The flowers were exactly what we wanted! They arrived the wednesday before the saturday wedding, and my [now] hubby and I spent the evening putting them into mason jars I had wrapped in lace/ribbon/burlap. As warned, they arrived kinda sleepy looking, but then sprung right back to life with water a couple hours of soak time in the afternoon! Very sturdy flowers it seems.
We had some larger jars placed at the base of the arch that my husband had built (set on stumps), and I grabbed a bouquet from one of the jars on my way down to the ceremony and wrapped it in ribbon! We did go sort of light on the jar fills, (although we did 50 jars with the 4 bunches we ordered) because I wanted that dainty sort of natural look, to go with the rustic farmhouse setting we got married in. And yeah, some of them look kinda lopsided, or uneven, but that really added to the personal touch and we got lots of compliments on how personal everything about the wedding was.
My friend made the ceremonial cakes, and used one of the leftover bouquets to decorate the cakes with - matching the rest of the wedding theme, and it was gorgeous!
I didn't have bridesmaids or make any other special bouquets, just one I borrowed from a table display and returned after the ceremony.
Overall, couldn't be more pleased and saved about $2k doing it ourselves through 50 flowers!!! 100% worth it, recommend to anyone wanting to go the DIY route. It took my hubby and I about 4 hours together to do all the arrangements, that was after 6 hours of soaking time where we had placed them large tubs of water for the afternoon, so plan ahead!! and have fun with it - we had a great time: little wine, some podcasting in the background. :D
