Branching Out

I'll admit it - I like flowers. My mom used to be a florist, I like growing my own herbs, and I try to have a bouquet of flowers in the dining room as often as possible. While my centerpieces aren't particularly important to me, I know they are to my mom. And so begins the flower saga....

Mr. Tango's cousin wants to be a florist, and as such offered to do our flowers for the wedding. His mom accepted this offer before consulting with us, which is fine because we'll take any help we can get. So when we went to Panama to have one of our many immigration interviews, we set aside a few hours to meet with her and discuss our ideas.

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I love manzanita branches, but they're very expensive and not really available in Panama. Boo for that. But other types of branches would still add height, be relatively cheap, and fit with our desire of white/brown/green centerpieces. After some searching, I came up with some other inspiration pictures:

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We showed Mr. T's cousin a few ideas similar to these and this is what she put together for us:

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While we're grateful for her help, neither my mom nor I are loving it. We think it lacks 'flow' - if that makes sense. The colors aren't quite right, either. We plan on having my mom, her friend, and myself all helping out the morning of to put together the centerpieces, so we'll have a bit more say. That said, I want to give her a heads up that we should look at buying some other flowers. Roses are some of the cheapest flowers in Panama given the country's proximity to Colombia, but they're just not my style.

I don't want to be rude or sound ungrateful (or worse - fit the bridezilla stereotype!) and am dreading calling her up to say we'd like some changes. It's especially hard, given she's family - and not on my side! Any advice?

Have you had to assert yourself during the wedding planning process to get what you want? How did you do it?

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