April Showers bring May FLOWERS :)

Well we were a little light on the showers this April, but I"m crossing my fingers for some delightful May blooms all the same.  Speaking of flowers...we met with florists in Cville the other day to try to make sure we'll have some for the wedding!

 I should tell you now, that flowers have never been high on my priority list as far as details for the wedding.  (I know I've talked about priorities before and how important it is to identify your high ones.  Well its also important to identify have some low priorities too.  These would be areas where you don't have a ton of expectations or a distinct vision and/or where you're willing to spend less $$ because you're less specific about what you want.)  I think flowers are beautiful.  I truly enjoy having fresh flowers in my home and when Javier surprises me with some I squeal with delight as any good fiancee should.  But that's about where it ends.

As you can see from these inspiration boards that I brought with me to our two florist appointments - I don't have a real clear picture for what I want as far as flowers go on the day of the wedding.  I didn't have certain types of flowers I wanted and I wasn't completely sure about colors.  (And from what I understood, Javs didn't have strong preferences either.)  You can see that sometimes I pinned beautiful and colorful bridal bouquets and other times white bouquets.  Some of the arrangements look clean and classic while others have a more whimsical, wild flower look.  I also pinned a lot of fruit.  How did I want to incorporate fruit?  (I dunno?)   Hmmmmm....I was either going to be a florist's dream (an opportunity for creativity!  a flexible bride!) or a nightmare (a bride with no clue what she wants!)

So after our cup of joe and a Crystal pick me up :) we met with Amy Webb of Blue Ridge Floral designs (example of her work to the left).  We had heard about Amy through our caterer, who suggested that she might be within our price range since she kept her costs down by working out of her home/not having a store front. Amy's home was located outside of Cville (closer to Wintergreen) on a gorgeous little pond.  Amy and her pups (who awkwardly licked the lotion off me and Mom's legs through our entire meeting) made us feel right at home.  I was relieved that Amy found my cluelessness a blessing!  And made suggestions of local flowers that would be in season for our October wedding.  She did a great job walking us through - starting with my bouquet and then flowers for my girls, all the way down to centerpieces.  In addition she said she was flexible about us bringing our own stuff to help save $$ and said she'd provide a proposal with the cost for everything so we could pick and choose what would work for us.  We left the meeting pleased, feeling only slightly concerned that she mentioned she was worried all that we had discussed would not quite fit into the budget I had sent her earlier in the week.

Mom and Dad had to take off - but Javs and I had one more appointment with Jenn of Sugar Magnolia.  Since day one when we started asking for florist recommendations we've heard 'Sugar Magnolia!' 'Sugar Magnolia.' and 'Sugar Magnolia,'  but I was worried that with these glowing recommendations would come a too hot to handle bottom line.  I started to feel better when we arrived a the little shack barn store front that Jenn worked out of just off of 29.  It was....low key...and made me reconsider the idea that they were definitely out of our price range.  Javs and I sat and talked with Jenn and _____ (I cannot remember her name!) for over an hour.  Jenn was very laid back and felt, as Amy did, that my lack of specific ideas would be a blessing.  She named some of the same flowers we'd heard about from Amy as good options for October and seemed to draw a good feel from my pictures.  Then she took us upstairs to an attic that she had converted into a vase/tin/porcelain/container heaven.  Along the walls were countless options for our centerpieces that she'd collected through the years.  It. was. cool.  She also promised to be flexible about items we wanted to provide ourselves and said we'd receive a proposal with everything to review.

It was hard to compare the proposals side by side (each had slightly different ideas for our centerpieces and therefore priced them out differently) they were very similar over all.  Neither was below our budget, but with a few items cut (that we'll take care of ourselves) we felt comfortable going with either florist.  The following weekend we had a walk through at Ash Lawn with our caterer to lay out where tables, chairs, etc should all be placed for the wedding (since we're renting such stuff from them).  I decided to wait until after that appointment to make the call regarding our florist (so I'd know exactly how many tables we'd have and therefore how many centerpieces we'd need.)  Truthfully, Javs and I were already leaning Sugar Magnolia.  Sometimes its just chemistry and we'd agreed that we felt better after our meeting with Jenn just slightly over Amy.  When our caterer asked if we'd picked a florist at our appointment the following weekend we shared that we were debating between Blue Ridge and Sugar.  'Go with Sugar,' she said (yet another recommendation).  That did it.  We would!  I mailed them a deposit and the signed proposal today - another vendor down :) and happy flowers on the way!