Mint

This weekend I actually got to get all dressed up in my wedding dress – hair, jewelry, makeup and all – and did my bridal portraits. My photographer, mom, and I went to a slightly overgrown garden, where the cherry blossoms and azaleas were in full bloom. It was a gorgeous, sunny and mid-70s kind of day, and we had a great time.

I also got to try my hand at making a bouquet. Since my budget was only $25, I decided to go to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and just buy whatever was available. They actually didn’t have many white flowers beside roses, and so I ended up using a lot more greenery than I had planned on (see my inspiration here). I bought five different kinds of plants, and ended up spending about $31, which wasn’t too bad.

The first thing I picked was freesia, because it smells delicous and looked super fresh. The cottage flower looked a little tired, but I liked that it was more off-white than the freesia, to soften things up. The Italian Ruscus gave a “picked from the garden” kind of look, and the green hellebores was a great filler since I didn’t have much white to choose from. The ginestra was a last minute addition; I couldn’t resist contrast of the long, thin stems with the softer freesia and hellebores.

Once I had the bouquet looking decent (standing in front of a mirror helped fine-tune things) I used a piece of fabric to wrap around the stems. I folded the edges of the fabric under, and used straight pins to hold the fabric on to the bouquet.

Can’t wait to see the photos! Less than three weeks to go now…