Reflections from a Spa Day

Yesterday, my former boss took me to the spa as a goodbye present. We ended up spending quite a bit of time on our own in separate rooms, which was sad because we didn't have all the girl time, but it also gave me lots of time to reflect as the stress floated away.

I found myself thinking about the whole wedding planning process and how much stress is crammed into each decision. Little details can suddenly take on a world of importance - what if we don't have flowers decorating the meeting house?? Will it be too plain? Will people focus on the absence of the flowers rather than the presence of centuries-old wood floors and pews? If we do have flowers will it make the meeting house just another wedding-decorated church?

It's funny to think that had our "original" wedding gone through, we never would have thought about choices like this. We would have had a much more standard wedding - one very much in line with "WIC" ("Wedding Industrial Complex" - a term I've seen on wedding blogs) preferences. It might have been easier, but certainly would have been less "us." We would have decorated my home church, as well as the tables at the reception hall, with lovely arrangements. We wouldn't have thought to question that.

But our new venue is a wonderful restaurant on a farm (our venue deserves and will get its own post soon!), and they grow their own flowers which will be scattered on tables for our wedding dinner. So we started thinking about whether we need - or even want - to purchase flowers just for the ceremony. It might dress up the church, but it will be hard to "match" the decor for the reception. After all, I haven't found too many florists who specialize in home-grown, just-picked, mismatched-jars-as-vases arrangements.

As I've been writing this post, I think I may have found the root of the problem. We don't want the "traditional" arrangements, but some scattered ones to match the reception decor might be nice. Perhaps we can pick some zinnias from the "Zinnia Guy," who grows a huge patch of them right behind the Inn where we will be staying throughout our wedding weekend.


[Check out the gorgeous homegrown zinnias in the lower left corner of this picture we took of one of the Inn's fireplaces.]

Perhaps as the girls and I get ready, we can pop some flowers into a few vases and send them toward the meeting house a bit ahead of us? That might give us the bit of color that would be a nice touch (and help tie the ceremony together with the reception) but not be a distraction from the simplicity of the meeting house.