Who doesn’t want to be showered with rose petals?

Martha has some directions for making cones, and that was a good place to start. But the cones will be sitting on the chairs along the isle, and I thought that the petals would fall out if the cones were shaped like ice cream cones.

First, I cut some subtly shimmery blue paper down to 8.5″ squares. I skipped rounding the tops and started experimenting with adhesives. Craft glue is way too messy and takes forever to dry, but mono adhesive doesn’t have enough hold. Good ol’ double-stick tape to the rescue:

Then I rolled the non-taped edge inward toward the taped edge, making the cone as wide as possible.

They came out in wildly different sizes, but I’m telling myself that that’s part of the charm.

Of course, what good are petal cones if no one knows what to do with them? I wasn’t convinced that my mention of “petal toss and recessional” in the program would be sufficient, so I made little tags for the cones. “When the newlyweds walk your way, toss the petals and shout hooray!” I wish I could take credit for the wording, but that’s all Laurie (via OnceWed).

I attached them to the cones with one of my very favorite things, Stampin’ Up mini library clips.

Now they’re with the gigantic Rubbermaid of vintage glassware, ready to go to the florist in a few weeks. It’s hard to believe that I have my final meeting with the florist in less than a month. Keep your fingers crossed for peonies and lily of the valley…

They say that if you’re going to do boutonnieres, you ought to do corsages too. And I definitely wanted bouts. They were the only thing I had picked out before I got engaged. I don’t know where the MSW editors found this super-petite lily of the valley, but it’s so beautiful against the lamb’s ear leaf.

Corsages are something you don’t see very often in magazines, on websites, or anywhere else for that matter. For me, corsage was synonymous with prom fixture, and I wasn’t feeling it… fussy, traditional, baby’s breath, miniature roses, and, umm, no. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk around for five hours with one of these on my wrist or pinned to my chest:

Maybe I’m alone, but I wasn’t going to subject anyone else to that. And was anyone else shocked at the cost of corsages? No way I could justify that kind of pricetag for something I wasn’t crazy about in the first place.

So I started thinking of non-traditional ideas, and I settled on silk flower pins. I figured I could pin them to a ribbon (so they could be worn as wristlets during the ceremony), and then people could remove them from the ribbon and attach them to purses or coats in the future. And, lo’ and behold, I walked into the Limited one day and found soft, luxurious satin flower pins for 70% off!

So pretty on my custom-dyed Cam Creations ribbon, but they’re too tall, so the flower flops around. I deconstructed one of them and thought about hot gluing it to the ribbon sans pin, but it would’ve looked sloppy, and the whole idea was to have a removable pin.

I happened to have some pink silk peonies around that I bought on impulse from Etsy awhile back, so I cut the wire stems off of them and hot glued them onto the ribbon instead. The result isn’t as dramatic, but it was definitely more of a success from a wearability point of view.

Now I have these wristlets and the original flower pins, which people could just pin to their dresses. I might let them choose, or maybe I’ll save the pins and use them for something else.

Actually, it’s part more-than-three, because I’ve been to Pacific Coast Antiques in Brookings a couple of times for a bottle here and a bottle there. But this was installment three of the Quest for Bottles and Cake Stands.

Since I was driving down to Brookings for Thanksgiving, I thought I might as well stop in and check out the world-famous antiquing in Lincoln City. Well, if you are looking to make a single purchase — and spend a pretty penny for it — then Lincoln City is the place to go. At my first stop, I found quite a few beautiful milk bottles in perfect condition, and many of them were quite special, but most were $60+. Several were $75, and I didn’t see a single one below $30. I’m buying so many of these, I can’t justify even one bottle at $30. On to the next shop, which was a complete bust. One nice cake stand, but at $70, I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

Last, I went to Granny’s Attic and found a few more reasonably-priced bottles. I was a little discouraged and antiqued-out at that point, so I skipped the rest of the stores and hoped for better luck in Brookings.

That photo has nothing to do with anything wedding-related… I took it from the beach in Brookings one evening this week. This is why the Oregon Coast is my happy place.

I found a couple of nice cake plates in Brookings, including one that was a steal at $9. Surely it isn’t an antique, but you can’t beat $9 for any glass cake stand, regardless of age. But still no milk bottles, no vintage wine carafes, no other nondescript bottles that I just had to have.

Yesterday, we went down to Crescent City to explore the antique shops there — and I was shocked to discover that there are tons of them! Nine in all, including one I went to a few months ago. And lo and behold, bottles!

First, the non-wedding items: The book is a first edition of a book I loved as a child, published in the 1800s. The little trivet is just for fun… We know I have a trivet obsession, and this one was only $2.

The little sugar bowl was just such a great find I couldn’t pass it up… I will probably see if the caterer will use it for sugar for coffee at the reception. The pink depression glass cake plate and the clear cake plate at the very back are the ones I found in Brookings. The little blue saucer at the front was all by himself so I had to have him. Not sure yet what role he’ll play at the wedding.

A couple of the bottles are from Granny’s Attic in Lincoln City, and the rest are from shops in Crescent City. The large bottle on the far right was a real splurge — I must’ve had a momentary seizure when I decided to spend $20 on a single bottle, but it’s in perfect condition and is very special.

And my HUGE splurge was the little light blue cake plate at the left. You can’t see him very well in this photo, but he’s so so so pretty — the perfect blue, in flawless condition, and blue milk glass, which is very hard to find.

Just a quick addition to the flower files. This is obscenely gorgeous. I’m usually adamantly anti-huge flower arrangements, but these… Oh, so pretty… As we speak, I’m sitting here doing a mental inventory of all my glass containers to figure out how many of them could hold large arrangements like this. (Enough to have one or two large arrangements per table? Perhaps, perhaps.)

Via the always-enchanting Peonies & Polaroids.

I’ve never been so excited about mailing a deposit check. As of today, we have a florist — at long last!

On Friday, I met with Kim at Geranium Lake Flowers in Portland. I was so impressed with her. For starters, she is super efficient and organized. She has a multi-page form that she fills out while you talk, and she actually gives you prices as you go along! Having waited weeks (err, months, in some cases… in other cases, five months and still counting) for bids, that instantly won my affection.

Geranium Lake is big on sustainability and supporting local growers, both of which are important to me. They let you come down to the shop a few weeks before your event to check out their current flower stock and see if there’s anything you might be interested in that wasn’t on your original flower wishlist.

And she really got me. As we were wrapping up, she flipped to the front of the proposal and wrote “lush, romantic” on the cover. I could’ve hugged her. I hadn’t used either of those words when I was going on and on and showing her photo after photo, so her read on my vision really knocked my socks off.

Did I mention that she did Amber’s flowers? Amber is a friend of a friend who lives a block up the street from me, and when she got married last year, she had the most personality-filled black tie wedding I’ve ever seen. Case in point:

How could you not love the florist who did that?

So now, looking at my flower inspiration photos doesn’t make me start hyperventilating.

Speaking of which, I talked about flowers for the reception tables a couple of weeks ago, but I skipped over the held flowers. The three inspiration photos for my bouquet are from Martha. The first one sets the overall tone and color scheme and includes many of the flowers I’m hoping to use — garden roses, tweedia, lisianthus, and ranunculus. And the shape is absolutely perfect… Not too round, not too flat or cascading. Enough definition to be modern, but enough soft movement to suit my romantic sensibilities.

But there aren’t any peonies in there, and we can’t have that. Plus there will be some soft pink in my bouquet — not too much, just a touch. Hopefully the pink will come from my beloved Sarah Bernhardt peonies. I’m in love with the ribbon here, but the jury’s out on whether or not that would detract from my dress.

And we can’t forget about the lily of the valley, a.k.a. my all-time favorite flower.

My beautiful bridesmaids will carry peony bouquets (or, if peonies don’t come through in April next year, garden roses).

I don’t have a good inspiration photo for the boutonnieres, but they will be very simple — a single lamb’s ear leaf with a spring of lily of the valley. The corsages will be DIY (hopefully), so we’ll see how those turn out.

The florist was the last big vendor to get on the books — hooray! Next up: sending the save-the-dates.

No matter how many magazines and websites I thumbed through, I couldn’t envision traditional floral centerpieces at our wedding. Even with the myriad of modern, unique floral arrangements I saw on blogs and pages of MSW, it wasn’t coming together in my head. I found, and noted, a gorgeous idea from a non-bridal magazine advertisement:

I still have this on file, for what I’m not quite sure… Reception decorations? The head table? Probably neither but we’ll see. Once I had the realization that I could buck the round table trend and do long rectangulars instead, I was decidedly disenchanted with large floral arrangements.

Before we decided on our space, I thought we might hang round paper lanterns or tissue paper decorations from the ceiling, in which case I considered skipping reception flowers altogether and using tons of candles instead. But then we booked the ballroom at Zenith, and the vaulted ceilings and enormous chandeliers precluded anything like that.

Then this beauty appeared on the Bride’s Cafe:

Perfect! Single-flower arrangements in glass containers. Why didn’t I think of that? A while later, another wedding with brilliantly chic florals also surfaced:

That sealed the deal. Since I’m using some flowers with vintage undertones — peonies, lily of the valley, garden roses — it seemed only right to accompany them with vintage glassware. I’ve always had a weakness for vintage containers anyway, so maybe it was just an opportunity to comb the antique stores for their best pieces. In July, mom, Granny and I went antiquing in Brookings and got off to a great start. I think we picked up 17 bottles in total, plus a gorgeous glass cake stand for the cupcake table.

Then in August, our pastor’s wife recommended a little antique shop that’s nestled in the north end of Crescent City. We never, ever would’ve found that place if not for her, and even with her directions, we almost missed it. The shop is in the downstairs of the owner’s house, and she’s usually closed on Sundays, but she happened to be out front and let us come in and poke around. It was definitely providence, because she had tons of glass bottles, and at amazing prices at that — and on top of it, she gave me a discount for buying so many pieces. I don’t remember how many we picked up, but I’d say it was close to 20. It seems that the managers in the antique shops can’t see my modern vintage vision, but I can definitely see the crisp ivory linens and the blue dupioni silk table runners and the glass bottles of many sizes.

I didn’t buy any colored glass the first time, but those big brown bottles were too cool to pass up. They’ll end up on the seating card table or something. And the tiny blue bottle — adorable! Later that day, we revisited the Brookings shops and found a few more, plus the most perfect light blue creamer that will be lovely with a single peony overflowing out of the top.

Unfortunately, my excitement about the glassware is partially overshadowed by the vision of all those beautiful containers sitting empty at the wedding. I’ve now had contact with six florists. Of the six, only a couple have responded to more than my very first email or phone call; two in particular seemed so excited at first, asking me to send photos and details, but then never replied. I can’t quite figure out if I’m coming across as overly enthusiastic or detail-oriented, or if I’ve had a run of bad luck. I’ve been so fortunate with most of my other vendors that the florist woes are baffling. I keep trying to keep this in perspective, keep trying to remember that plenty of people plan their entire wedding in less than seven months, but I’m a planner at heart.

I have fantasies of doing the flowers myself, but being artistic does not equal being a floral decorator. Maybe I’ll more seriously consider doing the reception flowers myself and have the highly-recommended little Salem florist do the bouquets. But in the mean time, I’m in full florist pursuit. Recommendations welcome!