Roots and Bloom

Thursday, July 5, my mom and I left Topeka and headed down to Wichita to start the wedding fun. We left the boys with my dad and Justin. Fortunately, we were so busy, I didn't have time to get too emotional about that (it was my first night away from Westyn).

Anyhow we were packed down with cookies, candies, wedding decorations, etc. We dropped all those things off at the hotel as soon as we made it to town and then we were off to Roots and Bloom, where we were going to meet Bec and several of the other bridesmaids to help make the bridal bouquets.



I had never heard of a whole sale florist shop that orders the flowers you want and then allows you to use their shop to arrange the flowers. They even do one as an example to help guide you.

It was a little overwhelming at first because they just brought out huge buckets of flowers.













Here is the beautiful bride checking out her flowers.



The first job was to clean all the stems by removing the leaves. My mom quickly volunteered for that job...I think she didn't want to be responsible for a bouquet.



After we got our lesson on how to arrange the flowers, we were set loose to make the bridesmaids bouquets. (We started with those for practice before we took on the challenge of the bridal bouquet.)

At first we were a little timid and maybe a bit confused...the florist made it look too easy.





But as we got going with the bouquets, it became easier.







We kept checking our bouquets from different angles to make sure there weren't any gaps.



Nice job Bec! Now we just have to add the green leaves around the base and your done!



Here is one that is almost done as well.



After we managed to complete all the bridesmaids bouquets, Bec started working on hers. It was supposed to be bigger than the bridesmaids bouquets. Boy did it end up getting big! It was difficult for her to hold all the stems! We were all cracking up about that.



She ended up needing extra hands to help put the greenery around and to tape and cut the stems but the end product was really very pretty.



After all the bouquets were complete, we had to made the boutineers and coursages. We thought the bouquets would be the hard part but really making these took much longer!







I actually didn't take too many pictures of this part because they were pretty time consuming and the shop was closing pretty soon.

I know my sister was a little disappointed with the flowers (the florist messed up the order) but the bouquets really turned out beautifully and it was a fun experience for all of us to get to do this. (Although, I'm quite sure none of us will quit our day jobs to become a florist.)

After all that hard work pretending to be florists, we headed out to get our nails done. All of us got pedicures and some also got manicures.