How Does Your Garden Grow?

I've been working on budget estimates with a couple of local florists and discovered that I've had to think a little bit more specifically on exactly the look I want to achieve with flowers.  Before, I was thinking, "lots of pretty flowers!" but now I need to think about the kind of arrangements I want.

Centerpieces are the big budget-buster.  A big, high-end centerpiece will cost you a lot of money (in big cities, sometimes almost $300!), and if you have a lot of tables and want to put multiple centerpieces on a table, that's going to add up really quickly.  

Fortunately for my budget, I am not a big fan of high floral centerpieces.  I just find them overwhelming.

(photo credit: Flowers with Feeling)

Besides, a centerpiece like that would totally overwhelm the reception space.  

I do really like low, clustered centerpieces like this:

(photo credit Loop) 

The thing is, you'd probably need a number of arrangements like this on a long table for it to have much impact.  

(photo credit: Style Me Pretty)

I think that look is gorgeous, and achievable, I think, through relatively inexpensive flowers.

Then, of course, Mr. C-Ville had to pipe up. "I don't like hydrangea," he opined (and of course, the florist we were considering gave me all kinds of cool ideas to do with hydrangea), "and I think we should have lots of little flowers in vases all along the table."  I guess he means something like this:

(photo credit; Pat's Floral Designs) 

But these are spring flowers and we are getting married in the fall, so we'll have to figure out how to achieve this look with fall flowers.  I'm hoping that maybe we can combine the two looks.