Easter Altar Flowers

A few years ago I started buying fresh flowers for our church for Easter. I love fresh flowers, but this is the only time I buy them. Easter is the most important holiday in the Catholic church, and I feel like the altar decorations should reflect that.

Arranging flowers is one of my few hobbies. This is convenient, because buying all the arrangements I make at a florist would be several hundred dollars. Buying random assorted bouquets at Walmart and arranging them myself is much cheaper. Also, then I can make them exactly the way I want them.

Gathering the materials.

I bought all of these on Thursday and transported them home in buckets of water I brought with me. These stayed in A.'s relatively cool office until I was ready to put the arrangements together on Saturday.

I started by taking all the bouquets apart and putting like colors together.

Poppy helped me with this.

Staged.

I use the same box every year for the main altar arrangement. Last year, the plastic liner in it was leaking. I discovered to my great satisfaction, however, that the big plastic container of salad greens I bought awhile ago is big enough to function as a liner in this box, so I didn't have to buy a new one.

I don't have any of that foam florist's stuff to stick the stems into. I hate that stuff, anyway. It always falls apart. This year I tried using some of the sheep's wool we had from shearing, but when I got that wet, it compacted too much.

Last year I used criss-crossed branches inside the box to support everything, but that didn't work this year. I think because last year I was using a lot more lilac branches, which are stiffer than flower stems. I ended up finding a piece of chicken wire in the pasture and using that inside the box for structure.

I had several fits and starts with these flowers. They were fighting me. It took me awhile to figure out how to put them together in the way I wanted, with the right shape, height, and color mixing. I spent a little more than two hours on four different arrangements.

The central altar:

The lectern:

The saints' pedestals on either side of the tabernacle:

And then the potted flowers:

I'm not a huge fan of Easter lilies, so I only get a few.

And the bigger picture:

The view from our pew.

This is so much work, but it is also so worth it to me. It's an act of service that has the selfish result of making me very happy when I turn on the lights on Easter Sunday and see all those flowers.