Married and finally back from our Honeymoon!!! UPDATED w/ Pics

Congratulations!!! Looking forward to seeing more pics!!

Congratulations!!

Congrats! Can't wait to see more pics of the day!

Congratulations! We'll be looking forward to seeing some more pictures! In the meantime, any tips on DIYing florals??

Thanks everyone! @Future Mrs. Crowell I'd be happy to share some tips! It is hard to summarize the DIY flower experience into just a few words, hopefully this will be helpful.

This is what we ordered from Costco (http://www.costco.com/bulk-flowers.html) 1 each: Unforgettable Bouquet, Pink A Boo Bouquet, European Mini Bouquets, White Mountain Bouquet, Carnations-150 Stems (pink). That gave us over 900 stems of flowers and greenery/fillers. When the flowers arrive you have to be available to take them out of the boxes, cut at least 1-2" off all the ends of the stems under water and get them into water right away or they will die. Most flowers will not be open. That is A LOT of work... I did that part all by myself. It took me about 3 hours (but I was being very picky and had distractions). My mom was driving down for the wedding that day otherwise she would have been there to help. You have to have lots of buckets to put the flowers in and a big bucket to use is helpful for snipping the ends under water. We had about 20 utility pails from Dollar Tree. You will want some garden pruners to do this quickly - some of the stems were woody plants and so thick that scissors could not cut. You will want to order the flowers and have them delivered several days ahead of time. My flowers were delivered on Wednesday for the Saturday wedding. We only had a couple of lilies that did not open or did not open all the way and some of the roses were blown, but that is okay. It still worked out.

Ordering the growers choice bouquet varieties can be beneficial but is also more work and not recommended for a novice. They pick the best flowers available at the time, so you don't get to pick what types you get, and you also get a good variety. We did get carnations, but if the carnations looked so-so we would have gotten them anyway if that makes sense. Fortunately, carnations generally look good. The bouquets themselves in my opinion are all too large to use in half pint or pint mason jars. We only used a couple quart sized jars for a handful of large arrangements and to hold the bouquets. This required my mom and aunt to separate the bouquets into flower types. I don't know exactly how she did it but she spent a lot of time (both Thursday and Friday) creating the bouquets, aisle chair decorations, and centerpieces.

She did the bouquets first, I didn't care I just wanted mine to be all pink flowers and the biggest. That is the best approach so you know what you will have left to work with for the centerpieces. You do have to sort of plan how you will use the flowers you have.

We utilized about 100 mason jars to decorate the reception tables and we had A LOT of flowers. It was beautiful.

It might be easier for someone with less flower arranging experience to just select several flower varieties (not mixed bouquets to arrange). My mom has an incredibly green thumb and has done flower arranging for big events before, but not as a profession.

Honestly, I would not recommend that a bride try to DIY the flowers herself (without a lot of knowledable help). I was able to work from home on Wednesday and wait for the flowers, but had to work Thursday. I didn't work on Friday and was able to help with flowers. Transporting them to the church friday was a lot of work and required several trips. Fortunately the church is only 10 min from my house. I also had to help setup the reception tables. This was a very DIY intense wedding.

DIY flowers can be messy... the flower food has sugars and gets sticky. My dining room needed a good mop after the arranging was done. Also have trash bags available for picking up cut stems.

If you have any specific questions please ask and I will try to answer the best I can considering I was not in charge of the arrangements operation which is the most labor intensive.

I would say it can definitely save money to DIY flowers, but it can be a lot of work (at least to get the results we wanted it was). It could be done much more simpler and there are many resources on the internet, so do your research and do what is most comfortable for you.

Congrats and cant wait to see more pics!! your flowers look soooo pretty!

Congrats!! Can't wait to see more pics.

More pics...

And more...

(These pics were taken by our friend/colleague) except for my flower shop pic.

So we have da flower shop, a couple shots of us, cake, centerpiece, my sis/MOH caught the bouquet, us during garter removal, centerpiece, me drinking moonshine and the after effect, and me again. ENJOY!!! :o)

So pretty! Best wishes!

Beautiful pictures You look so happy! Thanks for sharing and congrats to you two!

Congrats! Love your dress.

Great job with the flowers! Everything looks amazing. Congratulations!

Yea! Everything looks so beautiful! Congrats!

You look so pretty! And your centerpieces turned out so well!

You look beautiful! Congratulations!!!

Congrats! Everything looks great! Your mother and aunt did a great job!!

As a florist, I had to throw in my 2 cents on DIY flowers - and you're right! Ladies unless you know what you're doing (and I mean REALLY know), or you have someone who knows... leave it up to a professional. Professionals order extra flowers in case of things like: mold (flowers are perishable and yes they get moldy), dead flowers, broken stems, flowers that blow open too quickly (roses, lilies), etc. Professionals have all the tools already - cutters/floral blades, buckets, floral preservative, floral tape, foam, trays/containers, etc. Another main tool - the cooler!! Additionally, and this is one thing very few brides have on their wedding day - TIME! Time to set everything up and to wrap the stems in ribbon (which should not be done until the morning of the wedding).

That being said, if you have someone who is confident in their ability to do floral design: i suggest a trial run, even if you just use cheap flowers... just to make sure things run relatively smoothly. The last thing you want is for it to be the day before your wedding and you realize this person (or yourself) doesn't know what they're doing and you're stressed to the max and a pro won't have ample notice to help you out.