I DREAM OF FLOWERS, PART 1

I love flowers. I love the way they look, the way they smell and the emotions they can evoke. I like them on trees, in bushes, in vases and even as decoration on my sushi platter. Mr. Latte took note of this love early on and won many points by sending me lots of flowers during our dating relationship. My co-workers still joke that he must have stock in proflowers.com.

Not surprisingly, I was super excited to start thinking and planning out the flowers for the wedding. I opened up my "wedding ideas" folder (both on my computer and in my wedding binder) and uncovered files upon files (and magazine cutouts upon cutouts) of bouquet and centerpiece ideas. Pretty overwhelming...except that they were all pictures of pretty much the same flowers. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here's the inspiration board I created for our wedding party newsletter:

(source for all pictures here)

Note that this is an inspiration board for the wedding...not just for flowers. But see how 80% of the pictures are of flowers??? And not just any flower. Peonies, ranunculus and garden roses galore! Sure, there's a tulip, some puny branches and a random rose thrown in here and there, but you get the picture. This is a pretty good representation of the pictures I had been collecting for the past year...or 2. ;)

Our venue requires that we use a floral vendor from their list of preferred vendors. I am OK with this and figure that these designers will not only know the space very well, but they'll also be familiar with the staff. And more importantly, they'll know how to get there so I won't have to worry about my flowers being late or lost on the wedding day. Again, I was excited to get started so I contacted two on the list and set up meetings with them. In the meantime, I printed out some of my favorite floral inspiration pictures and scoured the web and lots of wedding magazines for more. I also made a list of all the flower bouquets, arrangements, corsages and boutonnieres we would need, and came up with an estimated budget for everything.

Just because they're pretty, here are some of the pictures I brought with me that day:

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Lots of pink, lots of petals and lots of fluffiness. I thought the meetings with our potential floral designers would be easy peasy. In my dreamworld, the meetings went something like this: I would proudly show the florist my picture collage and she (yes, in my dream the florist was a she) would smile, nod and write "peonies, ranunculus and garden roses." I would whip out my organized list of all the flowers we would need and she would pat me on the back and award me a gold star for being the most prepared bride ever. I would tell her my budget and within our hour meeting, the contract would be signed and I would be out the door dreaming of my pretty pink and white bouquets. Uh...not so much. Not even close.

Unfortunately, the meetings didn't go as planned, and the road to the Latte wedding flowers was longer and more tumultuous than I had dreamed up.

Stay tuned to find out why...

Did you dream of (very specific) flowers for your wedding day?