DIY Brides: Pick Your Own Local Organic Flowers

This week's Western North Carolina Wedding Wisdom post is a continuation of my interview with Katie Grear of Lady Luck Flower Farm. DIY Brides can pick their own organically grown wedding flowers on Katie's Farm.

I had such a good time meeting Katie, and getting to know her story. She made her flower-growing start growing Hydroponic Snapdragons. As she said last week, "I loved dealing with flowers and I loved bringing flowers to town, but I wasn't in love with the hydoponic greenhouse and [the chemicals] that went into that." So Katie stared Lady Luck Flower Farm, and started growing in season, organic flowers.

In this video, Katie talks about what DIY brides can expect from their U-Pick experience.

Here are a few tips for U-Pick Brides:

• Start by visiting Lady Luck Flower Farm's Website to see what's blooming or about to bloom
• You want to come out several days before your wedding to pick your flowers so they can be conditioned (We'll talk about conditioning next week with Florist Janet Frye of The Enchanted Florist)
• Make sure you use very clean buckets and knives. If your would eat out of your buckets, they are clean enough
• Have a cool place to store your flowers, such as a cool basement.

U-Pick Flowers: What to Expect from Hindsight Bride on Vimeo.

More food for thought from Katie Grear:

"It's really hard for me to wrap my mind the floral industry because it's one of the most heavily contaminated with pesticides. That's why it's really important to me to be local and organic. I try to get people to take their focus off of these other kinds of flowers and come back to stuff that's in season." ~Katie Grear, Lady Luck Flower Farm