How To Pick Your Own Wildflowers for Your Wedding | 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 lifetime. 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. Alex said my budget for florals is less than $1,000 and I'm having a hard time finding solutions here in Canada. Lots of the bulk distributors you mentioned do not ship here. Getting married at the end of August in the peak of wildflower season. Oh, delicious! Which are my favorite kind of flowers. My question is this: how crazy would I be to just get the girlies together in a field and pick a bunch of wildflowers as bouquets a day or two before the wedding? I love it. I feel like it could be memorable, fun, and a much more sustainable alternative. I'm worried there are details and logistics I'm not considering here. What would I need to consider to make this work? Oh, this makes me excited for you. The only thing that I would want you to do is, well, what have you— have you picked these flowers before? Some of them look gorgeous in the soil. The second you pluck them up, they wilt immediately. So I want you to go with florals that you're pretty sure should be fine. A great example of that is magnolia. Flowers. I remember I did this years ago and I was like, there was a blooming magnolia tree and I was like, yes! And I went and trimmed off one of the florals and stuck it in water, and within 2 hours all the petals had fallen off. And I was like, well, that's dumb. Feel like we made a mistake on that one, Lord. Like, why, why didn't it just stay together? Um, so that's the only thing that I can think of. I do think it's a delightful idea to just go and scoop them up. My mom has a saying, whenever we see a field of wildflowers, which we have a ton of here in Texas in spring, she's like, I just want to scoop them up. You know, it's like, like if you're driving past a field of wildflowers and just want to stick your hand out and just grab as many as you can as you drive past. I don't think it's crazy. It's brilliant. I love it. It's whimsical. It's so cute. So just make sure that you have florals that are not going to just go kaput on you. Okay, and then Yeah, my hopes that you've done this before. And then worst case scenario, is there a grocery store? Oh, and then greenery. Do you just want a scoop of wildflowers, or do you want any greenery? A lot of grocery stores here, at least in the States, places like Trader Joe's, you can actually place a bulk flower order with them. So I'd be curious to see if you could place a flower order with a local grocery store, or if you have a larger wholesale grocery store. We have Sam's Club here, we've got Costco. See if you have some sort of alternative that's like that, that sells flowers. See if you can place a bulk order so you can bulk order greens, scoop up whatever wildflowers you want, and then just have a day of it. I think it's delightful. I think this is so cute. 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. If my family does DIY, how do I navigate setup and takedown? I don't want them lighting all the candles and removing all the items. I don't know what that means, Kendra. If you're here, if you could give me a little bit more clarity. You only want some of the candles lit and you don't want them removing all the items. I— but regardless, I think just having really, really, really clear communication is huge. It's extremely helpful. So if that means— one thing that I did for my wedding is I had an overhead view of the venue, and then I created a map with a legend. So I Item A, B, C, D, whatever, all the way through. And then they would refer to— so I'd mark where item A is and they would refer to a list of what that item was. So I didn't have to like write like, you know, string light from here to here. I didn't have to get that detailed, but they could look at it, refer to the list, and then be like, boom, great, we got this going. And then mark individual things or boxes with the items that are in that box and Maybe even go as far as having a piece of paper that says what you want them to do with those items. If you don't want all the candles lit, write only light 5 of 10 candles. If you don't want them to remove all the items, that's what I don't quite understand. But hopefully that's clear enough. You can't overdo it on the explaining. I mean, they might get a little annoyed if there's 72 Post-its on one singular item, but when in doubt, go over the top with your explanation. Try to be as clear as possible. Walk through it with the person that's doing the— that's heading up the spearheading the setup for you. Um, walk through it with them a couple days beforehand in case they have any questions. So you're not leaving anything to the last minute. And as far as teardown is concerned, what I like to do is make sure those bins are very readily accessible, and they'll just be tucked under like the welcome table or the buffet table, um, or something like that. So as whoever's doing that setup will know where those boxes are and could put everything back in afterwards. I hope that answered your question. Okay, May Bride in San Diego or South Dakota. Maybriden SD. I'm doing fake flowers for all the faraway decor and real flowers for my bouquet, groom's boutonniere, and bud vases for my centerpieces. San Diego. Okay, cool. Would recommend Trader Joe's or Costco for— hold on. Would recommend Trader Joe's or Costco for the real flowers, or is there another nugget— I'm assuming budget-friendly— nugget-friendly. Let's call it nugget-friendly from here on out. Other budget-friendly options? Colors are pastel, dusty blue, and blushes with sage green. Flowers are wildflowers. Thank you. Hobbit wedding. Oh yes, okay. Um, I don't think you have as much control on what you receive from Trader Joe's. Conveniently, Rebecca also used to work at Trader Joe's and knows how the florist stuff works there as well, so she might be a great question— a great person to answer this question specifically. Costco's very limited. They've got some, some good greens. I think Costco is a great place to get greens, baby's breath. But as far as their floral selection overall, you don't get a lot of texture and a lot of variety. So I don't think— I think whatever Costco is gonna have wildflower version, it's just gonna likely be those like really bright, oftentimes dyed flowers where you get like a really bright blue and a really bright purple, and they're not organic or organically, naturally those tones. You could probably get some pastels, but it's going to be a lot more limited in what kind of florals that you're getting. So maybe Rebecca has a little additional advice on Trader Joe's, because I feel like they have way better selection there. So just depends. It's going to be a sliding scale. Sam's Club, Costco are going to be the cheapest, but have the smallest selection. Trader Joe's might be a little bit more expensive, but have a little bit more of a selection. 50 Flowers, sky's the limit. Like, there's so many things you can get from 50 Flowers, but it's going to be a lot, probably not a lot more, but a decent amount more than it would be with Costco. But then you get varieties that have texture, that have movement. You can get dahlias, you can get mums, you get all of these different sorts of things that you probably would not be able to get from Costco. So think about when you go to Costco and you look at the florals that they have there, you're pretty much limited and boxed into what those offerings are. You can also look it up online. They have that as an option. 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. 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!