Flowers

They have been decided on! Here's what I got:

For the Bridesmaids they will be carrying feather fans that I purchased off of eBay through cynthiasshope and I will also be getting them white alstromeria corsages to wear. I might try to get the feather fans to an airbrush artist to try and get a white to blue painted tips effect. The fans that I purchased are alright, but needed a little bit of picking to remove some of the stray pieces of colored fuzz and lint the was clinging to the fan. Overall the fans were a great purchase because the price of all five of these fans for my ladies was about equivalent to one bouquet at the Monte Carlo.















For the Groomsmen I thought we would keep it simple with a white alstromeria boutonniere like the one pictured in below and add some light blue belladonna (also called delphinium) to coordinate with the dresses the ladies will be wearing.















For the Mothers/Grandmothers present, I decided that they should get something special to feel included so I ordered white dendrobium orchid corsages for each of them. Hopefully the floral department gets them to look very close to this picture because it's very pretty.














For the Fathers/Grandfathers present just a simple ivory rose with rose leaves boutonniere for them. I didn't want them to feel like they were wearing almost a bouquet's worth of flowers on their chest so I'm keeping it simple and classy. I also requested that all the boutonnieres have that little curly-q on the end that this one does.













For the Groom, he gets a single ivory rose with greenery and white sweet peas added; simple and effective.

















For me, the Bride, I decided to go with a bunch of ivory roses with a bunch of white sweet peas and feathers added. I'll be able to bring in the feathers that I ordered from lamplight feathers as well as my own ribbon for the wrap that I bought on a 50% sale at Michaels.

Feather Fans!

Yes this is a bit odd but after talking to my Maid of Honor I decided to at least try this out. For quite some time I had been playing around with possibilities for bouquets and hadn't quite found something that gave me that "wow" factor without hurting our budget. While searching for feathers, because I was trying to figure out how to incorporate feathers into the bridesmaids bouquets, I stumbled upon these babies.














I was already going to try and get enough fans for all of our female attendants but this just looks like a fun idea for my gals. The best upside to this is the wedding venue wanted about $55 per bouquet; I got enough fans for all five of my girls at about the same price as one of those bouquets. Super save!

My hope is that these fans aren't as tacky as I think they might turn out and if they're fine I'll be looking into decorating them somehow. My Maid of Honor suggested going to a tattoo artist that also does airbrushing and have them do some airbrushing on the fans. I love that idea, I just don't 100% know what I'll be doing. The idea that I'm running with is to have the artist paint the tips of the fan light blue and have the fan look like it's dissolving from white at the base to the blue tips. She suggested having a flower airbrushed on to the fans but I'm having trouble envisioning this.

If this all doesn't turn out to my liking I can still use the fans I don't have experimental paint and whatnot all over for my mom, his mom and possibly my two grandmas.

Some close runners up were to have either white alstromeria or carnation bouquets, but if this works out we'll end up saving quite a bit of the budget for other things.

Blue Flowers in the Bouquet?

I've been looking around but the only way to incorporate blue flowers into your bouquet is to either use blue hydrangeas or blue grape hyacinths. Yes, irises have also been used for blues but I find them kind of on the purple-ish side. There are four options that I've come up with:

1) Incorporate blue feathers into the bouquet.
I searched the web for cheap feathers for this and became informed on ostrich plumes, drabs and all sorts of things in between that made my head spin because of all the information and the pricing on some of them for just one freaking feather.
http://www.allcostumes.com has them on sale for $0.63 per each 6-10" mini plume
http://www.wholesaleflowersandsupplies.com for $2.70 for five 9-11" drabs ($0.54 each)
http://www.ecrater.com for $2.30 for a 1/4 oz of 2-6" fluff
http://www.michaels.com has picks for sale but I'm not sure how much they are
Also, there's no Hobby Lobby or other alternative craft store within a day's drive so if I want feathers it's either going to be acquired on-line or at Michaels.

2) Figure out how to dye some flowers blue.















I know this can be done because I've seen blue roses out there on the market. Either they were genetically engineered to grow with the blue color or they were put in water with blue food coloring after they were cut so they'd "suck" up the blue dye and turn blue just like a carnation would. I haven't tested dying them blue yet but as soon as I get some fridge space or the apartment is cold enough (heck I've even though about doing this at work because it's so cold in there) then I'll be doing some testing. What I'll also need to look out for is how long the roses last in certain conditions and how much blue I'll need to either get a full on blue or just a tinge.

3) Dye/paint something blue.
This might be done if I decide to go with silk flowers because I think it would completely destroy a real flower if I dye/paint it blue... although it might be worth it to try and dye a real flower just for fun.

4) Deal without.
I've been searching and there haven't been a lot of brides that have blue flowers in their bouquet but also I figure I should have a plan B just in case none of this works. The backup plan is to try and find an all white bouquet but I'm not liking a lot of what I see. Maybe I'm not much of a bouquet person but to me a lot of bouquets look chaotic and thrown together without a lot of thought.