Wedding Wednesday: Flowers

Warning - super long post ahead with tons of pictures!

When we started planning the wedding, I really didn't have a clear idea of the flowers. I just knew I wanted something bright, fun and happy. I used a florist that I work with a lot at work and she is INCREDIBLE. I went to meet with her 1 time and she totally ran with my color scheme and had so many great ideas. September is actually a really hard month for flowers - there's really not too much in season during that time. I really wanted to use my 2 favorite flowers, tulips and peonies, but obviously that wasn't going to happen as they are spring flowers. But my florist came to the rescue and suggested dahlias (which look a lot like peonies as they are both really fluffy and full). We also used a lot of hydrangea because I liked how lush it was, as well as these amazing HUGE garden roses that she was able to find.

I seriously ADORED all the flowers. As evidenced by my reaction when I walked out of the brides room at my venue right after the flowers had been delivered:
Yeah, I was just a little bit excited.

I loved my bouquet, probably the most out of all the flowers. She did a wonderful job on it and it was exactly what I pictured in my head. It was yellow, green and white and I love how it popped out against my white dress in all the picutres. The bouquet was wrapped with yellow grosgrain ribbon and then we used a bit of chantilly lace from my mom's wedding dress wrapped on top of the yellow ribbon.

For Jake's boutonnière, I had found a picture of a really cool bout using a fish hook, and then making the flowers around it resemble a fishing lure. I showed it to my florist and she was really excited to try and re-create it. She seriously did an amazing job - it looked exactly like the picture and J LOVED it. All the guests commented on how unique it was. Here's when I first saw the bout:
And here it is on Jake. She used 3 crespedia (billy balls) and them some greenery around it. She also wrapped twine around the top of the hook too, which I thought was a great touch.

The bridesmaids bouquet were all green and white. They were very similar to my bouquet, only we didn't put any yellow in them, since I wanted them to stand out against the yellow bridesmaids dresses. They were tied with navy grosgrain ribbon.

We kept the ceremony flowers pretty simple, as I wanted the view of the river to be the main focal point. We did do some really fun carnation and daisy pomanders going down the aisle. They were really whimsical and I loved how bright they were.

We held our cocktail hour in the large garden right behind the ceremony site. We also wanted to keep this pretty simple, as it took place in a garden and I didn't want it to be overkill on the flowers. We used silver mint julep cups with small arrangements on the cocktail tables:
The wreaths!! I have to give credit to my mom, who suggested we add floral wreaths all around the venue. It was seriously one of my favorite elements to the wedding! The florist made 10 small wreaths that we hung from railings around the cocktail hour deck, as well as a HUGE wreath that she wired to the large oak tree which was the centerpiece of our cocktail hour, as the bar was set under that tree. This was a detail we added in at the last minute (seriously like the week of the wedding!) but I love the wreaths! The smaller wreaths:
The big wreath behind the bar:
As far as the centerpieces for the tables under the tent, again, I left it up to our florist and she did an awesome job. All the centerpieces were the same, and I liked the uniform look it gave the tent to have every table similar. She used low cylinder vases which she filled with cut lemons and then just did low, full, soft arrangements in the same color scheme and flowers as the bouquets. I loved how they popped off of our navy linens.

So those are the floral elements from our wedding. If you made it to the end of this super long post, congrats!