Page 105 of Save the Date
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The bride leaned across Cara’s desk and stabbed a long pearly pink fingernail at page 72 of the March 2009 issue ofMartha Stewart Weddings. The page was dog-eared, and the rest of the magazine bristled with pink Post-it notes.
“This one. This is the exact bouquet I want. I’ve saved this magazine since I was eighteen years old. I picked out my wedding dress because I knew it would go with this bouquet.”
Cara groaned inwardly. How well she knew this particular wedding bouquet. She was sure it was the most-pinned item on every single bride’s Pinterest page in the universe. She wanted to rip page 72 out of this magazine, ball it up, and burn it.
Instead, she did what she always did. She picked up a pencil and pointed it at each flower in the bouquet.
“Heather, these flowers here? They are Casablanca lilies. They wholesale at thirty dollars a stem. I count five stems in this bouquet—so that’s a hundred and fifty dollars right there. These pretty ruffly flowers? Like overblown roses? These are premium peonies. This size bunch wholesales at about seventy-five dollars.”
“What?” Heather drew back as though she’d been slapped. “Thirty dollars for one lily?”
“Yes. Although one stem will have multiple blossoms. They’re imported.” Cara pointed at the petite bell-shaped flowers edging the infamous Martha Stewart bouquet. “Now these—these are the budget killers.”
“Yes. Lilies of the valley,” Heather said eagerly. “Kate Middleton’s whole bouquet was made of them.”
“Yes,” Cara said. “I’m aware.” Which was the understatement of the year. Ever since the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, she’d been besieged with brides insisting upon having lilies of the valley.
“Here’s the thing, Heather. Lilies of the valley are so tiny, you need a lot of them to make any impact at all. One tiny bunch, which is ten skinny stems, is ninety dollars. I’d say there are at least six bunches in this bouquet. That’s three hundred and sixty dollars.”
Heather’s mother had been sitting beside the bride, frowning. But now the MOB’s eyes bugged out. “That must be a mistake. We didn’t spend three hundred and sixty dollars for her older sister’s whole flower budget.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “Mama, Jessica got married eight years ago! She only had one bridesmaid, and we had the reception at your house.”
“It was still a lovely wedding,” the mother insisted. “And I can tell you right now, your daddy is not going to pay three hundred and sixty dollars for some itty-bitty flowers just because some English princess had them.”
“Also? Besides being expensive, Lilies of the valley are extremely fragile. Your wedding is in August. In summer months, our suppliers won’t even guarantee what kind of condition they’ll be in when they arrive here.” Cara gave the MOB an apologetic shrug.
“No lilies,” the mother shot back.
Cara reached over and gently closed the March 2009 issue ofMartha Stewart Weddings. “Heather, the bouquet you’re looking at costs roughly twelve hundred dollars.”
“No way,” Heather breathed.
“Way. And what did you say your flower budget was for this wedding? With, what? Six bridesmaids?”
Heather looked at her mother for guidance. “Two thousand. And not a penny more.”
“Okay,” Cara said. Heather looked like a sweet girl. And her mother, as far as MOBs went, seemed nice, too. But with their budget, they could not afford a full-scale Bloom wedding. And with Cara’s current cash-flow situation, she couldn’t afford to take them on pro bono.
“Let’s do this. Let’s think about a nice, simple bouquet for you, Heather. I can make you up something very pretty, with white hydrangeas, tea roses, and white hypericum berries, for around a hundred and fifty. It won’t be anywhere as big or showy as the bouquet in your magazine, but it will still be lovely with your dress.”
Heather’s nose wrinkled. “Hydrangeas? Like my meemaw grows in her yard?”
“Yes. Hydrangeas.” Cara shoved Heather’s magazine aside and snapped open her iPad. She scrolled through the photos of weddings she’d done until she came to what she privately called “Bargain Basement Bouquet.”
“We can get these in all white, in a pale green, shades of pinks, blues, creams, and purples,” Cara said.
“That’s beautiful.” Heather’s mother nodded emphatically.
“It is kind of pretty,” the bride begrudgingly admitted. “What do we do about the bridesmaids’ bouquets?”
“You go minimalist,” Cara said. “One or two stems of hydrangeas, and you do a ruffle of hydrangea leaves to fill it out.”
“Wait. Are you saying you want me to make the bridesmaids’ bouquets?”
“If you do them, you can get away with spending around fifteen dollars apiece, and that includes a pretty white satin ribbon binding, which you can buy at Michael’s. You can find lots of tutorials online that show you how to make a simple bouquet. If I do them, I have to charge markup and labor, and that’s going to bring the price of each of those bouquets to sixty dollars,” Cara explained.
