Can you get dogwoods in Florida? etc...
Posted
Friday, June 13, 2008 2:10 AM
I'm visiting my mom this weekend, and my aunt's here again, so we had some more fun looking at wedding stuff. Somehow the focus turned to flowers and tuxes(probably because we watched Shall We Dance?).
My original plan was/still is to meet with a few florists to get pricing, and then proceed with flower "wants" once we choose someone. I personally don't want tons of blooms everywhere: just the guys' bouts, my bouquet, mothers' corsages, and the bridesmaids' flowers.
I want to start by seeing which flowers are in season in Florida in September..and work from there. I would love to include sweet William, maybe as a filler, in my bouquet, 'cause..well, I'm sappy. It was my only "requirement" in the beginning, and I was even willing to go all fake to have some of those. I thought the correlation would be cute, even if the florist and I were the only ones who knew 
. Then I started browsing wildflowers online--since that's probably where I'd start for Florida blooms--and somehow I got to wikipedia, typed in Virginia, and came up with dogwood blossoms.
Official flower of the state where Will is actually from. Then the wheels started turning. They revved up a little when Mom and Aunt Carole started looking at some of the saved blooms in my Notebook. I started thinking sentimentally..and looking for purple or blue flowers at the same time.
Some ideas:
5. all native Florida flowers (weird? state flower = orange blossom)
4. a "controlled" but wild bouquet (perhaps including sweet peas; my late grandpa's nickname for me was 'Sweet Pea')
3. something with alstroemeria in white, stephanotis (as a filler), white chrysanthemums, or lisanthus (lavender or purple)
2. a small bouquet (of appropriate blooms, tied with a ribbon)
and
1. sweet William blended with dogwood blossoms and an appropriate filler
***I'd really have to work to keep that one a secret, if I could even afford to pull it off. Will would have to know about it eventually, since we'd be figuring out flower pricing together.
Part of me still wants to forgo the traditional bouquet toss and hand out a flower from my bouquet to each of the women in our immediate families. I'd need a large bouquet for that. That means more $, if I choose real flowers. Another alternative I like, is handing my bouquet off to the youngest girl at the wedding--my cousin Laura. That way even a small bouquet would be acceptable. I'm not thinking of preserving my flowers at this point.
According to most online sites I saw, nearly everything's in season in September, except for peonies. So maybe some of my ideas are doable. The only iffy bit I see, is running the risk of too much personalization. I probably shouldn't worry about that, since we won't reveal the meaning behind everything..but it's still a sticky point. I want mostly everything to go well(I know everything can't be perfect)..but I don't want our guests and families to think we're overloading on the sentiment.
Guess I should jot this down to talk about it with Will later...he's surprised me lately with some of his opinions, so he might have some ideas about flowers too.