Flowers by Extortion

This is ridiculous. I am trying to sort out flowers for my wedding. I don’t want anything extravagant. It’s a small wedding. No church pews to decorate. No fancy centrepieces. No cascading bouquets made of tropical orchids that only bloom once every ten years.

Daisies. White gerbera daisies with black centres. That’s all I want. Well, not totally true, I’d like white calla lilies but I can’t afford them…although with the prices I am being quoted…I might not be able to afford daisies either! All I want is three stems of large headed gerberas on each table, boutonnieres for six men, corsages for four women, a bouquet for myself, my bridesmaid and my niece. Daisies are about $2 per stem. Yesterday I went into three florists and asked about the arrangements….I received quotes on a bouquet (remember, I am just looking for simple hand tied bouquets…not fancy cascading things…arrangements holding a max of 15 flowers) ranging from $60-$150 for my bouquet alone! That is totally insane and I could probably figure out how to make it myself for $30! $35 for a corsage? $20 for a boutonniere? Are they nuts? YouTube has a video that shows how to make a single rose boutonniere in about 30 seconds! And a white rose only costs about $3. I think I am going to learn how to make boutonnieres and corsages this weekend!

That old adage “you only get married once” (besides being untrue for many) always seemed to me to hold the meaning of “why waste money on something you only do once”. But lately it’s taken on a different meaning…Kirk and I have been together for so long…and I truly believe that we will only get married once…and after this long, that is something to celebrate, and celebrate right…even if we only have a short time to pull it together. It’s the limited budget that is bothering me.

I thought we could pull a wedding off for something around $5000, and I didn’t even really want to try to reallocate that much money, particularly when I have no idea if I will be working after March… now the reality comes to roost and this is going to cost much, much more than that by the time all is said and done…I used to think people were being ridiculously extravagant when they talked about $30,000 weddings, but now I just read that the average…the “average” wedding costs approximately $40,000! I suppose a large part of it is living in a big city. You’d think that would make things easier and less expensive, but I now realize that it is the opposite. Even though we have bartered for the venue, have a friend helping with the food, have managed to swing a deal on a cake (I think)…I didn’t expect to pay so much for rings, a dress, a suit, the alcohol, and certainly not for the flowers! Daisies no less!

Sometimes I think we should have done this years ago. And then I wonder why we are doing it at all. It’s stressful, particularly financially. I feel badly asking guests to pay for drinks, but no one in either of our families has offered to help out financially so we are on our own. I know that traditionally the brides father helps out substantially….but we haven’t been offered anything. We may not have accepted, but it would have been so nice to have received an offer at least.

And so it goes.

I think I am going to be glad when this is all over and I have something less personal to stress about.