Natures Bonbonniere

I used to love gardening but I find that I never have time these days and the worse the garden looks the less I am inspired to go out there and make it beautiful. Occasionally we are forced into action by big, bad, ugly rent inspections. This weekend just gone we found ourselves once more forced into action and pruned, de-weeded and swept our little patch of nature. Seeing the garden looking nice-ish (apart from all the barren spots) has got me wanting to pop down to Waldecks and once more take on the gardening world.

Now, as much as I’m sure you’d all love to hear me drone on about my not-so-green thumb some more, I’ll get to the actual wedding part of this - bonbonniere. I hate bonbonniere in general. They are usual stupid little things that you put money and/or effort into that no-one really appreciates, or they say they do and then just shove them in a drawer for all eternity. Having said that, I would like our guests to take home something from our wedding (other than good memories of course...lol). So what can we do? I like the idea of lolly buffets… people will eat them, if they don’t I will. My fiancé isn’t really keen on this though and that is totally fair enough. When I take off my giddy bride-to-be hat on put on my sensible Engineer hat I completely agree with him, the cost to benefit ratio is crap.

So how about bonbonniere that also double as something else? Ages ago when we booked our reception venue we talked about having live plants as our centrepieces (This thought is back in my head now after all the gardening on the weekend). We aren’t extravagant people so simple decorations are right up our alley, plus our reception venue doesn’t need too much decoration. We were also thinking of maybe rather than one plant at each table, have little seedlings and these can double as bonbonniere. I really love this idea because it has a dual purpose and they won’t go to waste because if people leave them behind we’ll plant them out ourselves.

My only issues with this idea are; 

1. The centrepieces wouldn’t be the flowering kind.
2. Some people wouldn’t want them.
3. Some guests will be from out of town and a seedling would just be a pain in the bum.

My current thought to resolve these few issues is to do the centrepieces/bonbonniere like so (I haven’t discussed this one with my fiancé but he reads this… so let me know what you think of this Justin!);

• Have a potted flowering plant in the centre of the table. Yellow daylilies I think would work well - and they are hardy and easy to grow (plus I want more in my garden so I’ll be planting out those afterwards).
• Have little seedlings of different varieties around the main plant. For a table of ten, we would have five seedling pots.
• Have either in seedling pots (clean ones obviously), or in other little containers/boxes lollies. So for a table of ten we would have five of these also.

This way people get to pick their bonbonniere and because they are doubling as centrepieces the cost to benefit ratio makes it completely justifiable (well, other than the lollies)!

As a guest what would you think of this? 

 Yellow Daylily