Playing Florist

Two days before the wedding, and just a few short hours before my bachelorette party, Mama Goodlaff, Sister Goodlaff, BM TCollins, The Enforcer, Mama Goodlaff's Boss' wife, Cee, and I got to play florist.  The Goodlaffs spent months and months hunting and sussing out vases, and finally, here was their moment in the sun!  Mama Goodlaff and I transported our vases over to the Grass Valley Florist, where Ingrid was waiting for us, ready to teach us her wise ways of floral arrangement.

We were working with simple, fun flowers: white hydrangeas, green spider mums, a few orange gerbera daisies. To our flora, we added fruit: lemons! We learned how to lay a base for the flowers, how to arrange, and what made the arrangements look the best, then off we went!

Let the arranging begin:

Sister Goodlaff is surprised, while TCollins hides...

Cee and The Enforcer chop up some greenery for our floral art pieces...

Mama Goodlaff and The Enforcer, working with some razor-sharp Bear Grass.  We bent it into little heart shapes, and added a few wispy pieces to each arrangement for texture.

Cee is smiling, because we have flowers in vases and lemons on skewers! 

TCollins and I, apparently having a laugh...

Almost there...just a few more lemons in the arrangements and we would be done!

Finally, we put all of our hard work to rest in the gigantic walk-in cooler where it stayed until the morning of the wedding!

The arranging process was relatively quick. I don't think that we were there in the basement of Ingrid's shop for much longer than an hour, if that. With so many hands, the work was easy and what's more, it was fun!

Ultimately, I consider this to be a semi-DIY project.  Yes, we did the arrangements ourselves (hello price break!), but we also had a lot of instruction and guidance.  Also, I didn't go and buy the flowers--luckily Ingrid and her staff at the Grass Valley Florist did that for us.  And while arranging the centerpieces was relatively easy, I know there was no way I would have wanted to do any of it (especially the the boutonnieres and the bouquets) on my own. 

Have you ever considered DIY-ing your flowers?