mary tsao: journal: here come the flowers, part 2

2004 . . . 2003 2002

10.13.04

jennie and nick are married! the wedding went off without a hitch, the bride was lovely, and the food was delicious. emily was a beautiful flower girl and enjoyed herself immensely.

our flower making adventures went according to plan and we ended up with 15 table centerpieces, 4 bridesmaid bouquets, 2 large vases of roses for the altar, and an all-roses arrangement for the welcome table. below are some pictures and notes about what we did and how we did it.

the order. we ordered the roses 10 days before the wedding and picked them up 2 days before the wedding. we ordered 175 "classy" red roses and 125 "judy" yellow roses. we also ordered 2 bunches of babies breath, 2 bunches of brake fern, and 4 bunches of tree fern. here's part of our order at the florist:

the roses. this is what 300 roses look like on your kitchen table. can you see emily?

the work space. production took place at the kitchen table. the greenery and babies breath is on an adjacent counter. on emily's high chair is the first arrangement i did, which i later re-did after i better got the hang of what i was doing.

the tools. i used a pair of felco pruning shears and an ordinary pair of scissors to trim the flowers. i highly recommend felcos if you do any gardening or flower arranging. they are indestructible, are forever sharp, and you can use them to cut easily through thick branches and stems. i wore work gloves when handling the thorny stems in bunches; handling individual flowers required no gloves. i used a tape measure to make sure the center rose of each arrangement was no higher than 12 inches, which is a standard height for table centerpieces.

the assembly. to be honest, i started this project with only a vague notion of what the arrangements would look like. with the flowers in front of me, things started to fall into place. i began each arrangement with 3 stems of brake fern. my trusty felcos are the red-handled shears to the right of the arrangement.

the middle rose (red) went in first, then i added 4 red roses radiating from it. 4 yellow roses went in next, then 4 more reds for a total in each arrangement of 13 roses -- 9 red and 4 yellow. this may not seem like much but the roses were very high quality with large blooms, especially the yellow ones.

after i positioned the roses, i then added the tree fern and babies breath as filler. here are two finished centerpieces. 2 down, 13 to go!

after making 9 arrangements individually, mike persuaded me to try the assembly line style of production, which is how he put together the spinners for his 2002 burning man art project. this worked well at this point since i had a firm grasp on the design of the centerpieces. here are centerpieces 10, 11, and 12 in production.

i finished centerpieces 1 through 12 on thursday, then called it a night.

coming up: i finish centerpieces 13, 14, and 15, add butterflies to all 15, design and create the bridesmaids bouquets and assorted other arrangements, and grow terribly terribly sick of roses!!