Picking flowers

Meet Kate. She's my friend, she's a wonderful writer, and she's going to be writing a series about her engagement tales. She's in love and getting married. Here she is with Andy. Aren't they cute? You'll love them. This story made me laugh. Enjoy!



{wscottchester}

It caught me off guard when my fiancé chose our wedding flowers. Andy’s not really a flowery kind of guy—in the years I’ve known him, he’s given me plenty of dresses and meals and DVDs, and even a sparkly diamond ring, but never flowers. He doesn’t comment on pretty gardens or bouquets at other people’s weddings, and he doesn’t even like floral prints on clothing. The guy couldn’t tell a daffodil from a lily.
Granted, Andy has lots of opinions on wedding stuff—from menu (pig-in-a-blankets) to décor (paper lanterns) to photography (only the best)—but I assumed I’d go solo to the florist. I’d ask what kind of flowers he liked for the bouquets, and his response would go something like this: “Don’t care as long as I get to plan the honeymoon and I’m gonna need to expand the guest list and don’t forget those paper lanterns oh and will you wear your hair down?”

But then one day Andy called to tell me he spotted the perfect flowers for our wedding in someone’s yard. He didn’t know the name but described them as “big flowers made up of lots of little ones.” The next day, he drove me by the spot and pointed out (you guessed it) a hydrangea bush. “We can even pick them from people’s yards!” he said, as if petty theft was the brightest idea he’d ever had.

My instinct was to say, “Hydrangeas wilt, and when exactly did you become the bride?” But I looked out at those blossoms and back at my fiancé, and in a satisfying moment of premarital compromise, I realized a couple of things: 1) I don’t really care what kind of flowers we have at the wedding, as long as they’re not sunflowers; 2) How cool is it that my future husband is so invested in our wedding that he thinks about bouquets and centerpieces when he’s driving down the street?; and 3) Hydrangeas are cheap—even if you don’t steal them.

So on October 17, I’ll put on a big white dress and walk down an aisle toward the picky choosy man I love. That walk will be symbolic—20 or 30 short steps toward merging bank accounts and sharing a bathroom, buying a house and having kids one day, arguing and forgiving each other, and eventually getting wrinkly together—and you bet I’ll be carrying hydrangeas.
(But for the record, I’m choosing the color.)

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