Preparing for Keri and Phil's Wedding

Well, it has been a while since my last post and I hope you will all feel that I have had a good reason for being away.  I have been preparing for and finally executing a delightful wedding for the daughter of a wonderful friend of mine.  My part was designing and creating all the bouquets and arrangements for the wedding. 

It has been a very interesting journey and I have learned so much!  Of course, I will be sharing the final results but, first I thought you could see some of the preparation.  Not all of course, since I feel most of what happens at a wedding should appear to be magical and set the stage for a lovely ceremony and reception.

However, I will share with you that the journey all started with this color purple and the love of purple hydrangeas by the bride and her mom.  These galvanized pails were an important part of the preparation for the scenery of the ceremony.

The pails had to be prepared ahead of time to make sure the ribbon would hold all of the flowers and water, as well as, making sure the length of the ribbon was just right.  I didn't want the pails to hang too low or to be cut too short dwarfing the arrangements inside.  It took a few pairs of eyes to decide on just the right length of ribbon.  Thank heaven for my buddies, Brittany and Judy, for all their help!  I finished by cutting the ends of the ribbon at an angle and adding a dab of clear nail polish to make sure the ribbons wouldn't fray.

This was the beginning of the end of months of preparing for this beautiful wedding that I had the privilege to be a part of!  The fun stuff came next!