Bouquets

So, things have been busy this summer for me.  Work has been moving at a rapid clip and on top of this, my sister got married last Saturday!  It was a wonderful event and I love her and her new husband dearly.  And obviously, we worked together on the flowers. 

We used orchids for the centerpieces at the tables and I'll post photos of those later this week.  For now, I'll show you how to make a bouquet, in case you don't already know.  I blogged about a year and a half ago about my experiences working at a florist.  When I was there, I also learned how to make fairly simple bouquets for weddings.

My sister loves hydrangeas, so we did blue hydrangeas with white roses for her.  We did photos before the ceremony on a July afternoon so I actually made her two bouquets, one for the photos and a fresh one for the ceremony. The bridesmaids were all wearing different colors of the same dress, so we kept our bouquets simple -- white roses.

I got the flowers at a wholesaler called Potomac Floral Wholesale.  Since my business is related, I was able to get a wholesale account, though they are strict about who can and can't work with them.  It was a blast walking through their warehouse, seeing the endless amounts of flowers.

 

The roses were longstemmed white roses called 'Eskimo' - the color was gorgeous, with just a touch of green.  Roses are delivered packed as you see them above - 25 to a bunch.  Typically they are grown in Columbia.  In fact, rose shipments are regularly searched as they've been used to mule cocaine into the country by drug traffickers in the past.

You need a few different tools to really take best care of the flowers.  Clippers to cut the stems (the orange ones above are Felcos, which are the best).  You don't want to use scissors unless they're terribly sharp because you don't want the stems to be crushed at all, instead they should be sliced cleanly so water transfer isn't interrupted.  You can use scissors to clip the leaves off.

 

 Finally, you use a knife to slice off the thorns.  Luckily this cultivar had very few thorns, so this didn't take long.  Once you've recut the bottoms of the stems, removed the leaves and cut the thorns off, you remove the outer, bruised petals and finally, put the roses right back into the water.

 

We planned on doing 15 roses per bouquet, so next you begin to organize the roses, trying to make them into an attractive bunch.  When you like how they look, you put rubber bands around the stems, holding them together. 

 When that's done, we wrapped the bunch in floral glue, which you can pick up at a craft store.  It's double sided with adhesive.  Once the glue is wrapped around the bouquet, you wrap ribbon around the base and use corsage pins to anchor the ribbon. 

 

Photos of the bride's bouquet and more tomorrow or Wednesday!