Like the napkin ring idea I wrote about earlier, if you commit to potted plant centerpieces, make sure you have ample help on hand the day of for assembly.

Finding the Supplies:

The pots are probably hard to find inexpensively online due to high shipping costs, but please leave a comment if you find some! Your best bet is to find a good deal locally well in advance of the wedding.  It’s one of those things to be on the lookout for.  The flowers you should place an order for in advance as well.  The MOG here placed an order with a local nursery and had them delivered the day before.  It’s probably possible to work out something similar with a Loews or Home Depot as well.  The filler is possible to buy online and cheaply.  I like Save-On-Crafts.  You have many of options here, (I suggest moss, or shredded wood.)

Getting the Look:

Assembly is very simple.  Throw the flower, plastic pot and all into the center of your ceramic pot and gently distribute some of your filler.  It’s really simple and the beauty is in the variation so you don’t have to be perfect.  Voila!  A natural and fun centerpiece.

Here are the steps you can take to get the look.

Supplies

• Shower curtain rings
• Raffia ribbon
• Silk flowers

You can purchase the supplies cheaply if you have time to shop around and online.  I recently saw a 12 pack of clear rings for $1.85 on Amazon.  I also love www.papermart.com for paper supplies for weddings.  They have raffia ribbon there for $4.85 a half pound.  Feel free to email or comment on the best place to get silk flowers, I’ve always gone to Jo-Ann Fabric.

For the nice presentation simply put your hand in the middle of the napkin, then pull the top down through the ring.  Then arrange the rest of the napkin in a fan shape.

The only downside to creating this look is the manpower required! I recommend hosting a crafting party (well in advance of the wedding) with girlfriends.  If you provide the materials, spritzers and appetizers and you’ll able to complete the number you need ten times as fast.  On the day of the event, depending on how many people you are hosting, allow time for setting the tables.  It takes longer than you think to stuff the napkin rings and arrange.

I also found the prices quite high for Safeway.  Although the cake prices seemed ok, they weren’t all the much cheaper than one of my favorite bakeries in downtown Seattle known for their wedding cakes.  The flowers were also way overpriced.  The option for a boutonniere was $50?!  To be fair, the option for a bridal bouquet (usually fairly expensive) also started at $50.  If the boutonnieres truly are that expensive you’re better off going to a florist.  I also wish the floral area showed you the type and quantity of flowers that you get at each price level so you could see the value for your money rather than randomly marking what you want to spend on each bouquet.  I have the same complaint about the wines.  The site takes the headache out of calculating the number of bottles per guest at each event: cocktail hour, reception, rehearsal dinner and even bachelorette party!  However, if you choose $10, $20 or $70 wine per bottle it doesn’t give you and example of what you get in return.  It could be Chianti in a basket or Brunello and you wouldn’t have an idea of the quality.  I’m assuming all of those answers are solved by taking your budgeting results to the store.  

Bottomline: Do-It-Yourself brides are still better off doing the research themselves for quality and prices as Safeway doesn’t shed too much light on prices for their flowers and wine.  I recommend comparing a couple of different supermarkets if that’s all your budget allows.  But, if you need help with a budgeting tool give it a whirl.

For more information on Seattle Wedding Flowers visit: www.AvantBride.com

I’ve had a lot of brides email me with questions and comments regarding two blogs that I’ve written about on Whole Foods wedding flowers.  (Los Angeles and Seattle) You’d think Whole Foods was paying me to promote them!  They’re not, I just happen to love what they offer a bride on a budget – fantastic service, great flowers and low prices.  I personally loved the flowers at my wedding and at another wedding that I attended whose bride had ordered from a Whole Foods (albeit 1,000 miles from mine!)  I can’t vouch for east coast flowers, but if you’re on the west coast and looking to cut costs, head over to your local Whole Foods floral department.

The main request I’ve had is for pricing.  The following was my flower budget:

*One Caveat is this is from summer 2007 so I imagine prices have gone up a little.  See my blog on cutting wedding costs here.  Also, my best suggestion on figuring out your floral budget is knowing what you want to/can pay.  Once you know what you can afford it’s easier to make that a reality.  Before I was engaged I never would have imagined even spending $1,000 on flowers.  Once I started going through the process calling florist after florist in the LA area I was blown away by the staggering prices; one florist’s “budget wedding” started at $3,000.  I did find some great florists who were willing to work with me, but in the end decided this was still too much of my budget that I would rather spend on good food or a flamenco guitarist!

Please keep the comments and replies coming! I’m happy to help with my own information or by finding the answer for you.

www.AvantBride.com – Seattle’s Bride to Bride Referral Guide

In regard to food, making your wedding more environmentally friendly can be as simple as swapping Chilean seabass for wild-caught salmon.  The former is not only overfished but is also known to have high levels of mercury.  When you’re reviewing your menu choices months ahead of time think of the produce that will be in season for your special day.  Fresh baby greens, asparagus and peas in the spring, cherries, berries, corn, beans and anything else you can think of in the Pacific Northwest in the summer, and squashes, apples, and nuts in the fall.  A couple local caterers known for sustainable, organic ingredients are Herban Feast and Ravishing Radish.

More Green Blogs to come…

A savvy bride wrote a review about Dorsey Floral and it piqued my interest so I thought I would write more about it.  When I asked her about her experience using Dorsey Floral she had nothing but great things to say about them.  She said she had wanted to have calla lilies but was told by various florists that they were out of season and would be expensive to order.  As she wanted very simple bouquets she thought to use Dorsey Floral to order the flowers in and make them herself.  She did say that as a nervous bride she probably called them a little too often making sure that the delivery would arrive.  It was an interesting point as florists have pointed out to me in the past that part of the reason that flowers cost more for weddings than other events is the extra time that they have to spend on the multiple phone calls and other miscellaneous bride requests.  However, if you are a low key bride and just want to order a shipment of flowers to do it yourself this company might be a great way to keep costs low on your flower budget.

A local Seattle bride, Kate, is taking over this blog today with her experience using the florist at Whole Foods Westlake in Seattle for her wedding.

She writes, “I called Lilly at Whole Foods about two months in advance and told her the wedding colors.  I didn’t have any specific flowers in mind, but specified that I wanted a unique and artsy feel.  I wanted it to look like someone walked through a field of wildflowers and gathered them for me.  I also liked the look of greenery, leaves and little grasses.  She said no problem to all of that and said she was looking forward to creating something really cool for me.”

“About a month later she called to check in and make sure we were still on board.  A week prior to the wedding she emailed and reviewed the quote and what I ordered.  It was so great to have someone follow up with me, it was just one less thing to have to keep track of.  The Thursday before the wedding she called and said that the yellow roses we had chosen for the men’s boutonnieres weren’t as beautiful as the orange ones.  They were pretty, but she said the orange roses were unusually spectacular for this year.  So we decided on orange for everybody.  Such a great choice!  The orange roses were HUGE and so pretty, as you can see in the pictures!  I really felt that she was looking out for me the whole time, and not just trying to get a mediocre job out of the door.”

“The Saturday morning of the wedding I was a little apprehensive on the way to pick up the flowers.  I wasn’t sure if a grocery store would be too busy of a place, I would be overlooked, or perhaps they forgot about the order, etc.  Lilly had let me know she wouldn’t be there that Saturday, but that a co-worker would help me out.  They did!  It was wicked easy – customer service took care of tracking down the florist on staff and they carted everything out in boxes with stabilizers to keep the bouquets from shifting in the car.  Everything was well watered, in complementary vases, and best of all, my mom was so shocked by the quality that she had me pose with the flowers and the florist before we left!!”

“Though flowers initially hadn’t been one of my more serious focal points while planning the wedding, they turned out to be one of my most favorite things at the wedding.  I definitely recommend them.”

Contact Information:
Lilly Bartmasser
Floral Specialist
Whole Foods Westlake
(206)621-9700
lilly.bartmasser@wholefoods.com

Flowers 

I knew from the beginning that I wouldn’t be spending a lot of time or money on flowers. Most wedding planners recommend spending between 10-15% of your budget on flowers, but my fiancé and I had rationalized the price of our location by including our flower budget in it! It was, after all, a giant garden so we knew we wouldn’t need much. Still, just flowers for bridesmaids, groomsmen, moms, dads, grandmas, centerpieces etc. adds up.

In addition to the sheer number of bouquets we realized we needed, another problem I soon realized was as soon as you mention the word “wedding” to a florist your estimate doubles. Flowers for an anniversary $30, the same bouquet for a wedding $60! It was ridiculous. Especially since I live near an amazing and incredibly cheap flower market, I found this very frustrating. I didn’t need more than those simply beautiful farmers’ bouquets for the tables and couldn’t the bridesmaids carry small posies of whatever flower is in season? I didn’t need roses flown in from Ecuador, stephanotis from Hawaii, or baby’s breath filler. I called florist after florist in vain asking for bids for what I needed. Unfortunately, I found most florists weren’t willing to give me what I needed, they would only estimate for what they generally created – large, extravagant centerpieces $100 or more and exquisitely detailed bridal bouquets around $150-$200 (and this was from so called “budget florists”).

At this point I could have revisited my budget, perhaps moved some things around and created a more realistic flower budget. However, I decided to stick to finding what I wanted, not only in price but in simplicity. It was then that I read an article about how beautiful the flowers are in an average Southern Californian supermarket. Of course, Southern California ships out cut flowers to the rest of the United States, it makes sense that their supermarkets would also be stocked with better than average flowers. And it just so happened I was having a wedding in LA, although planning from Seattle. I soon wrote a list of exactly what I needed; 15 centerpieces, bagful of loose petals for cake and aisle, 6 posies, 8 boutonnieres, 1 bridal bouquet, 2 flower girl baskets, 3 corsages for the moms and grandma, and 6 bud vases for the cocktail tables. On a planning trip down to LA I scoped out Ralph’s, Whole Foods and Von’s.

The report card for the three stores was scored by my fiancé .  A+ for Whole Foods, B for Ralph’s and D for Von’s. Von’s flowers were exactly what I had previously stereotyped supermarket flowers as – boring, cheap looking and half dead. Ralph’s fared a little better, fresher flowers with more creativity but still a little “supermarket”. Whole Foods had beautiful arrangements and healthy looking flowers. They also had a knowledgeable staff that had put together wedding flowers before. I later placed the order from Seattle generally describing what I wanted, adjusting as I got feedback on what was possible and in season. It was a positive experience and in the end added up to the exact budget we had set aside for flowers. I received a call two weeks before the wedding as the florist was putting in our order with the wholesaler and confirmed the order again with me. Then they were ready to go on time the day of the wedding. I was satisfied. It’s definitely a great route to go if you’re not picky about the exact flowers and look that you want. In the end, I did end up squeezing a little stephanotis into my bouquet as well!