Saving Myself From Insanity

As I've mentioned before, we are not using a florist for our wedding. We ordered our flowers through an online wholesaler, Fifty Flowers. 300 flowers will arrive the Wednesday prior to the wedding because they need more time to open than the others. The remaining flowers will arrive on Thursday. When I started to think about everything I needed to make, I realized I needed to assign some of the designing to someone else. I just couldn't drive myself bonkers over it. I went on a search... where else, but Etsy, of course! I kept favoriting one seller's pieces, so I figured it was a sign.

I contacted Erica Cavanaugh to design our boutonnieres. She asked me to send her inspiration pictures to give her an idea of the "feel" of our wedding. Of course, I had no problem finding pictures to send her.



I told her that our colors are kelly green and pale blue and that we were striving for a "natural" look with lots of birch and white flowers. I asked for dusty miller-like leaves and silver brunia if she could track it down. Within 48 hours, she'd already created a mock-up of a groomsman bout, and I loved it. She couldn't find either of the items I'd asked for, but she made it work with another silver/gray leaf and wood balls instead. I wasn't really digging a bow in front, so she used a mother-of-pearl button turned around backwards. It just happened to look very "natural" and worked perfectly. I had her make 7 of them: 4 for groomsmen, 2 for my usher/brothers, and one for Jeremy's uncle/godfather.
She whipped those up in no time flat and then asked how I wanted the fathers' bouts to look different. I explained to her that I didn't want my two dads to have identical bouts, but I didn't want either to stand out. How hard is that?! Apparently, it's not too much of a feat for Erica! I loved what she came up with for the dads. They are each slightly different from each other.
I had a hard time determining how to make J's different. I finally came up with the idea of not using green ribbon (as blue is really his favorite, and green is mine). I asked her if she could pick up gingham ribbon. She wasn't sure if it'd work at first, but I think it came out wonderfully.
I can't wait for them to arrive. AND-- I'm SO excited to not have to do them myself.
One more thing off the to-do list.