MaddFlowers: Gini and Ben's Mixture of Paper and Fresh Flowers

The Couple: Mr and Mrs. Spaulding

The Date: 8/20/2016

The Location: St. John Lutheran Church, Wheaton, IL

The Flowers: Blue Hydrangea, Coral Roses, 'Coral' Spray Roses, 'Coral' Dahlias and Paper Flowers!

As much as you can plan for something, you can not always plan for how fresh flowers are grown. As a product of God and nature, fresh flowers vary in color, size and durability. The coral dahlias we were hoping to use were suffering more this summer and the wholesale florist was not getting in strong looking dahlias. We ended up with a few in the bride's bouquet but left them out elsewhere because they were looking too orange. The coral spray roses came in more orange than we expected also but we ended up using them for the bouts. The bride and her friends made over 100 beautiful paper flowers that we tucked into the bouquets and centerpieces. They added the perfect element to the fresh flower bouquets!

We started with a color palette from the Bride. The bridesmaid dresses would be a coral red color. There are not that many natural bright turquoise or baby minty blue flowers, but we were able to tie many of the colors into the mix. The bride used the turquoise in a special way on the paper flowers.

The bride, Gini, made some wonderful paper flowers for the bouquets and centerpieces. There are several tutorials available online for making paper flowers using tissue paper, crepe paper or paper recycled from old books! Gini choose to create the kusudama flowers.

The centerpieces stood in a low skinny jar that made the paper flowers shine. There were red carnations in the centerpieces that were not found in the bouquets to tie in that color again. We created a few extra centerpieces to sprinkle around the venue at the guest book table, gift table, bar and more.

  

The bridal bouquet in the center with two of the bridesmaid bouquets on either side of it. The bridal bouquet was larger and included the "coral" orange dahlias and more white statice than the bridesmaid bouquets.

Up close on the "Coral" orange spray roses, "coral" orange dahlias, Nature's Cherry roses, mIni peach carnations and Blue hydrangea as the base.

The cake topper was beautiful with more colorful red and turquoise paper flowers. It was created on a foam to include fresh cut flowers also.

When selecting flowers, we start with choices the bride likes -- or we weed out flowers by starting with ones the bride does not want in her bouquet or at the wedding at all. We selected certain flowers in the price range in the color scheme building on each other. Below you can see some flowers laid out and from the pictures above you'll know that we did not end up with the bright blue hydrangea or the bright pinkish carnations. The Nature's Cherry Rose has a beautiful coloring to it. See more at SierraFlowerFinder.com.

After selecting flowers for the bridal bouquet, we selected flowers from there for the boutonnieres. Sometimes it is a process of elimination knowing that we would not want a large rose as a boutonniere or a hydrangea which might wilt faster. The spray roses or mini carnations are the perfect size for the boutonnieres and using a touch of the greenery, they made a nice addition to the groom and groomsmen ware.  We added some white statice to the groom's coral/orange flower to make him stand out and tie in more white.

We did a sneak peek on Instagram before the paper flowers went in. They added so much to it!

Flowers from Harold's Wholesale in St. Louis, Missouri.