June 2nd, 2009 by Ang

OK so today, my infinitely adorable hairdresser Emily and I were going to go look at flowers.  Since I’m trying to save money, I figured that I would do my own flowers, but we needed a supplier.  She has done a buttload of weddings, and I’m using her as a surrogate bridesmaid since my sister isn’t up here for another few days and my other one is off going to graduation parties and such.  But Emily is pure awesome so I was happy.

I was wearing nice jeans, a fancy cami and a little khaki jacket with my cute black heels, I had my Michael Kors glasses on and my hair was curly (And actually looked good for once), and my brown leather hobo Coach bag.  Emily had on some expertly torn jeans and a pink bandeau top and the reason I’m going on like this was we didn’t look like welfare lookie loo ghetto princesses.  We looked like we had money to spend dammit.

We met up at a certain florist in my town (Who’s link I will not give you as I don’t want to give them any added traffic), and headed inside.  It’s kind of been around since God, and if you ask for a Florist, everyone tells you to go there.  So we walk in and this lady comes up to us and asks if she can help us.  I explained that I was getting married and that I was going to do the flowers myself, but I heard that they supplied gorgeous florals and wanted to check them out.  She looks up at me, one perfectly shaped brow raised and in a highly irked voice said “And WHY would you want to do that?”  “Because I’m on a budget, but I still want to afford a quality product.” *Insert passive aggressive barracuda smile here*  “But do you have ANY IDEA how stressful that is going to be?”  “I am well aware of the work involved, and have several people set up to help me, thank you very much.”  *Stare off*  “Well I’m sorry but all our designers are immensely busy at the moment and you didn’t have an appointment, so you’re going to need to schedule one.”  *Death Glares*

OK so she is immensely rude and off putting and we had planned our day around this, and I’m a tad irked.  We set up an appointment for 2 weeks from now and went back to the car.  We talked about some florists and I mentioned one I had used awhile ago that I really liked.  We drove down a few towns over, and we smashed in the face with uber road construction, which made me drive past the florist like 3 times.  We finally pull in, and I wonder if they’re even open since everything seems really dark.  We walk in, and the lady behind the counter was very nice and said hello (A nicety that the other shop was missing…)  Not wanting to waste time (As I had mental images of us going to approximately 20 billion florists that day.  Oh and I had NO idea we had so many florists, we have a freaking Japanese floral arranging studio for God’s sake.  Aw crap that was another tangent.), I told her right away what I was looking for.  She smiled, said that unfortunately due to the construction they had no power, so their selection was immensely limited, but that we can talk to the designers.

So for some quick name dropping, we went to Woodman Florist in Milford, NH, and the designers that helped us were Karen and Kevin and they were AWESOME!!!  They apologized for the mess as they were taking the no power opportunity to do some spring cleaning.  They got bar stools for us and I gave them my current inspiration board.

I explained how I was going for a modern rustic autumnal chic thing.  I focused on the gorgeous arrangement next to the color pallet.  (Blatantly stolen from this post on Style Me Pretty)  I loved the colors, the softness, the vintageyness (that is SO a word!) and thought it’d be great as a base.  Karen and Kevin started giving me ideas (FREE ideas, since they knew that I was only going to be buying the flowers from them, and doing them myself.)  They asked about my budget and I said it was modest.  The antique green hydrangeas (The parisian flowers) were a bit more expensive per stem but I could get away with one of them per arrangement as opposed to smaller cheaper flowers where I would need a lot more than one, so it’d be cheaper in the long run.  For additional color in the bridesmaid bouquets we’re going to add hypericum berries.  My bouquet (Because it has to be bigger and more full of awesome) is going to have the berries and miniature callalillies in burgundy.  The boutineires are going to be the mini callalillies, berries, and greenery wrapped in burlap and silk ribbon, enhanced with buttons (which I found on Etsy and won’t post til I buy themn as I must hoard them).  They asked if I wanted uber perfect roundness MARTHA arrangments, and I inwardly laughed till I peed.  Outwardly I played the cool calm mature bride to be, chuckled slightly and said I was aiming for more of an organic organized chaos.

Another thing that shows just how amazing this florist shop is, we were discussing the date, and Kevin said that he got Married on November 6th and it’s like the 5th season in New England.  I said that the barren trees were sort of a theme in the wedding and went on to give them the quote from the invites.

Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.

Basically (for those non artistic poetry types) it basically means that when you’re young and in the prime of life, and things are going great, you marry someone and you’re two totally different people.  When you truly love each other, you start to depend on each other and become attached. Then you get old/have hard times/assorted badness you realize that you have merged together to become one and you’re that much stronger for it.

So I say this and Kevin leaves.  Emily look at each other like WTF?  And he comes back in with a piece of tree bark and comes up with this brilliant centerpiece idea that’s budget friendly, uber chic, and perfect.  (Which you’ll have to wait for, muwhahahaha.)

These people are amazing, they’re friendly, and the wealth of wisdom that they gave us is priceless.  And they did all of this for FREE!  I do have to say though that they were happy that I was organized.  (Stop laughing at me.)  Even though I feel completely unorganized and poorly prepared for this whole shindig, having the inspiration board was a HUGE help.  I also took pictures of the flowers (Most were in the book because they didn’t have them there).  They actually said that they’ve sent brides home to do homework before.  So just me throwing together a bunch of stuff that I liked really helped.

All that being said I’m trying to convince Emily to go into wedding planning.  She’s done approximately eleventy billion weddings (or 21, whatever) and we were talking about how frustrating it is for a TRUE budget bride.

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I HATE when I get all excited to see a bridal show, or read an article that screams “BUDGET BRIDE”, “CLASSY ON THE CHEAP”, “RECESSION RECEPTIONS”, and then you find out that their “budget” is $25,000.  What.  The.  Hell.  In what world is that a “Budget”?  My Budget is $5,000 including the honeymoon!  They spend more than that on their dresses!  And SOOOO many of these budget places are in large cities where they have all these neat little consignment shops and free venues.  What if you don’t have those options?  In New England everything is so freaking expensive, and stuffy, the only things in the consignment shops are gleaned by grave robbers accosting nursing homes, and it sucks and we really need someone like Emily who is classy and has taste, but is still willing to think outside the box.

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So yeah Emily is awesome and I love her, and apparently she’s being pimped out on theKnot, for her awesome hair styling too.  So seriously, she books up FAST, and if you want amazing hair, and live in Southern NH, call up Innovations in Merrimack and ask for Emily.