Colorado Wildflowers

verdesiempre14

Hi ladies,

Has anyone seen or used Colorado wildflowers in their bridal/bridesmaid bouquets and/or reception decor? I am consdering this but don't know where to start. Any suggestions, thoughts, or pictures would be wonderful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

sakana1840

i'm sure it's common enough

here is a website that shows pictures of wildflowers native to colorado

http://wildflowersofcolorado.com/index.html

PrettyPollyanna

you might try a farmer's market vendor, but a lot of wild flowers wilt quickly so pick the variety carefully

ksheeks

Hi there! 

Apology up front for the long reply but I definitely have experience with this!  Our wedding was just a couple weeks ago and centered around hiking and our love of Colorado wildflowers - our color (hot pink) was picked based on one of our favorite wildflowers (Rosy Paintbrush) and we named each of our tables after a pink wildflower....  So we definitely hoped to incorporate them into our decorations and my bouquet.  Unfortunately, it's not easy to do...  we quickly found out that no one sells Rosy or Indian Paintbrush flowers - you can get seeds to grow your own, but I think it takes two years before they bloom...

I checked around at quite a few nurseries hoping to have columbine plants at the reception for decorations and to use some as accents in my bouquet.  Many do sell columbine plants but the time of year of our wedding (July 10th) made it difficult - most of these plants bloom in May/June.  I worked with a wonderful lady named Jackie at Jared's nursery in LIttleton and she kept in contact with her growers in hopes that some plants would be blooming then.  Turned out for the week before the wedding, they only had 2 plants blooming, which she set aside for me.  The other nurseries I called had none blooming for our time period.  (Keep in mind we wanted only the light blue/lavendar columbine that we see on our hikes, there are lots of other hybrid colors such as red and sometimes more of these colors are available.)  So we ended up not having any plants for the reception but I did have a few blooms to put into my rose bouquet. 

The florist I worked with was Dawn at Hillside Consultants out of Colorado Springs, she was absolutely fantastic and very affordable.  Many florists I checked with tried to talk me out of real wildflowers and into things that look like wildflowers, but Dawn was willing to give it a try.  I understood they are very fragile and wilt easily so it's best not to try and use them for the bouts.  The columbines that came from the two plants I got were pretty small and pale but Dawn did her best and I was so happy that I was able to have at least a few in my bouquet.  Below are some photos to show you how it came out.  Dawn did a great job and they held up all day (the photo with our hands on the bouquet is at the end of the day and the columbines didn't seem wilted at all).

Keep in mind, depending on the date of your wedding, you may have better luck.  Also (sorry if this sounds pushy) please remember that you should only buy them, not pick them.  Some are illegal to pick (such as columbines) and more importantly, if someone picks them that just means the next person to pass by doesn't have the joy of seeing them...  The day before the wedding, we were checking out the location where we planned to have our reveal and wouldn't you know, there were flowers everywhere including LOTS of gorgeous columbine.   Made us laugh - here we were trying so hard to find them and they were carpeting the hillside... but we wouldn't pick them and rob someone else of the pleasure of seeing them, so we just made a point to go there for pictures on our wedding day
 


Best of luck to you, I hope it turns out well. 

Karen

verdesiempre14

Thank you, everyone, I so appreciate your information and feedback! 

Karen, thank you for sharing your experience.  Your pictures are beautiful!!  It look like the stars aligned for you to have columbines in your wedding (-:  And no, you're not pushy in advising not to pick wildflowers.... I would do the same thing!

thanks so much again, best wishes.