One weekend this past fall we took a day trip down through rural Pennsylvania, part of our jaunt was to visit Carousel Farm Lavender to tour the farm. While there we got to see magnificent rows of lavender growing in the fields. All the buildings are built with rustic stone; I imagined we were transported to the french countryside. During our visit we met with one of the owners and he was proudly telling us about how his farm was featured in Martha Stewart Living and Country Living magazines. They had the magazine’s out for display, and they were full of beautiful images of lavender decorations and table settings. They even have weddings at the farm, talk about a beautiful venue! If your looking for a wedding venue in eastern Pennsylvania, you have to take a look at this place.  However, researching wedding venues wasn’t why we were there.

I haven’t gotten to write about many of the details of our wedding just yet, however, to sum it up, I like describing it as “simple and elegant with a beachy twist”. To keep with the simple, I thought we could still have fun with flowers but use only a single type of flower — lavender. We plan to buy quite a few bundles of it from Carousel Farms and use it for all of our flower decorations. During our visit, I purchased a bundle of freshly cut lavender and some culinary grade lavender petals to test a few things out. I took approximately one quarter of the bundle of lavender and stripped all but the topmost flowers from the stems to make a “test” bouquet. I love the way it looks. I think it would be perfect spiced up with some babies breath and some pearls throughout–or left au natural.

So I’ve shown you what I did with the fresh lavender flowers, now its time to show you what Moon dude did with the lavender petals. I could gush all day about what a good cook my fiance is (aside from being so handsome! ;-]), but if you tasted the cookies he made you most certainly would gush, too! He made delicious sugar cookies with infused lavender and lavender petals. Mmm, so sweet and floral! They will be perfect for our desert table at the reception!

We plan to play up the lavender in other aspects, too, like using lavender petals for the “rice toss” and have petals strewn around the tables. Maybe even offering a lavender lemonade! So many ideas! I think I need to stop for now though… Maybe more lavender for another day! Overall it will be a very economic way to do flowers, and I think it will look very elegant. Anyone else do/doing DIY flowers? I’m a little nervous, and I would love any advice!