How We Bought Our Whole Wedding Online Part 2: Flowers, Invitations

Flowers It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you prefix anything with ‘wedding’ it becomes twice as expensive. I don’t think this is totally unreasonable. If you’re making a dress or catering an event, the stakes are probably much higher if a wedding is involved. But I still didn’t feel like paying £100 upwards for a ‘wedding’ bouquet when I could just buy a normal, lovely bouquet of spring flowers and tie some string around it. So I bought my bouquet online (see above): it was this one, from the Fresh Flower Company, who use mostly seasonal flowers. It was £40 and smelled heavenly; I think I might order it again now that all the spring flowers they used – anenomes and grape narcissi and paperwhites – are out.

Twirling with my bouquet. As you do.

But then there were the other flowers. The ones that I fretted over. Specifically, flowers on tables while people eat. I don’t know why but I got very bewildered over these. I initially thought the easiest thing would be to buy a load of hydrangeas and put a few in small bowls on each tables. But I’d have had to buy the flowers and the bowls, and get them to the venue, and I just couldn’t deal. The manager of the place pointed out that once all the glasses and china etc were on the tables there really wasn’t much room for flowers, and they would put a large candle on each table which was plenty. I agreed that he was probably right, but then I fretted. Wasn’t it sad to have no flowers? Wouldn’t it ruin things to have no flowers? Then I told myself: no, don’t be ridiculous. But then – the morning before the wedding – I cracked and ordered these, which brilliantly came with their own containers. They were very pretty. Probably nobody noticed them.

Our reception. Can you spot the flowers?

Invitations Like so much to do with wedding planning, we were probably a bit stupid with these but it worked out fine. I was reading the only sane and helpful wedding website I could find, and via them I fell in love with the Metropolitan printable invite from A Printable Press. The idea is you print it yourself and I knew I could get it printed through work. Unfortunately the sizing etc was all American and there were a lot of complicated conversations about formats and re-sizing and Pantone shades, so I’m not sure I’d go that route again, but whatever, it got done. I also got envelopes free from work (fancy stock left over – the perks of working in publishing). But we did pay for the stamps, you’ll be glad to know. Second class. If I were doing it again … I do love the elegance of having a printed invitation, but I would possibly use something like www.paperlesspost.com. Because people can lose printed invites, and then you get a text from your friend the morning of saying ‘What time is your wedding again?’ And you’ll end up having to send an email with some extra details anyway. We didn’t have a wedding website though. Life, and our engagement, were too short.