Stop and Smell the Flowers: Sam's Club Online Bulk Flower Review

I have access to the wholesale florist row here in town, which has many benefits including high quality flowers of all varieties and the ability to purchase exact colors. If I want a dusty peach knock-out rose, florist row can't be beat. I often leave there, however, and see better prices on common flowers elsewhere. Basic roses, for example, are always better-priced at Sam's, and I know Trader Joe's will always have white hydrangeas at the unbeatable price of $5.99 for three stems. I have become so accustomed to the these prices that I hate to pay more even when I need something highly specific like light lavender flowers to match an invitation, which is exactly what I needed this weekend. Some friends and I were making centerpieces for a bat mitzvah luncheon (there was lots of professional decor at the nighttime party--ours was just a little extra gift to make the casual luncheon pop). Enter Sam's club online. I ordered three boxes of these Hand Painted Lavender Hydrangeas with 26 Stems each for $62.98 a box. I set them for deliver the Thursday before the Saturday event. In the meantime, I ordered 24 of these gold cubes vases from afloral.com.

Thursday morning, the boxes arrived

Here is the inside:

I had lots of buckets of water waiting at a prep station:

The first order of business was to unwrap the flowers and give each a clean cut before placing them in the water:

I was told that the flowers would arrive thirsty and wilted, but they were in pretty great shape when I started the re-hydration process:

They got even better after a drink!

The only problem was that my hand got a little of the stain (remember I ordered tinted flowers to match the invitation)!

But the hands were worth it, because look at how well it matched (I blurred the name and location for privacy):

While the flowers got a good, long drink, I crafted floral picks to tie into the gold, heart theme:

First, I mixed paint to match the invites and painted ordinary wooden dowels. Next, I affixed small ribbons in coordinating colors. After that I added gold glitter hearts that I cut on my silhouette, though you could use a punch if you don't have one. Finally, I wrapped them in floral tape so that they would look natural amongst the stems if they were visible and to ensure that the paint didn't leach into the flowers.

The next morning, I began soaking floral oasis before the rest of our committee arrived. I normally would have used a block, but these rounds were on sale 2 for a $1 at Dollar Tree.

After a good soak, they went in the vases:

My friend L had the hard task of cutting the picks down to size, which proved to be one of the hardest parts (the moral of the story is to buy thinner dowels)
Here was the end product:

The planner actually ended up pulling the floral picks out for the morning luncheon so that the arrangements were just purple. She put them back in and reused them on the cocktail tables and scattered around the room at night along with lots of other sweet gold accents. So, our flowers turned out to be a dual-purpose gift with a wardrobe change in the middle. I couldn't be more pleased and the added benefit was that I now own 24 of those gorgeous vases (more accurately 16 as 8 seem to have walked off).

I would order these again in a heartbeat!

I am linking up with best of the weekend. This certainly was a great part of my weekend.