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Flowers - Articles and Posts from AisleDash
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DIY inspiration board

This week we brought you Do It Yourself (DIY) weddings. One of the great things about doing it yourself is the money you can save. And who else knows what you want better than you do? Here are the things we found for you:

Continue reading Inspiration board: DIY wedding


The flower dilemma: you really want to have pretty flowers at your wedding but, with the current economic downswing, are desperate to cut costs. How do you do it without compromising on style?

Here's one solution. Make them yourself from paper.

We love these flower kits from Paper Source. They have a large and varied range to choose from and all of them are seriously good. From vintage flowers to funky-retro to bright and cheerful to pastel and pretty, they have it all. The kits are very reasonably priced, around $14 for about 12 or 14 flowers. Included in the kits are pre-cut flower shapes, leaf-shapes, floral wire, floral tape and, of course, instructions on how to assemble the flowers. (Kit contents vary according to designs).

You can make flowers for boutonnieres, bouquets, napkin rings and gift decorations and it should save you a bundle, as well as being really fun and whimsical.
fuchsiaIf you're planning an informal or beach wedding, a floral anklet might be just the whimsical touch you're looking for. Luckily for you, they're extremely easy to make!

You can find full instructions to create a simple anklet at Elegance in Bloom. You can choose beads and flowers in the colors that best suit your wedding. You could opt to make your own paper flowers, of course, for greater variety, or, for the string-them-together simplicity of fabric flowers. Look beyond the craft stores for supplies. If you purchase a branch of artificial fuchsia, for example, you'll have several dozen little blossoms you could use, generally for less than it would cost to purchase them individually.

via: Wedcraft
rocher nosegayIf you love the hazelnut goodness of Ferrero Rocher chocolate, you'll love this quirky wedding craft idea.

With a two-inch styrofoam ball as the base, and five Ferroro Rochers as the main ingrediant, you use toothpicks, glue, popsicle sticks to hold it together, then fill out and embellish with ribbons, lace, and greenery. When you're done, you've created this sweet (and tasty!) nosegay. For full instructions, check out Wedcraft.com.

You might want to give your flower girl something else, though: We suspect this particular posy wouldn't make it all the way down the aisle!

via: Wedcraft
Using fruit as your centerpiece is an easy way to add a dose of rustic chic to your table settings - in addition, arranging fruit in square glass vases will dress up even the most inexpensive flowers.

We recommend using fruit that will hold up well over time - citrus is a good bet (in fact you should check out this citrus-themed wedding at The Knot, it's just beautiful!) - but really, use your imagination and don't skimp on quantity. More is better!

Do it Yourself Weddings has some clever ideas for you - we like using limes because they're green and will camouflage the stems very nicely.

Tie it all with some raffia or pretty ribbon and - voila! You've got centerpieces!

Cream, navy and gold is a sophisticated color theme for you wedding. It can be preppy, masculine and/or glamorous - it all depends on the details you choose. Want to learn how to make it your own? Read on!

Continue reading Inspiration board: Cream, navy, and gold wedding

bride and bridesmaids

As we launch into Do-it-yourself week here at AisleDash, it seemed only right to highlight a delicious do-it-yourself wedding. The bridesmaid's bouquets are crafted from papers, and the bride's bouquet? It's made from Christmas ornaments! The paper flowers behind the women were also made by the bride, Sandy.

We love how the crafty bride provides a terrific example of how a wedding can pull together through creative use of color and do-it-yourself elements. Like these centerpieces! Thank you to Josh and Sandy for sharing this picture with us!

If you'd like your own picture featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr Pool. We'll highlight one image every Monday. We're looking for brides and grooms and attendants and guests and cakes and shoes and anything else that was fabulous about your wedding day. Be sure to read the intro on the main Flickr page for more information, and please upload only photos for which you own the copyright.
heart-shaped gel vasesA quick and easy way to add color to your venue, these gel hearts can be attached to glass, plastic or metal. They don't adhere so well to paint, so you probably can't use them on the walls -- not if you don't want your heart and flowers suddenly plunging to the floor! However, on a mirror, or a glass door, the window behind the head table?

Because they're gel, they're re-usable, too. If you don't want two dozen of these for yourself, perhaps you can give them to your bridesmaids and flower girl, or offer them to any guests who have been particularly helpful.

You can find more information on the Love Vase Gel Gem at Wrapables.com.
red rose

When they started showing up at Whole Foods Market not so long ago, even though they were more expensive than others of their kind, according to the Utne Reader, they "few off the shelves."

What are they? Roses. Lush, gorgeous roses, huge roses with heads bigger than your fist. More than that, they're fair trade roses. The farms in Ecuador on which they're grown have agreements with TransFairUSA, agreements which ensure the flowers were produced in compliance with strict environmental and labor standards. And they're just plain gorgeous!

Increasingly, production costs are sending flower farms to other countries with far lower costs. Unfortunately, they also have far less strict labor practices. So, if you have the choice of choosing flowers that were produced on farms where pesticides are sprayed when there are workers around, or a farm that adheres to higher, worker-friendly standards, which would you choose?
Your cream, navy, and gold color scheme sounded like a great idea -- until you got to the flowers, right? Cream flowers are no trouble at all, but what if you don't want monochromatic blooms? Where on earth do you find navy blue flowers?

They are out there, but your selection will be limited, and you may have to pay a premium if they're not in season. Perhaps a cheaper, easier alternative is to go with silk flowers, which can be dyed any color in the rainbow, regardless of what occurs in nature. There's also the option of decorating the cream flowers in your bouquet with navy and gold ribbons.

We spoke with a florist about getting authentic navy blue flowers for a wedding. She was able to name a few blossoms for us, but warned that the selection is going to be quite limited. Available year-round are delphinium and dark blue iris, which will have a yellow center. Some brides go with hydrangea for their navy blue color scheme, but these flowers usually come in lighter shades, or look more purple than navy. You may be able to find berries that would fit in with your bouquet. The florist we spoke with specifically recommended privet berry.


Who can resist the delicate, pastel-colored lighting provided by these floating water lily lights? Each lily is 10 cm (about four inches) across. They are lit by batter-powered LED lights, and will change color gently as they float. For an additional touch of whimsy, add a few of the lily pads with a clear glass frog on top, and watch the frogs change color. Not true to nature, perhaps, but fun.

If you're having an outdoor wedding and/or reception, these lights can be an addition to a water feature. For an indoor wedding, perhaps you could have place large decorative bowls on a couple of small tables, on either side of the door, say, or at each end of the head table or cake table. Float one or two of these lights in each bowl. Lovely!

(For more information on the Waterlilly lights, or the Floating Frog lights, check out The Glow Company.)




Take one creative Etsy shop-holder, let her propose to her sweetie, give her some time to put those creative talents to work on her very own wedding -- and you'll be sure to see something spectacular. Princess Lasertron (aka Megan), creates hugely fun button flowers in her Etsy shop, so of course she'd be making her own wedding bouquets!

A bouquet can take between 10 and 40 hours to make, starting with hand-made patterns on heavy paper. Each flower is formed of layers of felt and sewn together with hand-dyed white silk thread. Dying her own thread is cheaper, says Megan, and that way she gets the exact colors she wants. Each blossom is finished off with a vintage button or sparkly jewelry.

And the result, we're sure you'll agree, is SPECTACULAR! If you'd like some fabulous Princess Laserton blossoms for your own wedding, check out her Etsy shop.

Lots of weddings include a special part of the ceremony specifically designed to symbolize the joining of two families. Some couples use unity candles, others have a handfasting ceremony, and others might have a family lei exchange.

In the lei exchange, the bride and groom take turns adorning their new in-laws with leis, with the maid of honor and best man or other attendants holding the leis for the ceremony until it's time to use them. This is a great job for a child attendant. Instead of or in addition to flower girls and ring bearers, you can have a lei carrier.

For examples of ceremony scripts including a lei exchange, visit this site. For some of our favorite leis and where to buy them, read this post.

When you have your wedding on the beach, you can dress and accessorize however you like. Many couples opt to wear the same formal attire that they'd wear in a church wedding, and others go a lot more casual. You can wear anything from a skimpy bikini to a traditional big white dress -- you have tons of options.

The same is true for your flowers. Lots of beach brides and grooms opt against traditional boutonnieres and corsages in favor of something a lot more beachy -- the lei. Leis can be the perfect accessory for the bridal party, and they also make great favors for your beach wedding.

Leis come in all different types of floral and leafy designs, so no matter what your beach style is, there's sure to be a lei that will complement it nicely. We found gorgeous selections here, here, and here. Browse the gallery for some of our favorites.


If you've decided to have a beach-themed wedding, you might think the tough decisions are behind you. After all, once you choose a theme, all the decorations should be easy peasy, right?

Here's the thing -- within the beach wedding genre, there are a plethora of sub-themes to choose from. You could opt to go with any one of them, or, in some cases, combine a couple of them to make your wedding uniquely yours. But first things first -- you have to decide which sub-themes best suit your personality.

As always, we're here to help. Just click the "Next" button to see some samples of different beachy themes. Before you know it, you'll have your wedding all planned!

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