Page 5 of Crowe
“I will, thanks.” I held up a flower. “Do you think this one looks okay? It got kind of squished.”
“I have no idea how that even happens when we were so careful when we packed them up yesterday.” He shook his head. “Do we have extras?”
“As long as we don’t lose any others, we should have enough without it. If not, I can make another one.” I laid that one to the side and went back to inspecting the flowers.
It took us longer than we expected, but eventually the corsages and boutonnieres were all laid out, but that was just the beginning.
We still had to assemble the arch and the centerpieces. They featured peonies, ranunculus, and eucalyptus to complement the bridal bouquet, and they were going to be stunning. The problem with peonies, though, was that you couldn’t do much with them ahead of time or they would wilt something awful, so we had to hustle to get everything set up.
The arch was next and Carina had already gotten started, so Levi and I hurried up the aisle to help her. She was under the arch, wrestling with a roll of chicken wire when I walked over.
“What can we do to help?” I asked.
“Get started with those,” she said, pointing at a massive pile of greenery.
Levi made a face as he handed her wire cutters. “This a lot of green.”
“It’s a spring wedding,” Carina said, tugging the wire tight. “Spring is supposed to look abundant.”
It took us a good thirty minutes, but we had indeed accomplished what I would call abundant. I was up on the step ladder, and they were both on the ground. I started adding the spray roses to the arch on my side. The last flowers to be added were the peonies, and when we finished with those, we all stepped back and looked at it.
“What do you think?” Levi asked.
Carina smiled at both of us. “Fairytale achieved. That’s it for in here. Now you two go assemble centerpieces. I’m going to check in with the wedding planner.”
A few minutes later, Levi and I were on the fifth of twenty centerpieces when Carina came into the room. “Hey, Noah, can you do me a favor?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“The wedding planner just asked me if we could add a bouquet to the table by the guest book. They thought they didn’t need one, but whatever they were going to do instead didn’t happen. So now she’s panicking.”
“Sure, that won’t take long. We have plenty of extras. I can put something nice together.” I smiled at Levi. “I’ll be right back.”
They shrugged. “No biggie. I’ll just be here gluing eucalyptus onto the base of the centerpieces.”
“Be careful not to scorch the peonies,” I cautioned.
“I promise not to go anywhere near them with the glue gun.”
I hurried out front to find the wedding planner, Kim, standing in the vestibule where everyone would come in. “I hear you need an emergency bouquet.”
She sighed and nodded. “Yes, they’d ordered an ice sculpture that was supposed to sit by the guest book, but there was a miscommunication on the date. It won’t be here.”
I gave her a reassuring smile. She really was one of my favorite wedding planners we worked with, and I could tell she was stressed. Of course, wedding planners always were on event day. “Don’t worry. We have plenty of peonies left. I can put something really nice together for you.”
“Thank you. The bride loves peonies, so that’ll be perfect. It needs to be big and impressive, though.”
“Impressive enough to replace an ice sculpture. I got it.”
“Thank you. How long will it take, you think?”
“Give me ten minutes.”
“You’re an angel. I’m going to go put out one of the thousand other fires and leave you to this one. I’ll meet you back here in ten.”
I hurried back into the prep-room where Carina and Levi were adding flowers to the centerpieces. “I’m going to use the peonies,” I announced. “I just need something to put them in. She wants it to be big.”
“That’s perfect.” Carina smiled at me. “Let’s use as many of them as we can so they don’t go to waste. Look in that closet over there. A lot of venues have vases and things available.”
