Wedding Day Details: Flowers

{Photograph of our wedding day blooms by Seth Parker}

What amazes me most about weddings is the sheer cost of them. Seriously. Delicious, beautifully decorated cake for a family gathering? R300. For a wedding? Make that R3000! My husband is an incredibly low-key guy who dislikes anything flashy or over-the top, so his only stipulation for our wedding day was that it would be a budget-friendly affair. I'll admit that we did clash over this at times (I was hell-bent on wearing Louboutins on my wedding day. Husband was not thrilled. He won, in the end!), but I soon became the ultimate frugal bride, sniffing out bargains like it was nobody's business. One thing that completely shocked me was the cost of flowers, so I immediately decided that I would do all the flowers, centre pieces and table decor myself. With resources such as Pinterest at my disposal, it was bound to be a fairly easy task.

{Images: All from Pinterest}

I've always said that my 'One' would never dare buy me roses, but would buy me Proteas instead. And what was the first flower Mr ever bought me? Why, a King Protea, of course! Needless to say, we decided that our wedding flowers would be Proteas right from the get-go, and the rest of our wedding theme pretty much evolved from there. Given that our ceremony took place in our garden at home in Noordhoek, the theme for our reception soon became an enchanting garden party with lots of lovely, South African details thrown in for good measure (a good ol' spit braai and salads to feast on? A vast selection of local craft beers to choose from? You can't get more South African than that!) We decided on cream and red as a colour theme, which tied in nicely with our choice of flower. We have several Pincushion bushes scattered around our garden and these have fast become my favourite flowers, so we decided to use an assortment of Pincushions, Proteas and other indigenous lovelies to pretty up our tables. I loved the idea of using everyday objects, like consol glass jars and tins, and adding a few pretty touches using raffia and hessian rope to add a touch of colour to our tables, so we started collecting tins and glass jars a couple of months before our wedding. As it turns out, Pincushions aren't as abundant during December as we'd hoped, so we needed a plan B. The day before our wedding, I went off to the Earth Fair Market in Tokai (in the Builder's Warehouse Centre on Main Road) and found a friendly vendor with an assortment of flowers to choose from. I ended up buying 7 large bunches of Proteas with other indigenous grasses and flowers thrown in for good measure for just R210. The end result? Pretty tins decorated with hessian rope and filled with Pincushions, and elegant Proteas in big, glass jars lining our tables. I decorated our house with these for weeks after our wedding - here's a shot of our gorgeous centre pieces on our mantle.

{Photograph by me, on Instagram}

I originally approached a few florists to find out about the costs of having a bouquet made for me (we chose not to have bridesmaids or groomsmen), but when the cheapest quote amounted to roughly R500 for a single King Protea, I decided to make use of my creativity and create something fabulous myself. As it turns out, I didn't have to. My super-talented and super-creative husband bought a King Protea for R50, and made use of red ribbon and hessian to pretty it up. 

{Photograph of my beautiful bouquet by Seth Parker}

The tables looked absolutely magical, thanks to our DIY tins and my new mother-in-law's fabulous floral arranging skills. One of the things I'm most proud of when it comes to our wedding, is how absolutely beautiful our tables looked and how little it cost us. We bought about two reels of hessian rope and a reel of raffia that cost us no more than R60, and we managed to collect all the tins ourselves. We did buy a few glass jars at Merry Pak, but this only set us back about R100 at most. We collected Pincushions and an assortment of grasses from our garden, and we bought 7 bunches of Proteas for R210. Add all that to the R50 we spent on my bouquet, and the total cost of our wedding blooms comes to approximately R420. And there you have it. Wedding on a budget? With a little creativity and shopping around (and lots of inspiration from Pinterest!), it can most certainly be done!