Flowers are always a big part of a wedding, they look lovely, and can easily carry your colour scheme throughout the whole day. I knew what kind of flowers I wanted, but what do you put them in? I decided on gold jars!
For a good 11 months, we collected all types of jars. Short ones, tall ones, fat one, tiny ones. Cleaning and removing the labels was easily the most frustrating and time consuming part. Some came off with hot water, others had copious amounts of sticky residue that was a pain to get off.
We bought some gold spray paint from Bunnings (I think we went through about 4 cans), and started spraying!
We would spray jars every few weeks, so we didn’t have to spray them all at once.
I think we ended up with about 80 jars. I was a bit concerned that the paint might chip or scratch off, so we tried putting a clear spray lacquer over the top. I don’t know what happened, it must have reacted with the metallic particles, because it made the gold paint melt and run off the jar! We were even using a “professional sealing lacquer” from an art shop! Anyway, the jars held up brilliantly without any kind of sealing.
Onto the flowers! I really wanted to use as many Australian native flowers as possible, they are extremely durable, and the colours played in with our theme perfectly. We went to the Sydney Flower Markets on the Thursday before the wedding, and spent close to 2 hours walking around, picking out the most beautiful flowers! Our plan was to first look for maroon colours, then white, accents, and finally, foliage. By the time we’d finished, the car was packed, to say the least!
The boot was full too!
We got so many different varieties of flowers, and I’m going to attempt to name as many as I can remember…
Protea (I’ve just found out that these are in fact, native to South Africa, not Australia!) in both pink, and cream. Devils Blush. Billy Buttons (those adorable yellow pom-pom things). Celosia (or Brain Celosia, the internet informs me). Eucalyptus/ghost gum leaves. Cockscomb flowers. Kale roses. Daisies in both white, and burgundy. Roses in white, yellow, and pink. An absolute mountain of Babies Breath!
Jars and bits of flowers everywhere!
In terms of arrangement, I really wasn’t too fused about how things came together. I let Nicole and Nyome (my bridesmaids) create their own bouquet, and I did mine. With all the left over flowers, we divided them up between all the jars. I kept some of the larger ones for the wedding arch (you’ll see that in another post), and we pretty much used every single flower!
Photo by James Day
Photo by James Day
Photo by James Day
Photo by James Day
The flowers looked so striking in the gold jars, and I was really happy with the overall look. As you can see in the picture above, we also used some rosemary in a few of the jars, which gave off a very subtle perfume.
Photo by James Day
I love big bouquets, and ours turned out massive! They were heavy too, but I enjoyed feeling the weight of them throughout the day. I absolutely love this picture, the colours are so vibrant, and all the different flowers just work so well together.
I can’t wait to show you more of my DIY wedding, so stay tuned!
Mitty x
Made by Mitty 