Five days later...

Friday the 18th was the wedding. Today, five days later, I'm still exhausted from the wedding. Last night we took lots of decorations and orchids to the newlyweds' apartment and decorated it. It's amazing how different a living space looks with greenery. Just one big fern placed in a corner makes a huge difference. We hung ivy garlands above the windows and honeycomb bells, strands of pearls and lots of flowers here and there around the apartment. The newlyweds will love it! As we worked, daughter said we were "reverse vandalizing" the place. Funny.

For the wedding, we wired together long garlands of real ivy that we pulled up from the side yard. We hung the ivy garlands above the front window and the sliding glass door in the dining room. We placed ivy garland over the top of the china cabinets in the dining room and living room. We also wound the garland around the railing in the living room and hung white, wired-ribbon bows. It looked gorgeous.

I wish we could have afforded real flowers but the extraordinary silk ones we found looked amazing. There were flowers everywhere! Daughter helped make the bride's and maid-of-honor's bouquets from a combination of real and silk flowers. I figured out how to decoratively wrap the stems with ribbon by following book directions.

The magenta orchids did not match a single thing. So we used the four vases of orchids to brighten up dark corners. That worked very nicely and the shadowy corners helped tone down the bright magenta color so it didn't clash with the barely pink roses. Everything was so lovely.

Here is a photo of the cake, two vanilla layers with a lemon-orange cheesecake layer in the middle, taken after I finished decorating it the night before the wedding. The pastillage roses turned out perfect. The cake was stored in layers in son's big refrigerator and delivered to the restaurant the morning of the wedding.

I like how the cake turned out. I made enough cake for leftovers and the restaurant staff hoped for a little bite. I left them a big chunk to share. Son wanted his favorite, simple birthday frosting on the cake, loaded with shortening and butter, so that's what I put on the cake. The staff made no comment so they probably thought the icing was appalling. I do make a melt-in-your-mouth French Buttercream that has a whole pound of butter and NO shortening and NO grainy powdered sugar but that's not what the bride and groom wanted. Life is sweet when you keep is simple.



Here's a photo of the bride and groom sitting on the deck after the wedding. Just one day after this photo was taken, the Pat Austin rose had dropped her peachy petals. Two days after the wedding, the Cascadia petunias were so anemic that I had to drastically prune them. It is very fortunate that the deck looked so nice the day of the wedding.

The Fair Biancas on the deck and in the front yard had some perfect, bug-free blooms. But no rose was so fair as the bride and no flower would give me as much pleasure as seeing my son radiant with joy with his new wife. God is good to me.