the flowers

The flowers were so much fun! Our house was like one huge bower. We had flowers coming out of our ears. My mom and my aunt did the flowers themselves, and it all turned out so beautifully. Since we were having a pretty informal wedding at our house, I wanted a cottage-y feeling, and we used lots of hydrangea, peonies, viburnum, and roses.

My mom ordered the flowers from a wholesaler and my aunt did all the arrangements, four hydrangea wreaths, my bouquet, six attendant bouquets (I didn't technically have attendants, but I wanted my sister, two best friends, the mamas, and the grandmama to have a small bouquet), and six boutonnieres. In retrospect, it's hard to see how she did it all. Who needs a team of florists when you have one superhuman and supertalented aunt?

Here's Aunt Ann working on my bouquet, which had pale blue hydrangeas, white lisianthus, grape hyacinths, viburnum, freesia, and Sweet Juliet roses. Sweet Juliet is a David Austin rose that we first encountered on a trip to England. It has a soft, sweet, almost lemony scent and we all have such good memories of discovering it in some picturesque English garden (though now I can't remember where we were...Sudeley Castle maybe?)

It's funny, I don't have that many pictures of me holding the bouquet, because pretty quickly after the ceremony I traded in the bouquet for a glass of champagne. Ann also put together the flowers for my hair, it's a lisianthus and (I think) some freesia.

The mamas had violet sweet peas, roses, queen anne's lace, and viburnum.

Matt's boutonniere had a green button mum, a tiny grape hyacinth, a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace, and those berries that I can't remember the name of. We used a hosta leaf out of the backyard.

I know some people don't care for mophead hydrangeas, but they just speak of summer to me. We had a huge hydrangea in the front yard of the house I grew up in, and I've always loved them. This arrangement also had the Juliet roses and Bells of Ireland, which is such a cool flower.

We had four hydrangea wreaths, which we put on the front and back doors of the house and the two fence gates. After the wedding, we just chucked them up in the attic and they dried amazingly well. I'm going to pull them down again and make a dried wreath for my front door this fall. We also hung up my bouquet (upside down in the attic) and it dried very well too. Retained much of its color and shape. I don't know what to do with it now, though. Mama laughingly suggested we display it under a bell jar in our living room, like Miss Havisham.

We also worked very hard to get the garden looking nice. It was wonderful to be able to rationalize some plant purchases, since we were having the wedding at the house. The garden is definitely a work in progress, and I am really enjoying it. This fall I'll be planting some Coral Charm peonies, which are the ones that are so spectacular in the pictures at the top of this post.

It really was a bower. This is my bedroom the day before the wedding, and this is only a portion of the flowers we had to work with. It was a lot of work, but we had a ton of fun.