How To Time DIY Florals on Your Wedding Day | 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. Emily said, what are your thoughts on DIY real flowers if you're staying/getting ready at a hotel? Is this possible? I was thinking of using real greenery and faux flowers. Have you seen this executed well? Will it make the faux flowers look even more fake? Okay, I am a real flower girly through and through. I'm a stan. I, I think that the— yes, the juxtaposition of those two together, you run the risk of them looking even more fake if that's what you're doing. I would instead recommend doing a hardier flower and Rebecca, please feel free to like correct me in front of everybody. I welcome it. I would just go for like something a little bit hardier that you know is going to perform well rather than spending enough money on faux florals so they look believable enough. Does that make sense? We do have a floral quiz if you want to take it, and it helps you kind of figure out what might be the best option for you. I know Something Borrowed Blooms is pretty awesome. Just don't get the scented kind. They offer like spraying perfume on their flower rentals, and I didn't know this, um, and we're on like a, like a little less toxic journey where we're like trying to be mindful of fragrances, and I opened that box up and I was like, it's a little overwhelmed. So if you're looking for high quality florals that are faux, renting them through Something Borrowed could be a really, really good option for you. But I know usually when we DIY it's because we're balling on a budget, um, very rarely is it because I you just— the person loves flowers and can't imagine not doing them. So in a situation like this, I would see if there's any way that someone else can transport them for you on your behalf, because I don't want you setting them up on your wedding day regardless. I don't care if you're getting ready at the venue where you're getting married at, I just don't want that burden to fall on your shoulders. So ideally we're gonna have someone else handle that for you. Um, so if that means, you know, that kind of lessens the pressure, it doesn't really matter where you're getting ready if you you can have someone else just kind of take that over for you. Yeah, I would say either go full faux or go full real. If it's close enough that people can touch, it's close enough that they can tell. So if that's the case, then I would go one direction or the other and then pick things that are a little bit hardier. Try to avoid things that are really temperamental and fall apart. No sweet peas, okay? Sweet peas are not for the faint of heart. Yep. Oh, see, the florist agrees. Agree, one or the other. 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. Uh, Alyssa said, I'm planning on DIYing my florals from Fifty Flowers. I'm also having a tent wedding and I imagine the tent and tables wouldn't arrive till maybe the day before. Course, I'll be getting ready all day on wedding day. So do I spend all day the day prior to the wedding doing the styling and then just let them sit out for 24 hours? Or how do people usually plan when they do their styling and event design? Do I need to hire people? How does it all come together if I'm doing it myself? Great questions. Okay, so typically, I think I have the timeframe right. You want them delivered on Wednesday, processed on Thursday, which means like taking off all the guard petals. So when you get the flowers, like, you know, roses, etc., roses specifically, they have the petals that are called guard petals on the outside. Those are supposed to look bad. We want bad-looking petals on the outside so we can kind of pull those off and make sure you have something really nice on the inside. And then Friday for styling for a Saturday event. So yes, but you're going to kind of want to lengthen this process a little bit. It could be a Thursday delivery. Correct me if I'm wrong, Rebecca, but I'm pretty sure you could have a Wednesday delivery Thursday process, Friday put together, or Thursday start the greens and then Friday do— I just have her here to gas me up, guys— and then Friday to put everything, finishing touches, put everything together. Ideally in a temperature-controlled space, not a fridge, that's too cold. So if you have a room that has like one of those window air conditioning units that you can kind of just keep a little bit cooler, fantastic. We want to make sure everything's topped up water-wise, and so they always have a consistent source of water. If you are doing boot boutonnieres, those need to be done at the very last minute because those don't have a water source. If you're doing a headpiece, again, last minute, no water source. So it might be one of those things— can't— I think I've put boutonnieres in the fridge before, but you just obviously don't have enough space in your fridge most likely to handle all of that. Then as far as the setup goes, usually I would pass this off, like I mentioned the other question when we're talking about this, to someone else who can do this. You know, if it's a parent, if it's your mom, if it's the groomsmen and you just send up a photo of what it's supposed to look like, you need a body to take it from wherever it's being stored to your venue and place it on the center of the tabletop. Now this is not diminishing what a florist does, obviously we know they work really hard, but the actual act of like getting them, transporting them, as long as there's enough flat space, we're not stacking them on top of each other, right, because that's not ideal. And then in a dream world, if you have any spare florals and the person who's delivering them has like a little bit of an eye for what they're doing, they can replace anything that might have gotten damaged during transit or looks a little bit sad. But don't stress about that too much. We just want to make sure they stay temperature controlled, and we want to make sure they're well hydrated and you don't prep them too far in advance. So Wednesday delivery, Thursday processing, maybe start doing some of the greens, especially if they're hardier. Friday, finish all the styling, putting everything together, and then Saturday someone transports it. So I'm crocheting my centerpieces. Stop it! My daughter just made her first top and she would die to hear it. Making little roses, but I would like some dried or fresh greenery for dimension. How many types of greenery would be needed for 12 flowers? Would ruscus and/or baby's breath suffice? As far as greenery is concerned, well, baby's breath obviously is not greenery, but it does add some more dimension. I love, I love Italian ruscus. It's my favorite. There's Italian and Israeli. Israeli is one that most people, most time you see, has a little bit more firmness to the stem. Italian kind of droops a little bit more, has a little bit more movement to it, and the leaves are a little bit smaller. So I do, I do love a good Italian ruscus. I feel like in a situation like this I would recommend at least 2 different kinds of greenery and baby's breath, if that's something you want to incorporate. Ruscus and salal, or lemon leaf, would be great options for that. If you want to add in a different dimension to that, like a different tone, I don't think eucalyptus is a good call if you only have ruscus and eucalyptus. I think you need like a third element, which is where the baby's breath might come in and soften it up a little bit. But the green next to that like sagey eucalyptus color not exactly my favorite. I like something else in between to kind of bridge that gap. And I would say Silver Dollar would be your best bet if you're going with Israeli Ruscus, because Silver Dollar will droop. So you kind of want something that falls a little bit, something that maybe has a little bit more structure. That's what I would look for there. So I would think maybe two types of greenery. I love, um, salal leaves. They're pretty, they're pretty big, probably like that. Um, so they add a really pretty statement. So I kind of like the idea of the salal forming like a good base, the ruscus kind of forming a little bit of like antenna-type features. I'm not the term for it, okay, but everyone knows what I'm talking about when I say that. And then the baby's breath to kind of fill in the fluff of the in-between. I think that could work. 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!