This is my current stress. FFIL's partner, D, was going to do our flowers as a gift. We were so excited -- he does sales for a wholesale florist so he said we could have anything we wanted because he gets them for so cheap. Roses everywhere! Amazing. Yesterday I found out that FFIL and D are taking a break, and may or may not get back together. FFIL said D would likely still love to do the flowers, but I immediately thought that no, we can't depend on a 'maybe', and it wouldn't feel appropriate anymore to ask him to do them anyways -- that's a huge undertaking that he was going to take a week off of work for.

So I'm stuck where you are -- we were not budgeting for flowers. Before D's offer, I was planning on using a combo of fake and fresh. I have consults set up next week with florists where I think I will be shocked to hear the price of what we were going to have done for free by D. I'm preparing myself by figuring out where fake will work. Anywhere that people won't be directly in front of the flowers, I'm thinking fake. Fake greenery garland (or dried) for the mantel and windowsills, and I think I can even manage to do a fake arbor decoration. Shepherd's hooks too maybe for the aisle. These things only are important for photos really, and nice fake florals can do the job. For our centerpieces, I want real, but we are going to do bud vases down the middle of our 8' banquet tables. Just a couple flowers/greens in each. Hopefully that will be an economical choice, but who knows.

Another option for you could be mixing fake flowers with real greens. Or a mix of real/fake flowers. Pick the fake ones that look the best, and use real filler flowers that come cheap along with real greens. Some sort of combo that will help them look more realistic and give you that freshness!