Flowers Here, Flowers There!

     One of the things I really thought would be pretty easy would be flowers as I knew even before I was engaged who my florist would be.  Sandra Chastain is a very close friend of my mom's. Her daughter, Bella, was in my mom's class a few years ago and the two of them built such a strong bond, that mom started
babysitting Bella on weekends for Sandra and her husband, David.  Sandra owns Chastain's Floral on Universal Drive in Columbia and has been doing floral arrangements for years. In 1996, she was named "Designer of the Year" for the state, so we are working with someone who's pretty amazing.

     Dave and I met with Sandra on a Friday afternoon.  The first questions were pretty simple.  Date, Venue, Time, Number of Attendants and wedding colors.  After that, I had no idea what to think. I brought in samples of what I liked and Sandra, being amazing, had her own ideas of what would work with where we are getting married as well as what would look best with bridesmaid dresses and the men's suits. We picked out a certain style for the bridesmaid bouquets.  I've posted a picture to the left of something similar.  Instead of pink roses, since they would blend with the girls' dresses, they will be orange roses. The guys will be wearing simple boutonnieres made up of an orange rose with some sort of pink accent.   
    She then asked what I wanted for my bouquet... Ummmm.... defiantly didn't think about that. So my mission right now is to take some time to consider that and get back to her at a later date. Then we had to discuss who else in the wedding party would be needing flowers.  Then I thought we were done. Oh no... not anywhere close. I totally forgot that we needed to discuss flowers for the ceremony as well as the reception.  Needless to say, I don't want to do anything over the top with either.  We are getting married outside and it will be absolutely beautiful on its own. But why pay so much for flowers when seriously the ceremony will only be 20 minutes long.    We then discussed the reception.. After three hours of talking about flowers, we were just about done until we realized her husband actually did catering so we then started discussing things with him for our rehearsal dinner.  Four hours after walking in, we were completely done and full of ideas and a list of things we needed to discuss and take care of.  All in all, it was a good day with a pretty price tag. =)

If you are looking for flowers for any occasion thought, I highly recommend her.  Here's her new website that she just launched.  http://www.chastainsfloral.com/