Traditions and special moments: The flowers

I am a big fan of traditions... every Easter I must either hold or participate in an egg hunt, eat a cadbury egg and bite the heads off of some peeps; every New Year's Eve I stay the night at my Grandpa's house where we always eat out, watch the ball drop (my grandpa calls the Time Square ball the "Big Apple" instead of calling New York the Big apple, which I find extremely cute) and I ALWAYS draw my grandpa a poster with the year in numbers on it decorated in a fun manner.


So, why would my wedding be any different? I tried to incorporate several neat traditions and special details into my big day. I am going to talk a little about each in the next several posts, this one is about my flowers.

First off I made all my bouquets. I am not a huge flower person and didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars on flowers that were going to die. Especially, since none of my decoration ideas (centerpieces) were using particular flowers (I used some live flowers at the ceremony site but they were the cheap misc. bouquets from Wal-mart that cost 5 dollars). Instead I went to Hobby Lobby (one of my favorite places EVA) and picked out some of the real nice silk flowers from their HUGE selection. I created my bouquet, a small bouquet for me to toss, my 4 bridesmaids bouquets and a few bouquets to use next to my cake and gifts for under one hundred dollars. I had SO much fun doing this! I loved picking out the flowers, arranging them and wrapping the stems with floral tape and them ribbon. Here is a picture of them:


Another neat thing about my bouquet is that instead of just wrapping the handle in ribbon I first took a piece of my dad's mom's (Grandma Nelson) veil and wrapped it around the stems.

Here is a pic of my Grandma Nelson on her wedding day:


After wrapping her veil around the bouquet handle I then took the ribbon sash from my mother's dress and wrapped that around the handle. Here is a picture of my mother on her wedding day:


Then as one final touch I borrowed a brooch from my cousin that belonged to my other grandmother (Grandma Hawks). This was my mom's mom and she actually passed away in January 1986 and I was born in December 1986. Here is a picture of Grandma Hawks:


I used her brooch on the top of my bouquet's handle and then finished off the handle by securing the ribbon with pearl topped pins. Here are two photos of my bouquet's handle:



I really liked what I ended up doing with my bouquets... not only because I got to have hands-on control of how they came out but I was pleased with the overall look and most importantly the special details that went into them. By adding my Grandma Nelson's veil, my mother's dress sash and my Grandma Hawk's brooch I was able to carry with me a little part of each of them on my big day. :)

The only thing that could have made it a little cooler was if the brooch from my Grandma Hawks had been one she wore on her wedding day. However her and my grandpa got married a long time ago and actually just had the wedding at the minister's house. I think they only had about 5 or 6 people there too! It was a different time and its crazy to see how weddings have progressed since then. But all in all it was still a blessing to carry with me something from my Grandma Nelson's wedding day, my mother's wedding day and a cherished brooch from my other grandmother.