Guess I am too late to answer this! HOpe the flowers held up and the event were fun for all!

Everything turned out great. I picked flowere at 6 am and used the conditioning lq that I found on this forum. I was able to keep them cool in the neighbor's extra fridge that was stored in her garage. I would still like to know what is the best thing to do as next year we have to do it again and the neighbor is having the fridge picked up next week.

Given the (relatively) cool overnight temps, you could easily pick early in the morning for something the same night. If the time to use is less than that, I'd go with the "as late as possible the night before" cutting. That way you'd be sure they were well-hydrated.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try to plan ahead next year and plant flowers that hold up longer. It looks like this will be an annual thing. Everyone loved the flowers, they were much nicer than what was available at the plant stands in the supermarkets and better then the carnations that the florest had. He wanted $7 for 2 carnations with a bit of filler, tied with a ribbon. I needed 10 bouquets. There was not that much in our budget. I did it all for les then $7 for all ten with the flowers in my garden plus some ribbon and some plastic to wrap them in.

Hi, do you have any photos of the bouquets? if so I would like to see them please! I'm new here and not sure where
to upload flower arrangements or where to find them!
Any help would be much appreciated, thanks

Sorry, I didn't even think of taking photos of the flowers, only the girls.