First, a little thing I don't like: What I Like Wednesday is quickly becoming What I Like Thursday due to my inability to get a post to publish when I schedule it. So...either no more writing ahead of time or I need to change the name of this series! As always, I'm open to input.
Now on to the meat and potatoes (um...petals and stems?) of this one! I'm doubling up on this post, because I actually got my flowers for the wedding from two different sources and I don't want to leave anyone (who earned a place here!) out, but I also don't want to have the wedding posts drag on forever after the wedding! (which is this Saturday! Eeek!) I figured I didn't want to get too far ahead with wedding stuff, because you never know how things are going to go until you've actually received the product or experienced the service, but these two are done or nearly done and so great I just can't not brag on them!
I contacted Janice at Heirlooms and Blossoms about doing my flowers, because I wanted a mix of fresh and silk flowers and she's the only person I know of that does both. I always planned on having all fresh flowers at my wedding, but when Man and I sat down to talk about it, we decided that between the girls being rough on things (fresh flowers probably not looking very nice by the time they finally walked down the aisle) and the fact that the girls would want to keep their flowers (we figured it would be an issue if our youngest got to keep her flower girl basket but the older two didn't have anything to keep) that we should really do silk for them. Then we decided if the younger girls had silk, the older girls should too. And it snowballed from there. Wouldn't have dreamed it, but we decided to go with all silk. I met with Janice a total of three times (once to describe what I wanted, once to see what she was working on and give her the go ahead to finish them and once to do a final review and pick up the finished product) and each time I got more excited about our decision. Janice did an amazing job and just rolled with every change I made. And I made a lot! At our first meeting I said I still wanted fresh flowers for my bouquet but silk for everyone else. At our second meeting I both added and deleted people on the list who needed flowers, changed my flowers to silk and asked her to add on flower girl baskets and decorations for the arch under which we will be married. I don't think I made any changes at the third meeting (thankfully!) but I did go over everything with a fine toothed comb. And it's perfect! The flowers are amazing and somehow all look real, everything is beautiful and Janice was such a sweetheart. The whole experience was really great.
The only problem with doing silk flowers is that we needed fresh flower petals for our flower girls to scatter (it's a requirement of the hall, since it's an outside wedding and they don't want to have to chase down a million silk flower petals! I totally get their logic on that one!). This wouldn't be a problem, except generally when you do flower petals you use roses since they have nice, big petals and dark purple roses aren't exactly easy to come by. I know that Kroger has the largest florist in the nation, so they were the first place I tried and they were so super helpful it was ridiculous. I called the Harrison location, since they're the biggest one close to us and not only were they super nice, they really went the extra mile. When they couldn't get what I wanted from their normal distributor they called around to other places and not only got me the flowers I wanted but got them at a discount! One dozen roses for $9.99? Yes, please! Today they called to confirm my order and my pickup time and as we were about to get off the phone, the lady said, "While I have you, would you like us to pull the petals off for you or did you want them on the stem?" to which I replied, "You mean I can not only get what I want at a great price but you'll save me the work?" She laughed and said, "Sure, you've got enough to do!" I love it! I know a lot of people think of Kroger as a big box store and don't expect to get very good service, but they prove that wrong time and time again, and they are quickly making me a customer for life!
Awesome experiences, awesome stuff, it's going to be an awesome day! I can't wait for Saturday!
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