Hello, lovelies! I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. I wanted to start off the wedding recaps with one of my favorite parts of my day… the flowers. I’ll confess, I wasn’t originally a “flower girl.” When I thought of wedding flowers a few years ago, I imagined giant balls of hydrangea centerpieces stuffed onto ornate tables, and I didn’t want that for my wedding.
Fast forward to a few months ago (did I ever mention that I planned the wedding in 6 months? Crazy!) and I was looking for a way to express both my love of color and the exuberance of our invitations without making our industrial-chic venue look like a rainbow vomited all over the place. What to use but flowers? As I started actually researching types of flowers (complete with a Pinterest board) I found that I could really stretch my creativity through blooms.
I knew that I wasn’t going to have the time to DIY the flowers, since I had pretty much DIY-ed everything else in our wedding, so I scoured Texas for the best, most original floral girl I could find. I found everything I wanted and more in Lindy Fowler of Lindy Floral, who was based in Austin but who would serendipitously be in Dallas the weekend of our wedding, thus foregoing any sort of usual travel fees.
I originally wanted to do a twig-encrusted altar configuration that you see so often for outdoor weddings, but it was expensive and I realized that I didn’t want much to take away from our lakeside view, anyway. I had the idea to take two cheap-o shelving units from Ikea and line them with glitter paper, and then Lindy filled the shelves with flowers. Once Lindy was done with her initial setup, the moms and grandmothers decided that the altar shelves needed some more sprucing up (I disagree, but whatever… I was happily taking first look portraits while this was going on) and they added some flowering branches that they stole from a tree outside the venue. Every time I look at pictures of the altar I crack up a bit. Later, we moved the altar into the reception area so people could enjoy everything up close, which was another plus side to having such a portable setup.
I provided Lindy with a pretty exhaustive list of my favorite types of flowers, but I ultimately stepped back and let her do her thing. Some of the best advice I ever got for wedding planning was to figure out the most important element(s) of the wedding to you and then to really hire people you trust to see your creative vision brought to life. I was crazy about our photography (more on Ryan later!) and flowers, so I left everything in Lindy’s capable hands.
In keeping with the color palette, I chose to put our centerpieces in both graphic black and white wooden boxes and silver mercury glass vessels. I had the idea to amp up the traditional wooden box by painting it with chalkboard paint and adding a love quote on the side. I had originally planned on writing the quotes out myself the day of, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen (plus I am a font obsessed girl and my handwriting wouldn’t have been near as nice) so I used my trusty Silhouette Cameo machine to cut out messages on white vinyl and I stuck them on the boxes. If you’d like a DIY tutorial, perhaps I can create one?
At any rate, I was absolutely blown away with the flowers. Lindy used some awesome specimens like King Protea (everyone was obsessed with the big one in my bouquet!) and beautiful garden roses, craspedia, red roses, and more to bring my colors to life. They really were some of the most unique arrangements I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something considering I’ve been reading most of the big wedding blogs since they started! I wanted to think outside the box and I think Lindy and I accomplished that. The pop of the reds and blushes against the golden table linens were really something to see!
I hope you enjoyed a bit of insight into my floral process. I’ll be continuing with wedding recaps for the next few days, so stop by again for some more inspiration if you’d like! (All photos by Ryan Ray)
filed under: our day, wedding
