Flower Power

(Originally posted 4.15.12)

When we first started wedding planning, I racked my brain for what we were going to do for a flower girl and ring bearer. Both of my sisters are older (15 and 18,) so they would be my maid of honor and one of bridesmaids. Keegan's brother is 25 so he wouldn't work for a ring bearer.  I have 4 young-ish girl cousins that could have worked, but that would mean they would have to come down from Canada, a two day drive or numerous hour flight. I didn't want to put that pressure on them and their families so I didn't even bother asking. I figured we just wouldn't have a flower girl or ring bearer until Keegan suggested his cousin, A's two little girls. I hadn't met this cousin or her girls, but Keegan and A are really close and he wanted her as part of the wedding party so of course I said yes.

Asking A and her girls to be part of the wedding has been one of the best things we've done (I know I've said this before and I'll say it again and again.) A has been such a big help with the wedding from just checking in and seeing how things are going to offering to do my hair/makeup and well as the rest of my girls'. An added bonus? Her girls are absolutely adorable and will be perfect flower girls.

After asking both A and her girls to be part of our wedding, we came across another challenge. The venue we picked told us that our flower girls could only toss real flower petals. After some research, I realized that real flower petals are expensive! Also, we aren't having real flowers anywhere else, so I couldn't get them at a discount with my bouquet or something like that.

I looked around the internet and came up with the idea of rice paper. It would dissolve in the rain and I had the idea of punching out clover and leaf shapes, an overarching theme to our wedding. After second thought, I realized punching shapes out of rice paper would be similar to punching shapes out of tissue paper and would be a huge pain in the butt.  

More research showed me EcoFetti, a business that sells biodegradable wedding confetti as well as other wedding products. We ran the idea by our venue and they gave us the a-ok. The only problem I had with the ecofetti was their colors. They had a green and an orange, but they were really pastel, not something we were looking for. I stashed the idea in the back of my brain as an option and went on planning other things.

Well, we're officially....110 days away from the wedding (holy crap!) and I decided I needed to make a decision about what the flower girls will be tossing. I went back to the ecofetti, but I still wasn't feeling their colors. I Google searched for biodegradable wedding confetti and came across Save-On-Crafts.com. They have some biodegradable confetti, but only in white. I searched around their website for some more ideas and came across these:

Freeze dried natural flower petals. At $7.50/package or 3 for $21, I thought they were a little pricy, but do-able. I noticed that these were their "premium" selection but they had a "lesser" selection specifically for aisle tossing.

These are their aisle tossing flowers. A little less "perfect" than their premium blend, but hey, people are going to be walking on them so I don't care that much. At $5.50/bag or three bags for $15 my wallet also liked them more.

We got 3 bags for $15 plus $9 for shipping to total $23. Much better than the $50/"cup" I had seen for fresh flower petals. If we want them a little softer, we just re-hydrate them in a steamy room for about 30 minutes. Since they are freeze dried, we can order them now and (hopefully!) remember to bring them up to Missouri the week of the wedding. We don't need to worry about a florist bringing them the day of.

I got their flower girl baskets from Michael's on sale around Christmas for $8/each.

I'm in the process of taking off the bows and random stitching and adding ribbon in our colors. I think our flower girls will look wonderful with their baskets and their flowers! I can't wait!

And if you're wondering, we're not going to have a ring bearer. Neither one of us has a young boy in our families that we'd feel comfortable asking them to commit to coming to the wedding so we're just going to have Keegan's best man bring them down in his sporran (that's another post entirely!)