How To Decorate Your DIY Wedding Arch & Floral DIY Advice | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello, lovely humans, and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern-day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way, because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with all of the I was going to say constituents. They're not constituents. The people over in the Master Plan course and answer your questions in live time. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master Plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. I'm getting married in November. I want purple and white or cream colored flowers for my bouquet. It's an inside wedding. What species of flowers are good to buy in November? So Rebecca has taught me this. Rebecca has taught me so many things about florals. I don't know if you all know, but when I first got started with my business— we're gonna take a little aside because I just love this human so much. I was doing my second styled shoot of all time, like of all time. I hadn't even worked a wedding yet, and I was like, this is gonna be great. And I walk into a local flower shop right down the road, and I'm like, hey, any flowers? I'm doing a style shoot. And she was like, oh no way, I'm up, I, I do wedding florals. And she wrote her name and number on a little tiny piece of paper. And I, I had that, I think, even up until we moved to Texas 5 years ago. So she is like OG, has been in the game with me the entire time. Gosh, I remember my first expo, um, if y'all have ever heard, heard me talk about the Bridal Expo booth that we've done in the past, she did a bunch of florals for it. And I was like, this is the best. And then she turned out to be one of my dearest friends of all time. So what she has taught me about florals is, because so many of them are greenhouse grown, you can kind of get them year round. Now, if you're working with something, someone local, and you want to be really intentional about that, there might be a little bit of a difference that we see here for a more cold weather crop or cold weather variety. But if you're ordering from a place like Fifty Flowers, if you're DIYing it, or if your florist orders through a wholesaler, you will likely be able to get a whole lot of flowers at any time of year. Let's take peonies, for example. Obviously, Trader Joe's goes off in May with peonies. I don't know if you have a Trader near you. I don't anymore. It's so sad. But you're going to get the biggest peonies during that season. But you can likely get access to them through a wholesaler almost year— almost, if not all year round. They will just be slightly smaller. Just got the hybrid tulip peonies today. Oh, are they so delicious? Beautiful. I know. Oh my gosh, that makes me so, so happy. So as far as your floral question is concerned, Amanda, Rebecca, I'm wondering if you can think of anything that's seasonal for November if they're wanting to work with someone that's local. Rebecca started to do a lot of work with a very sustainable florist. In California. She's doing incredible stuff. She's trying to move away from foam and use a lot of reusable things, chicken wire. I think she uses frogs, etc. Urban Marigold is doing some really, really incredible sustainable work when it comes to wedding florals, and I love her eye. So if you can think of any, Bex, that would be awesome. Just in case you want to go hyperlocal on that, but honestly, for the most part, just about everything should be available if you're not going hyperlocal. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to. And you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie, actually, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions. Guess what? You need to join the Master Plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the Master Plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out at wolferandco.com TMP. That's wolferandco.com TMP. Listen, wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision, and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to weddingpriorities.com. My flowers are faux galaxy orchids, purple and teal/blue. I ordered all of my florals last year— bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, single pieces for centerpieces— from Etsy, and I absolutely, absolutely love them. Yes. Instead of doing white organza on our arch, we are planning on doing shades of purple. Will it look naked without florals on the arch? I'm not keen on mixing in other kinds of flowers. Colors are purple, teal, and gold. I live in Canada, so ordering more flowers from Etsy is astronomically more expensive than it was when I ordered previously. P.S. I wish I could attach a picture— a photo of my bouquet here. Cascading Galaxy Orchids with White Calla Lilies and Pearls. Oh my God, that sounds good. Thank you for— you're so cute. She spelled out how to sound her— out her name. Thank you. Um, That sounds really pretty. I think that if you— I think you should be fine. I think that we're used to seeing florals on arches, but that doesn't mean that they're necessary. There almost feels like a little bit of a relief if you're just doing the organza. I don't think it'll look naked. I think you'll be okay. I'm meeting with a potential florist next week, and I would like some advice on what questions to ask. I love flowers and definitely want lots for the wedding, but I'm considering DIYing a faux floral arch/aisle flowers instead of getting real ones to save some money. I definitely want real flowers for the tables and my bouquet. Do you think it's usually worth— do you think it's usually worth doing all that, or maybe better to go with the real florals? Ellie, this is a great question. I think it would be a good idea to get a quote from the florist regardless. It's not going to hurt anything to be like, here's my full vision of what I'm looking for, and get a full quote from them, and then go, okay, I can't pay for that. I literally went today as part of my errands to ship fertilized eggs to a friend. In California and went to ship the eggs. And I was like, what's the fastest it can go? He's like, oh, overnight. I was like, okay, cool. Like, what's that cost? He's like, $300. And I was like, oh no, no, she can get them a couple days later. We're not doing that. But we don't know the full scope unless we get a full quote. So I would say give your potential florist the whole vision, everything that you want, right? And then you can trim from there. But at least you're going in equipped with numbers. Of course, having a florist do your florals for you, it's gonna be more expensive. Um, faux flowers, however, are more expensive than DIYing with real flowers. I did a video— gosh, I don't even know how long ago— of the comparison, and it turns out that obviously faux florals are gorgeous, and if that's your thing, uh, the faux florals can be gorgeous if that's your thing and you want to hold on to them and have them in your home later. That feels like an investment. But most of the time, brides really struggle with reselling that stuff afterwards. A lot of people don't want to purchase florals afterwards. So you will likely be stuck with them unless that's something that you want, which is great. But to get good enough faux florals that look good— not Dollar Tree version, but look good— is way more expensive stem per stem than it is to get the real thing. There is actually a whole blog article that I read when we did this video. Rebecca, if you could find that, that would be awesome. Because you'll end up spending more on the faux florals than you would if you DIY'd with real flowers. So unless you really, really, really want to have these in your home afterwards, I would suggest doing a cost comparison. But of course, you doing it yourself is going to be cheaper than the florist doing it. Just, is it worth the sweat equity for you? If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the Master Plan community over at themasterplanwed.com. Com. I would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a 5-star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about sometimes. And until next time, bye guys!