What We Did: Bouquets

For our flowers we wanted in-season, local blooms at a reasonable price. We'd waited until the week before the wedding before researching badge options for the San FranciscoWholesale Flower Mart. When we called we found out that you can apply online but processing takes two weeks and you can only pick up your badge on specific days at specific times.

What did this mean for us? We could still go to the Flower Mart but only during hours when they're open to the public. Not all vendors sell to the public and not all are open on Saturday. For hydrangeas and baby's breath this wouldn't be a problem. For more exotic and more specific blooms this might be a problem.

We took a first pass through the mart and then picked through the buckets of hydrangeas for the freshest blooms. There were a lot that were already browning but we were able to find enough fresh antique blooms. We got the hydrangeas from two vendors, one of which was Piazza International. The total cost of the flowers for our cake and my bouquet came to $33.14.

Earlier in the week we'd decided to replace regular baby's breath with a purple "baby's breath" or statice. After looking at the available flowers we picked the purple "baby's breath" and paired it with dark pink wax flower and silvery leaves. The flowers for the bridesmaids' bouquets and the boys' boutonnières came from Neve Roses and cost $39.96.

We'd budgeted $100 for florals and this was one DIY area where we came in under budget at $72.10.

After we picked up our flowers we were off to our Diva of Honor's house to assemble the bouquets. It was such a nice sunny day that she brought her dining room table out into her backyard so that we could enjoy the day while we worked.

I'd originally thought we'd secure blooms with rubberbands. Instead we used zip ties.

After Ames assembled the bridesmaids' bouquets she tied the ribbons for my bouquet and the toss bouquet.

Once the bouquets were finished, we transferred them to our refrigerator.

In case you missed it, all of our bouquets - with the exception of the toss bouquet - had three antique keys on them.