We have a florist!

We have a florist!  I was really dreading hiring a florist, because floral designer contracts are insanely complicated, and in the end the florist will end up using whatever she thinks looks best, anyway.  And, you're supposed to hire your florist one year in advance so that you can see what flowers are available around the time of your wedding, but I don't even have my dress yet!  As I've mentioned before, flowers are not one of our top priorities.  I want my and my bridesmaids' bouquets to look nice, and we have a few small ideas involving flowers, but if all else fails I would be equally happy with straight roses.  Luckily, my aunt's sister-in-law is a florist, and I've seen her work at my cousins' weddings, so I get to skip the whole floral quote nightmare (otherwise, I've read that grocers like Whole Foods will order flowers, so I would have probably chosen that option or an online distributor).

For my bouquet, I would like classic white with a lot of different flowers.  I think it would be fun to incorporate different flowers that mean something to me: roses for my late Grandma, carnations for my mom, sweetpeas because that's what Lance calls me sometimes.  I like orchids and calla lilies for texture, freesias because they smell pretty, stephanotis because it's "the wedding flower," and baby's breath because it is snowy looking.  Lance likes hydrangeas, so I'm open to those as well.  I hate peonies, though; they are the brussels sprouts of flowers--round and peely and yuck.  I know it might be too much to incorporate all of those flowers, but I think a few different types of flowers creates interest.

I do like some other types of flowers, like these blue ones that would contrast nicely with a white dress, but I feel like they are riskier.

Those spikey blue ones are cool.

Beautiful, but too much drama for me.

I like the dusty miller at the bottom of this one, but the flowers are a bit too Christmas-y.

For bridesmaids' bouquets, I like either the white (if the dresses are gray or black) or light blue (if the dresses are blue).  I really like the look of lighter flowers on a more saturated dress.

But, if all else fails, there are always roses.  :)

(Not exactly our color scheme, but light blush roses look good against white and blue dresses.)

Finally, we are thinking of using rose pomanders to decorate my and Lance's chairs,

and maybe a floral wreath for the front of our car.

I think that's pretty much it for flowers.  We aren't decorating the church at all, because that would be a waste of time in such a pretty space.  We decided not to do boutineers for the bridal party, because technically you are supposed to choose between a pocket square and a bout (though no one does), and Lance has accidentally smashed almost every bout I've ever given him.  He also mentioned that at most weddings, when the box of bouts is delivered to the guys, they all wander around confused until they find a woman to pin them on.  So, with the exception of the grandfathers (our dads will be in tuxes too), we won't be needing those!