by Leila Morris
Order Flowers from Costco
They offer a variety of flowers -- from roses and sunflowers to gerbera daisies. They also offer floral arrangements for a higher fee or you could just flowers in the store on the day of the wedding. You can order bulk flowers online from Costco at http://www.costco.com under the bulk roses category. To find the roses on their site, you have to do a separate search for roses, for some reason!
Buy Flowers from Trader Joes
You can probably do one dozen per table centerpiece. Have you considered flowers from Trader Joe's? They have great prices on flowers in their stores.
Purchase Roses a Day or Two Before the Wedding
You can always remove a few outside dead or damaged petals. Order some extra roses in case any get damaged or to sprinkle rose petals for decoration. Remember to keep the roses in a cool a place as you can (air conditioning). But, don't freeze them or they will get ruined.
Buy inexpensive vases from Ikea, Big Lots, craft stores, thrift stores etc.
Vases are one those ridiculously inexpensive things that Ikea sells to draw you into the store to by furniture. They even sell a reasonably large vase for about $1.50! Also, the 99 cents stores sometimes carry some nice vases. Also, look for sales at craft stores like Joanne's and Michaels. You can also try yard sales or swap meets. Who says the vases have to be identical? However, unless you go to a huge swap meet like the one in Pasadena, Calif. you would have to put in a lot of time and effort to purchase enough of them.
Another great place to get nice vases is Big lots. They have large crystal vases for as little as $10 and substantial glass vases for as little as $3. Ross has great prices too!