Garden Rose & Gold Pear Centerpieces in Mint Julep Cups

This is my 110 step process to making my centerpieces. They were super involved, but luckily I had some help!

For my centerpieces I wanted to include cream roses, champagne garden roses & gold pears. I used mint julep cups because we live in Louisville and it's a nod to the Derby and they had the vintage feel I was looking for.

FINAL CENTERPIECES (Julep Cups & Table Runners for Sale now)

HOW THEY CAME TO BE:

Mint Julep Cups:

STEP 1: Bought them in bulk in two sizes 4.25 inches & 7.5 inches. They had 10" as well but once I put the flowers in them I worried that they'd be too tall and block conversation.

STEP 2: Attached gold and satin ribbon to them and tied a bow.* (Click pics for links to supplies)

*Easier said than done due to the shape & the finish on the cups - they had to be tied, then hot glued, then the bow was tied and hot glued again to keep them from slipping.

GOLDEN PEARS:

Initially I thought I could buy these some place but could only find glass pears which didn't really work. So I had to create my own.

STEP 1: I bought mini syrofoam pears from Hobby Lobby (I got 10 pkgs of 12 each).

STEP 2: I enlisted the help of my little sister.

STEP 3: We used thread to tie slip-knots around the stems of the pears so we could hang them from a cord to spray paint them. We used two colors of gold spraypaint. NOTE: Use different lengths so that the pears don't bump into each other when they're hanging.

STEP 4: We set up two stakes in our back yard and tied a cord between them and then looped the thread around it. It took some precision to keep them from getting tangled (sorry no pics).

It's very messy! To get the bottoms we had to hold them so they wouldn't move when we sprayed them.

STEP 5: Once they're dry cut them down and remove the strings.

STEP 6: Add floral wire to the bottom so they can be included in your arrangements. I didn't even glue the wire, I just stuck it in. If you want to make sure they don't pop off add a small amount of glue to the end of the floral wire.

FLOWERS:

STEP 1: I ordered 400 cream vendela roses from FlowersandFreshness.com and 72 champagne garden roses from TheFlowerExchange.com

STEP 2: Strip all the leaves and thorns off the flowers and put them in water so they can open (most will look small when you first get them but they'll open up with proper hydration). I used buckets I got from Home Depot.

Be sure to BUY ONE OF THESE FLORAL STRIPPERS!! I didn't and it suuuucked because I had to use a utility knife because I couldn't find one locally (no craft stores had them). Also get a pair of rubber gloves.

STEP 3: Prep the vases. I bought WET floral foam (make sure it's not styrofoam for fake floral arrangements) and cut it to fit the vases (leave a little room at the top so you can't see the foam from the sides - it doesn't have to fit perfectly).

STEP 4: Arrange the flowers.

I'd already done a test run so I knew how many flowers would make each vase look full (around 7 regular roses for the small vases and 19 regular roses & 5 garden roses for the large ones) but I still needed to figure out how long to cut them and how to arrange them so they had a nice dome shape.

It took some trial and error and one minor meltdown but I had help and we got thru all the arrangements in about 3 hours.

STEP 5: Admire your work...Consider a career in floral design.

STEP 6: We put them back in the flower boxes to transport them. Then we passed out from exhaustion. :)

howfar in advance did u do your centerpieces?

Thanks ladies!

Flowers came in on Thursday and were put in water that night.

Arrangements were done Friday evening for a wedding Sunday afternoon. I watered them Saturday with turkey baster.

I had 12 centerpieces with 3 vases each.

Flowers = $500
Vases = $80
Ribbon = $12
Foam = $12
Pears, Floral wire, spraypaint = $40

Total = $644 or $53 per table (I also made my bouquet from those flowers and pears so it would probably be around $50/per).

Camrie, this is beautiful.  I love how they turned out!  They look amazing.  Congrats!

Beautiful job...

You are an inspiration to everyone! Thanks so much for posting. This was a huge help and they look great!