Flowers for Jennifer, part II

I had an astonishingly productive weekend. We got Eric's car fixed (mostly--to save $100 we also have to go in next weekend), got some AAA brochures about our honeymoon, visited a nursery to inquire about papyrus (and found some lovely stones we'll be going back for when we pave the garden path), bought a coffeemaker and a small ice cream maker for test batches, got the best man to try on his vest, mowed, mulched, discussed the gutters the city's asking us to fix with Eric's mom, and worked on wedding music.

And we ordered flowers. The florist at Hafner's never called me back, but Hafner's was between the AAA place and the nursery, so Saturday morning we stopped by. We got asked to come back in twenty minutes, so we went to the nursery first after all, but on the way back we stopped back in. The wedding florist (what do they call the people who do wedding flowers?) was with "a regular customer whose mother just died," so Tink, the wedding florist's assistant, asked what we wanted. She got everything down, took names, agreed to make a tiny safety-pin corsage for Eric's niece, made recommendations, asked if certain flowers would be okay as fillers. Her total? $258. And she didn't ask for a deposit. We agreed to pick up the flowers the night before the wedding and walked out, happy. "If you want the best flowers in town, go to Glendale," Eric said as we were getting back into the car.

"But we don't need the best flowers in town; we'd rather have the extra $220," I concluded, and he agreed.

Flowers for Jennifer

I just got back from the florist. Wow--serious sticker shock. She quoted me $480--$125 for my bouquet (admittedly a somewhat tricky one), $65 for two bridesmaids' bouquets, $20 each for several corsages and boutonnieres and a couple for $15. When I expressed dismay she said we could maybe reduce the corsages slightly and save me around $70, and started talking about how people would love the flowers, not how I could, you know, make another choice to save money. So I wasn't inclined to stay and get her to do so--plus I had been away from work longer than I liked anyway.

I was prepared to pay somewhat more than my mental budget ($200) for the sake of convenience, because I'm not that interested in flowers really, but that's way more than I'm willing to pay, even for convenience. So I asked around at work and got a couple of other names, and I guess I'll be calling them today. With less than four weeks to go, I need to move quickly on this.

Or I'll go to the farmer's market Saturday (they're open! Hooray!) and see if any of the flower growers there can provide me with enough that I can make my own. I saw a The Knot book on flowers at the florist, and read a little tutorial on making boutonnieres. It looks like something I could do. Especially to save hundreds of dollars.