio and suggested some styles I liked. I chose a small square vase arrangement for the windowsills which she announced at the end was quite expensive as it took a lot of flowers to fill. Why she couldn't have told me at the time so I could possibly have chosen an almost-exactly-the-same-but-cheaper (same size but round perhaps) style I don't know!

Anyway the result was a quotation for 4 bridesmaids bouquets, 1 brides' bouquet, 6 table decorations and a floor-standing pedestal arrangement for £600. It was a reasonable price and my mum thought I should go with it but my fiance thought it was too much to spend on flowers. I would have ignored him had it not been for the nagging control freak inside me suggesting that I could use artificial flowers for a lot cheaper and, most importantly, I could make the arrangements myself. Not only that but I have terrible hayfever and felt that artificial flowers were preferable to sneezing all day...

...So I provided Hobbycraft with a lot more business. Not just Hobbycraft either, I also bought flowers from Dunelm Mill, vases and glass nuggets from Tesco Extra and tin buckets from Homebase.

My venue was a country watermill so I wanted the flowers to be simple and reminiscent of an English country garden

I used 2 shades of cornflowers along with a single white hydrangea flower in the tin buckets to put on each windowsill. I also added a single white butterfly, made from feathers, to each.

The cornflowers were 99p for a stem with 5 flower heads on (3 stems in each bucket) and the hydrangea was £3 per flower, both from Hobbycraft. Buckets were 99p each and the butterflies were around £4 for a pack of about 12.

I wanted the table centres to be a little more elegant but still very simple. I was also very careful about which artificial flowers to use as some look much more realistic than others.

The table centres consisted of fairly large goldfish bowl vases with a handful of colourless, shimmery glass nuggets and a single artificial dahlia head in the bottom. I also used 3 strands of artificial grass around the edges of the bowl.

The bowls were £8.50 and nuggets around £3 a pack, only half a pack is in each bowl. Dahlias were £1.50 each from Dunelm Mill.

I wanted the bridesmaids' bouquets to fit in with the simple, country theme and, although gerbera don't really, these spider gerbera had just enough of a tousled look to be similar to cornflowers. Anyway I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them in Dunelm Mill, its the black centres that does it for me!

Each bouquet is made with 5 gerbera held together with florist's tape and then wrapped with a piece of cream ribbon, held on with 3 pins.

I did quite a bit of research into buying premade, artificial bouquets and discovered that the cost is the same as for fresh flowers. I wouldn't have minded if those companies had access to amazing quality, real-looking flowers but it turned out the flowers were no better than the ones I bought from Hobbycraft and Dunelm Mill.

Each gerbera cost me just £2, making each bouquet just over £10, a saving of £30 on the cheapest price I saw for real or artificial bouquets.

I also used some of my cornflowers with a single artificial leaf to make buttonholes for the groom, best man, ushers and dads. I simply tied the 2 together using florist's tape. One cornflower also made it onto a hairclip for one bridesmaid's hair.

My bouquet contained the only real flowers on display at the wedding. I was conscious that it would be in a lot of photos and possibly very close-up photos so I felt I should use real flowers. I would have done the same for the bridesmaids had I not seen those gerberas and fallen in love with them!

The day before the wedding I set off to Anemone a large florist in Bath to buy the flowers for my bouquet. However, I had got up very early and knew it wouldn't be open yet so I stopped off in Homebase on the way to buy a bucket to fill with water to keep the flowers fresh. In homebase I passed some beautiful blue hydrangeas and, knowing how hard blue flowers were to find, I bought the (fully rooted and growing) potted plant. I then stopped in Sainsbury's and spotted some bunches of  white roses for £4 so I bought them and headed back without every making it to Anemone. (Though Anemone did later provide us with some lovely bouquets to give as thanks to people)

I had a minor crisis with my bouquet because the hydrangea head I cut off to make the bouquet the day before the wedding had died by the morning of the wedding. However I just chopped another one off the plant and remade the bouquet on the morning, with some extra roses for added support.

The great thing about using artificial flowers for all these (apart from the fact I had full control over what they looked like) (and the fact that we saved several hundred pounds) was that we were able to give them away to our guests at the end of the night as keepsakes.