scott & ally
It took me a long time to decide if I was going to write about my own wedding or not, I ended up deciding that it was an important event to talk about because it was a pivatol moment in not only my personal life, but my professional life as well. This was the largest event that I have gotten to work at in my career thus far. I had done previous on site event work including adding the finishing touches on floral arrangements we had made in the shop and setting up vases in their desired locations. But for my own wedding, which was a province over from our home, there was no logical reason for transporting flowers that were pre-arranged. This meant all design was done on site, in the reception hall.
I was very blessed to have had many family and friends help me out with the undertaking of cutting & processing, designing & arranging the flowers. Three of my bridemaids had floral experience and were a huge support to me, and everyone else was very willing to help with what ever they could do. We had a lot of fun!
We picked up the flowers from my workplace in the morning and left everything in boxes so we could travel easily with everything. We drove the 6 hours from Saskatoon to Clear Lake, MB and unloaded the flowers at a family friends' cabin. We cut and processed all the flowers on their deck and stored them in their porch until Thursday, when we got the keys to the hall. Our hall was the stunning Danceland in Wasagaming, downtown Clear Lake. A truly beautiful and historic space.
We packed up my friends' van and had all the flowers in the hall in 3 trips.
We set up numerous tables behind the backdrop that was used behind the head table and we created a little on-site studio. All of the centrepieces, various reception arrangements, bouquets and boutonieres and corsages were made in Danceland. Here are several "behind the scenes" photos that show all the chaos and mess in its glory!
Let's move on to the flower details. Despite what you may think, I didn't have a set plan about what my flowers were going to look like. I simply ordered my favourite flowers in the colours I wanted and decided what was going where when we were arranging.
Orchids are one of my favourite flowers, so the bouquets had to feature green cymbidiums. There were 3 types of roses used; ivory standard roses, yellow and coral spray roses. As well as, viburnum, freesia, button mums and carnations. They were wrapped in a simple ivory lace ribbon and styled in a layered, round nosegay.
The flowers used for the centrepieces and reception arrangements used all the same flowers as the bouquets but also included snapdragons, oncidium orchids, hydgrangea, and curly willow. We had flowers at the guest book table, the entrance table, the memory table, the head table, the bar and in the bathrooms. We also hung flowers and origami butterflies on the backdrop behind the head table.
We opted to forgo the traditional table numbers and used flower names and football positions instead. My husband has had a lengthy career in football including player and now coach, so the table names were a nice personal touch.
The professional photos in this post were taken by the incredibly talented Jennie Weselowsky of Jennie West Photography. She is incredibly talented and we got some truly amazing photos of our wedding!
