A rose by any other name

On Tuesday, I received my test shipment from 2G Roses. I'd ordered a mix of 25 roses for our "test" bunch. I knew I'd have some free time now that the holidays are behind us so I figured I'd grab a couple of bridesmaids, test out their bouquet making skills, and investigate the quality of the flowers I'd be getting.

The test met and exceeded my expectations! It went really super - well until the fire. But we'll get to that. I'm getting ahead of myself.

New Year's Day - Amy (sister and maid-of-honor), Kirsten and Steph (bridesmaids extraordinaires) stop by. Armed with the 25 roses from 2G and a dozen bought at the grocery store with some baby's breath, we set to work to see how we could do.

First off, let me just say that the quality of the roses from 2G was awesome! They came firm and healthy, and as promised, two days later they were blooming and beautiful.

Our first attempt at a bouquet. We got a mix of colors in our test bunch so we could choose exactly which color we want. These were a bunch of the pastels. Beautiful, but not what we'll be doing. What this did teach us was how big we wanted the bridesmaids' bouquets and how we wanted them to look.

Our first boutonniere. Steph will definitely be in charge of this. She knocked this out in like 45 seconds. Pretty bad ass if you ask me.
After I banged out the first bouquet, and Steph showed her serious boutonniere skills, I unwrapped the first bouquet and let the three of them try. I had cookies to make for dessert that night, so I stepped into the kitchen (right next to where we were working) and preheated the oven.

While I was mixing, the amazing ladies came up with this. The first picture is our first attempt at a bridesmaid's bouquet.The next picture takes a look at what Amy's maid-of-honor bouquet would look like. A little fuller with a couple more roses. Kirsten and Amy did great jobs with these!A great shot at how beautiful the 2G flowers are... and Steph's serious skills.Instead of baby's breath, we considered green filler. We all decided it was a little too Christmas-y for our taste.

While the bridesmaids were working, I checked on the oven. This is what happened:

Nothing foggy or out of focus about these pictures. The house was FILLED with thick, smelly smoke. I'd made meatballs for dinner a few nights prior and apparently having about a 1/2 cup of grease at the bottom of your oven is a bad idea... When it first started smoking, I thought, "Oh, I'll just turn up the heat to burn it off quicker." The result, which was not captured on film, was a HUGE grease fire in my oven. After calmly informing my fiance that I had lit the house on fire, and remembering we never actually got around to buying a fire extinguisher, we shut the stove and waited for it to burn out.

After politely avoiding teasing me for lighting my house on fire, and hiding upstairs and outside in the 15 degree weather because no one could breathe, we regrouped in the living room to attack the final bouquet - mine!

Without baby's breath, and then with:

Isn't it pretty?? This was with the grocery store roses and some of the extra 2G ones. For the wedding, my bouquet will be twenty French Red and Black Magic Red roses with baby's breath. I love it!

After we finished with that, while we were waiting for the smoke to finish clearing, we played with mixing red and white for the bridesmaids' bouquets. Here's the result: I really love this! I think this will be what we go with in the end.

An exciting afternoon for sure. I have some really talented bridesmaids and I'm SO excited that not only are we going to save some serious dough, but we'll all have a personal touch on our bouquets.