wedding flowers

I thought I'd post pictures of the wedding reception flowers I did yesterday for one of Janelle's good friends in our ward, Chelsie McGuire. She married Nick Blight, from Moreland ID, his mother is Mary Martin. They are a very cute couple. She wanted calla lilies, which I think are beautiful, but they are the absolutely hardest flower to work with and to work in with other flowers in my opinion. Fortunately she wanted just callas on the tables for centerpieces and at the guest book, so those were easy. We ordered them from Costco and from past experience I ordered them to arrive on Wednesday for a Saturday evening reception. They come as straight sticks, like a bundle of firewood - with a big fat rhubarb-like stem and just plain straight. They have curve, no anything - just straight long sticks. They still hadn't fully opened up by Saturday, but had started to arch slightly - but I was not very happy with them. Fortunately they let me have free range on the rest of the flowers as long as they were purple or white. Let me tell you there are many shades of purple, but no flowers are the exact color of the purple they were using. The big urn for the buffet was the most fun to do-it was at least 4 feet tall when finished. There were many adventures along the way including the urn not being waterproof and water starting to seep out at an alarming rate. You don't want to know how we got it to the church. Chelsie gave me a picture of what she wanted for the boutonnieres -two mini callas with black ribbon - they turned out nice. The corsages were two mini callas with purple freesias (they smelled so good!) and tiny lavender daisies. I didn't get a picture of those or her bouquet. That's fine with me - do you know how difficult it is to make a bundle of sticks look like a bridal bouquet? Future brides take note - if you MUST have calla lilies, pick minis! They are much easier to work with and they are very sweet! Or pick a florist who loves the big ones and knows what they are doing! That wouldn't be me! Unfortunately Janelle informed me a long time ago that she was going to have calla lilies for her wedding, so I'm hosed!