Succulent Inspired Flower Bouquets

Last year during the September Creative Challenge I planted these lovely succulents.

They were so easy to maintain and fun to watch grow over the past year. As you can see, they really grew!! I moved these succ-kers with me to the Cotton's house with a plan to work them into this year's creative challenge. 

In addition to my love of succulents, I love flowers! It's a love that stems from my first part time job working at a flower shop, where I spent three years basically playing with flowers. I learned the basics of arranging but mostly just learned to appreciate all the beautiful, unique flowers that exist (oh and worked the cash register, cleaned, etc).

So now that it's time to really start looking at wedding flowers I am enjoying every minute of it! I've started a Pinterest board with some of my favs. In reality I will end up choosing what's in season and fits within our budget, but it's really fun to look and pin!

Succulents seems to be all the rage these days. They add such a nice pop of green within a bouquet and if you grow them yourself, they can be so affordable. Here are some white and green with pops of purple bouquets that I like:

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  With all of this lovely inspiration, I decided I should try my hand at making my own succulent bouquets! Especially since I had full grown succulents to work with. The first is a white, green and hints of purple bouquet that I would envision for a bride's bouquet. 

I picked up flowers from the farmer's market and several flower shops in the Walnut Creek area. I was trying not to spend too much money, so I stuck to: white dahlias, white/light purple lisianthus, green/light purple hydrangea, eucayptus and my favorite succulent, the blue rose. Here's how they came together:

(top = front view, bottom = top view)

For bridesmaids (and who knows, maybe me too) I envision more colorful bouquets. I'm completely in love with the purple bouquets! Here are a few that I adore:

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 It was a little tricky to pick a variety of purple flowers and hope when combined they would compliment each other well. I purchased: mums, stock, lisianthus, sterling roses and combine them with vera higgins succulents. Here's what they look like in bouquet form:

This project was fun and challenging. I love how the purple bouquet turned out, more so than the white one. As one of the ladies I purchased flowers from shared with me, working with succulents is tricky! They're heavy and their crisp leaves break very easily. So I might be rethinking succulents in bouquets, but that doesn't mean they can't be else where in our big day! 

This project reaffirmed two things for me: 1: I really do love flowers! It was so fun to shop around and arrange them. When I win the lotto I will quit my job and open a cute flower shop. I even have a name picked out! 2. I am definitely NOT doing my own wedding flowers. I had only considered it for a split second several months ago, thinking it could be fun. No, too stressful. Instead I will dream up ideas of what I love and put it into the hands of a trained professional!

I know what you must be thinking: what are you going to do with two flower bouquets when no one is actually getting married? Its a valid question. I disassembled the two bouquets and made them into one happy floral arrangement. They're now sitting in a vase on the bar at the Cotton's house where we can all enjoy them!

Special thanks to my bouquet model! Check out what she's inspired by today: Walmart!

This post is part of my September Creative Challenge. Follow along as Inspired Honey Bee and I do something creative Monday - Friday all this month!