Working Tuesday: Finding Good Silk Flowers

I had a friend who was getting married a couple months ago. She wanted a silk flower for her hair - a particular silk flower - and asked if I could make it for her. I told her I'd look for the flower (she had a picture she wanted to emulate).

I think it's very difficult to find good, milliner quality, silk flowers in the United States. I guess I say that because I've seen much better quality in Europe either in the land of hats, England, or the city of vintage finds, Paris. Occasionally I'll come across something I like in a home decorating shop and occasionally something will turn up in Pier 1, but for the most part I'm just not happy with the quality. I think it's because I love REAL flowers so much. If a silk flower can't capture a little of the movement of it's real sister, I'm not interested.

The other day, however, I was looking through my UK Wedding Flowers magazine and came across an article on silk flowers. Apparently, the economy has sparked a new push to use silks instead of real in weddings. They recommended a couple suppliers that I thought I'd pass on.

The first is a company called Bloom. They have some lovely arrangements, but they also sell bouquets and individual stems. For my purposes, I do actually like some of the arrangements, but I'd hate to cannibalize one to make a flower for one's hair! Debenhems is another of the choices the article mentioned. I had to search "Jane Packer" - the designer - to find the stems, but they did find the flower I was looking for (and wish I had found) back in August.

I'm going to continue my quest to find a U.S. supplier that beats these beauties. If you know of a good source, pass it along!

DIY Monday: DIY Wedding Flowers

I guess as you get older, your friends get older too. Does that happen to you? Apparently with my friends, the older they've gotten, the more responsible they've become for covering their own wedding costs. Because of that, many of my friends have asked for help in creating largely DIY weddings on a budget. What? You too? Well maybe this will help you.

One such friend had a very tight budget for flowers and asked me for help doing flowers for her fall wedding. I wanted them to be fantastic, but I only had about $100 to do her arrangement, bridesmaid's bouquets, numerous corsages and boutonnieres as well as table decorations. I had to get creative.

This was the best kind of wedding in my opinion. A group of friends got together to create a fantastic wedding day at a local coffee shop's basement that doubles as an urban church on Saturday nights. A couple friends "catered" the food and took care of the table coverings. Another friend made the cake. Yet another did the photographs. And I worked on the flowers. It may not have been the Willard, but it was a beautiful, delicious day of celebration.

As for the flowers, I chose mums. It was fall, they were in abundance and the groom was Korean. I was lucky in that my mother had just brought a bunch of bittersweet she'd cut from her yard, so I had that in abundance to fill in the gaps. I knew I wouldn't be able to use hundreds of cut stems - the budget wouldn't allow it. Instead I reserved the cut stems mainly for the bridesmaid's bouquets, using grasses from my yard as greenery. I then used the leftover cut flowers to accent the rest of the arrangements. I found some lovely ribbon in vibrant green at Wal Mart to wrap the bouquets, which doubled as table decorations for the reception.

I used potted mums (on sale if I could find them) to make the corsages and boutonnieres. In order to create a more modern design and to make them "pop" a bit, I wrapped the finished stems in copper wire and left a spring of copper wire at the end. I splurged on larger potted mums for the table decorations, carving out a large pumpkin for the main arrangement and putting the pot directly in the pumpkin to hide the plastic pot. I then stuck some of the stems into the potted mum to break up the color and add texture. We sprinkled bittersweet and gourds along the tables and around the food for color. As for the cake topper, I hollowed out a miniature pumpkin and added stems cut from potted plants.

The bride's bouquet was special. She wanted roses and so we used old-fashioned spray roses that opened as the day progressed. I tied her arrangement with more wire-edged ribbon and her arrangement was used on the cake table as decoration after the ceremony.

The result was lovely. The bride was thrilled. And the best part? We stayed in the $100 budget and had some of the most gorgeous arrangements I've ever had the pleasure of doing. Perfect.

Inspiration Thursday! UK Wedding Flowers Magazine

I'm going to try to share something that inspires me every Thursday. Since there are many things that inspire me, I'm hoping I can keep this up for a while!

This week, I present the British magazine called Wedding Flowers. Available at Barnes and Noble and sometimes at Michael's each issue is a treasure trove of flower arrangements, wedding tips and snippets of real weddings.

Occasionally, I help friends with their wedding flowers and stumbled across this particular magazine when I was looking for a portable resource to show brides which flowers I was describing. Each issue focuses on a season - usually a season ahead - and gives layouts that contain new and interesting arrangements that follow the trends of that season. I've often found that this alerts me to trends a little ahead of the bridal magazines here in the US, which inspires me to make arrangements that are ahead of their time!

Every issue contains an article that highlights a particular aspect of a wedding. For example, one might have a section on wedding cakes. Another might have an article on scents for your special day. Others might talk about trends in bridesmaid gowns or new trends in favors. Each article, though, is beautifully laid out and truly inspirational.

My favorite section, however, is always in the center of the magazine - the arrangement

section. There are always flowers that would be readily available in that season and each is more creative than the next. Sometimes it's an interesting vase, sometimes it's what they put into the vase or the way they arrange the flowers in the vase. Bridal and bridesmaid bouquets often have interesting wraps or ribbons. And each is photographed on a white background so that there are no distractions from the beauty of the arrangement.

This month in particular, there's an article on the current trend of personalizing a wedding by using a variety of containers for centerpieces, such as old tins, teacups, tiny creamer pitchers or silver pieces. An example of this concept is later included in the center arrangement section. And at the end of each magazine is a color coded flower guide to help explain a bride's choices. It's helped me explain more than once the difficulty of finding a true blue flower!

So that's one of my creative inspirations. Do you have a magazine that inspires you? I'd love to know what it is! Share your inspiration in the comments below!