Flowers

One of the many things that Costa Rica is known for is it's biodiversity. Fauna and flora. I am going to take advantage of that fact and use flowers local to my wedding location... so local that they will be cut from the grounds of the bungalows we will be staying at as well as hosting the reception and ceremony. The funny thing is that you can't always control nature so I don't know exactly what will be available for my bouquet in January.

And I am fine with that.

I decided to write this post after thinking over that crazy news story last week where someone did not have a contract but paid over $25,000 for flowers for a single wedding and they were not the right shade of pink so the bride is now suing the florist for $400,000.

Ideally I want an arch made with mosquito netting and simple arrangements similar to this image from floralartistry.com. Mosquito netting is already at the location to cover beds and the flowers are on the premises. It will be no big deal if we can't construct the arch or it is too windy because the Caribbean Sea by itself does make an awesome wedding backdrop.


I want a bouquet as well as bouquets for my side of the wedding party. They can double as centerpieces at the family-style dinner we will have later in the evening. The arrangements from the arch can be used as reception decor as well. I also want bouts for my fiance's side of the wedding party, our fathers, and his mother.

Here is an example of what is available at our location and the kind of work our wedding coordinator, Dawn Yates, can do.


Basically heliconias, bromeliads, and orchids should be abundant for the wedding. The orchids flowering at that time are usually purple and I am vain enough to know I'll pass on those since they don't go with our saffron/merlot colors. The heliconias will be awesome though (so awesome that they are on our monogram as well as our yard at home) and so will the bromeliads. I already know that I will not be cool with raping the garden for a lot of flowers and want to maximize the less-energetically expensive leaf blades in all arrangements. We are cutting a number of leaves anyway since we are using banana leaves that need to be pruned for plates. We are also collecting fallen leaves for escort cards. I don't know the species but my coordinator says that they are in the almond family and the underside is packed with tanins so we can write scratch names into the blade two days before the wedding and the darker oxidation will be visible for the reception dinner. Here are some great ways to use blades in arrangements.



After the wedding and after they lose their vitality the flowers will be composted at the site they were picked from. They will join our banana leaf plates.