Whitney's Cheap Artsy Wedding, Parte Tres: Las Flores!

This will probably be my last wedding crafts post for a while...and it's about flowers!  Who doesn't like flowers?  Grumpy cretins, that's who.  And besides, when you get married in the spring like we did, you're pretty much required to have flowers at your wedding.  It's the law.

Although I think nature supplies flowers enough of her own sometimes, no?

Fresh flowers are awesome, of course.  But when you have lots of guests who are allergic, or very scent-sensitive, or if you're just cheap (*raises hand* I am!), fresh is not always the way to go.  So you want silk flowers!  And for that, the goddess created Michael's.

(Yes, of course Michael's was created by a goddess, not a god, what did you think?  "Michael" is just a cover.  There is no "Michael.")

I already knew I wanted green to be one of my "wedding colors," if I had to choose.  And I've always loved yellow with green - see the picture of the palo verde above as one of the most compelling arguments for that color combination.  So in terms of flowers, I was looking for green, some yellow, and a few white as filler.  I tried to find larger greenish flowers to be the centerpieces of the bouquets, and smaller yellow ones - I liked these ones that were more delicate and could stick out and wave around, like little floral confetti, which I thought would be a pretty effect.

Plus some plastic ferns...although one of these had a run-in with my hot glue gun later, so just be careful while you're glue-gunning, as a general rule.

With flowers, plus some green floral wire, and white wired ribbon, I spent about $22 - not bad, huh?  There are good tutorials for how to make a silk flower bouquet, so I won't bore you with that, but weren't the results pretty?

I also made floral hair ornaments for myself and my maid of honor (I only had one attendant, as did my husband...we only had 12 other guests, and if there were more wedding party than guests it would just look funky).

I cut out some green felt (I used green felt for my ring box/book too...green felt is very useful, not just for pool table covering!) and sewed it onto a metal barrette back, although you could also glue it, since it just has to last for one day.  I stripped some flowers off their stems, hot-glued them on in a pleasing arrangement, carefully glued on some fern fronds and other leaves, and there you have it!  Beautiful spring accessory, little effort.

For our centerpieces, we gathered up some beer bottles from brands we like, and my maid of honor and I arranged the leftover silk flowers in those. (I bought some extra silk flowers on clearance for $3, just to fill them out more - Michael's always has small floral sprigs for a dollar.) (I swear, Michael's is not paying me for this.  Maybe they should.) Why beer bottles?  Well, they have cool labels, and my husband and I love beer.  It's really not that complicated.

There was no actual beer at the reception...however, I believe this picture is from when we were enjoying our ice cream cake, which is arguably even better than beer.

And that's it!  That's how you have photogenic, compliment-getting flowers at your wedding, for less than $30!  Granted, if you need to make multiple bridesmaid bouquets, or boutonnieres (this just sounded way too complicated and way too French for me to master), or if you want large centerpieces, of course the cost will go up.  And I can't blame you if you NEED to have fresh flowers, either (I almost did that too...I thought about having herbs in my bouquet, but I worried so much about them wilting, I didn't go for it).  But this worked for us.

The other main thing was, I could keep these afterwards, so now my dining room table has this new springy centerpiece!

I'm thinking of what to do with the rest of the flowers...maybe get some wooden initials from (you guessed it) Michael's, and sort of collage the flowers on, like this?  Or do the same with a mirror?  A picture frame, and then put one of our wedding photos in it?  Hmm...ideas...