Wedding Flowers

Photos by Sean Marshall Lin

If you haven't already seen my posts on my bridesmaid dresses, which I designed and sewed from scratch, you can view the whole sequence starting here.

Flowers weren't something that was incredibly important to me going into the wedding planning process. And they still weren't that important to me in the weeks leading up to the wedding. When I saw my wedding pictures, though, I was THRILLED with how I ended up handling my wedding flowers and centerpiece flowers!

It was important to me that all the bridesmaid bouquets were the same to tie everything together. That was my only real prerequisite. I've seen pictures from other weddings with a rainbow color scheme where the bridesmaids each have a totally different bouquet to highlight flowers and foliage in their dress color, but I'm really not a fan. It seems to lend itself to more of a hippie vibe, and I wanted the flowers to contribute to a traditional feel... uniformity, uniformity, uniformity.


The biggest problem was that natural flowers don't exist in two of the colors of my rainbow (the teal and blue). In the end, I decided to dye silk gladiolus to match those colors (and to best match the shade of purple). I wrote a separate post on how to dye silk flowers, here. Our florist incorporated these silk flowers into the appropriate bouquets along with white roses, while the pink, orange, and yellow bridesmaids had real gladiolus in theirs. My bouquet featured a mix of all the colors, white roses, and real white gladiolus. Additionally, each bridesmaid wore a matching silk flower in her hair, and my bridal assistants wore white flowers in their hair.

For the centerpieces, we decided on using all silk flowers so we could assemble them ahead of time. We bought the flowers at a silk flower warehouse (saved a TON of money and got beautiful flowers that will never die). We also used some of the dyed silk gladiolus in the centerpieces. You couldn't even tell which flowers were hand-dyed and which were real!

Here's the labor breakdown:

• Dyeing silk flowers and handing some off to the florist and bridesmaids: mostly me, with the help of my husband
• Assembling bouquets, corsages, etc. of real flowers combined with dyed silk flowers: florist
• Adding a necklace to my bouquet: me, day of the wedding
• Assembling church decorative flowers (mostly real: florist)
• Assembling centerpiece flowers (all silk): me, my mom, my aunt, and my husband
• Setting up centerpieces: reception venue

Here are some more pictures to show how everything turned out:

This color was dyed. All the girls had a flower in their
hair to match their dress.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

Church flowers, created by the florist.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

I'm including this to show the hair flowers. The yellow
was purchased in that color, and the teal was dyed.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

I added this necklace with my recently deceased dog's
picture to my bouquet. I'm really jealous of everyone
whose dog gets to participate in their wedding.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

This picture shows all the bridesmaid flowers.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

This bouquet (the orange bridesmaid)
contained all real flowers.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

The purple flowers are silk flowers,
dyed by me (the bride), and the white
flowers are real.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

My bouquet featured all the colors.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

This is one of the bridal assistant's bouquets. They were
slightly smaller and matched their dresses. The moms 
had similar bouquets that matched their dresses.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

The centerpiece at the head table (just us and our parents)
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

The bright flowers gave the room a cheerful vibe.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

Each centerpiece was different.
In this one, the light blue flowers were
dyed, and the rest were purchased as is.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

A normal table. In the table closest
to you, the purple and teal were dyed
and the rest were purchased as is.
Photo by Sean Marshall Lin

I didn't like any of the flower dyeing tutorials I found online, so I came up with my own method. Here's how I did it!

I'll also be posting a future post on our centerpieces/table names/table settings.