My sister-in-law got married yesterday, and I did all of her flowers. She had 5 bouquets, 5 boutonnieres, 3 corsages...And 25 small vase arrangements for the tables.

What. A long. Day. Wow!

It was exhausting, but I think the flowers turned out well anyway. I heard a zillion people tell me they were "amazing" yesterday (and more today!), which is nice to hear, I guess, but because of the style of the wedding--wildflowers; not a polished look--I couldn't believe that the compliments were genuine until today. My brain has just been on a "Not perfect enough, not perfect enough" track, round and round and round and round, until about an hour or two ago, when I went out and sat by the box of leftover flower bunches on the porch. Sitting there looking at them, I found myself wrapped up in their brilliant colors, thinking, What an incredibly gorgeous assortment of flowers. I mean, they looked good all by themselves. They didn't even need my handiwork!

So I'm *finally* satisfied. :D

And I can't wait to bring all those gorgeous flowers home.

So here's what my weekend looked like. Friday, Steve and I drove up and arrived about 1:00 PM. From there, Cari (his sister) and I drove about 45 minutes north to a flower farm. They had buckets and buckets of cut flowers from their farm--butterfly bush stems, dahlias, sunflowers, crocosmia, phlox, daisies, zinnias, lilies, gladiolas, snapdragons. I just about died from gorgeousness. There is nothing I love more than looking at buckets and buckets of beautiful flowers. And then we got to pick out huge handfuls for her wedding! Most fun I have EVER had. :D We got deep purple butterfly bush stems, golden sunflowers and daisies, white phlox, pinkish-purple and white statice, and white and ruby-colored dahlias. Cari had as much fun as I did, I think. :) Oh those ruby dahlias! I so wish they'd had more. They had some ruby snapdragons, too, that just dazzled me, but they weren't going to work for her wedding (and I didn't have any cash on me!). *sigh*

Anyway. :) Most stunning flower colors I have ever seen.

So after we got the gorgeous wedding flowers, we went back--took 1.5 hours because of traffic and we got back *just* in time for the rehearsal dinner. We just put the flowers into buckets and went to the picnic. We got back around 7:30 and I put the flowers together into the bouquets and rubber banded them. I also had to run to Michael's to get burlap, twine, and lace to wrap them in. I didn't have time to do anything else.

Saturday morning we had to pick up ferns from a local grocery store florist because I hadn't had time the day before. We got to the wedding site on Saturday at 11:30, but not having the ferns in the bouquets already put a real chink in the machine, because it just took that much longer. Then I still had to wrap and hot glue them in burlap, twine, and lace, then I had to make all the boutonnieres and corsages--all the while counting down to 2:30 when pictures would start! By some miracle I made it happen (it helped that they did couple pictures first). And then AS SOON as I had loaded off the boutonnieres and bouquets for pictures, I slammed into the 25 small vase arrangements for the tables. I think that was the hardest part because I barely had enough flowers, and I definitely did not have enough ferns! Good gracious, it was crazy.

So finishing up the bouquets took from 11:30 to 1:30, then it was a CRAM hour to do the boutonnieres and start on the corsages so they could do pictures (and then I had to run them out to the guys just as the photographer lifted his camera, shouting, "Guys!! Guys!! Boutonnieres!!" Really??!). I had to be in family pictures at about 3:30, but other than that, 3:00 to 5:30 I was doing arrangements like a crazy person. People kept offering to help, but I didn't know what to tell them. What could they possibly do?

Yeah...Not very Gospel-centered thinking...I'm still working on how to be a professional and a Christian at the same time. :P

Argh...Sleep is calling me. I'm never going to finish this if I don't end it for now!

-Stephanie

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