Today’s bride requested a bouquet of purple and green. I thought to myself, “Purple and green? How in the world am I going to make that pretty?” Then she asked for a head wreath.
Ummmm, no. I know, I know, all the answers are supposed to be yes. It wasn’t easy to tell a bride no, but I wasn’t comfortable trying something so artistic, and I worried she would be disappointed. Her biggest concern was that she would bring a head wreath and it would clash with the bouquet. So. I told her to bring it. And early in the morning, when the dew was still on the moss, we walked the grounds and chose her ceremony site. She showed me her wreath – beautiful! It was green, wrapped in floral tape, and had two white silk roses, or ranunculus, and bits of silvery lavender heather woven around it. Now here was something I could work with.
None of the fuchsia pinks and red violet or mauve so many people call ” lavender” but the real thing. She wanted purple. The purple you expect in a box of eight crayons. But she wanted it toned down a bit, with that silvery gray. I was on a quest.
At the florist, my big plans came to an abrupt halt. “White hydrangea, for the center of the bouquet?” Nope. Mothers Day was last Sunday. Fresh out. Ok, white chrysanthemums? No way. Same reason. “How about just white roses, then? I’ll need them anyway. I’ll figure something out.” Certainly not, was the snappy response. (I didn’t say snippy, because I’m being polite, here, folks.) Raised eyebrows and a superior tone, words carefully clipped so as to insure I would absorb each one: It. Is. Graduation. Weekend. Ev-Er-Y-One. Wants. White. Rose. Corsages. Gee whiz, lady, I shoulda realized. Not having school-aged children any more, I had actually let that important piece of information slip right by me. (And hey. I didn’t get a white rose corsage for graduation. And -blush- neither did my mother. I’m such a cretin.) Humbled, I threw myself on her mercy and begged, “Can you help? What may I have? The bride wants purple,” and I stopped myself before saying, “and green,” because leaves are green and I didn’t want to push my luck.
In the end, I left with deep purple statice, light purple stock, white alstroemeria (Peruvian lily), eucalyptus, ferns, and a bundle of deliciously silvered purple larkspur… the exact shade of the heather in the bride’s wreath. The silvery green of the eucalyptus picked it up perfectly. But what tickled me most was the pair of roses. Not precisely white, they had been cast aside by the florist as unacceptable for her corsages. She said, offhandedly, “Oh, you could take those,” with a little wave. “They aren’t really white. They are a pale pastel green.” My life rocks.
