A Floral Trip Down Memory Lane

Prom season.  Usually, I have a ton of dresses to work on during this time of year.  This year was an exception - the only dress I worked on was for my oldest son's girlfriend.  She inherited the dress from a cousin, who had had it redone by her mother at some point.  It wasn't the best alteration job, so most of what I needed to do was repair the work that had been done to that point, and to hem it and take it in just a smidge for her.

The saddest thing about it is that my son doesn't even get to attend her senior prom.  She's 18, but he's 21.  Too old to be an escort because he is of legal age to buy alcohol.  Never mind that my kid doesn't drink (and most likely never will).  The school has to do what it has to do to try their best to prevent tragic accidents that you read about in the papers every year.  But it was still a little sad for the two of them, since this is her senior prom.

She decided that she was just going to go with a bunch of girlfriends who also didn't have dates (a move that I heartily applaud - I wish we'd had that option when I was in high school - it sure would have beat the stigma of not being asked and not having a date...).  While doing the final fitting on her, it occurred to me that since none of these girls would have dates, that maybe none of them would have corsages.

You can't go to prom without a corsage.  You just can't.  I think there's a law about that on the books somewhere.

I asked her if her parents were buying her some flowers, and she was pretty sure they weren't.  Then I asked her if any of her girlfriends were getting flowers from their folks, and with one exception (she was takin' herself to prom, so she's buyin' herself some flowers, darnit!), none of the other girls would have corsages, either.

A brief conversation with my son later, we figured that since he'd be working while they were going out to dinner, that he might as well at least buy her and her friends some flowers.  He actually wanted to learn how to make the corsage himself (and he's not that bad with flowers, remember?), but there just wasn't enough time to teach him how, with him working all day and going to class at night.

Heck, I didn't even know if I could remember how to make a wrist corsage, much less teach someone else to do it.

Off to the local floral/decorators warehouse I went.  Wrist corsage bands, check.  Floral tape, check.  Floral wire, check.  Ribbon in colors to match all three girls' dresses, check.  Up to the register, check.  Oh, wait - they don't take checks.  Cash.

When he got home from work last night, off to the grocery store we went to check out their floral department.  I usually go to Trader Joe's to get the flowers that I put into arrangements for tables (you can hunt through my posts for anything labeled floral and you can find some examples), but last night they were just about wiped clean.  So off to Ralphs grocery store we went.  Luckily, they had a little more than T.J.'s, but still not very much.  He finally settled on some purple striped mini carnations, some white roses, and some baby's breath.  No greens available there, but my neighbor had gifted me with several cuttings of her leather fern plants years ago, so no worries.

Until I got home and realized that my husband had just that day decided that he needed to cut all the plants back, nearly to the roots.

Sigh.

We don't have any more ivy (too many places for rodents to hang out and party hearty), so I cut what I could from what was left.  And decided to use ribbon accents.  Lots and lots of ribbon accents.  (LOL)

Dark blue ribbon, to match the girlfriend's dress.  I only made this photo large because I was so proud of myself for actually using the macro properly.  

Dark purple and gold ribbons to match the other two girls' dresses, plus the blue one (to the upper right).
Sure hope they can tell the difference tomorrow night when they put them on. 

I love roses.  I just wish I could grow them.

And off to prom they go.

The prom this year is being held at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  Attendees are allowed to go into the ballroom where the dance & food will be, but they also get to wander through about three floors of the Queen Mary and see some of the displays & rooms.  Hopefully, no ghosts.  If she ever gets a copy of the photos they take there, I'll post a photo of the finished dress - we didn't have time to take a shot while she was here and I like them better when they're all dolled up for the dance anyway.  :)