The thrips can destroy bloom, I found that they are especially attracted to yellow roses (for a wedding, all ten brides maids carried Graham Stuart Thomases (I had 25 plants of him). I was appalled making bouquets when I looked down and say the table, my skirt the floor, my blouse, and even my arms were crawling. I'll never forget that. What saved me was the outer six petals was where the thrips were, so I cleaned up all those roses by taking them down to the undisturbed petals (GST works that way rather well). I don't think a malathion spray would have worked, and the hay fields (this was a fall wedding) are thrip-iferous at that time of year.

I had a huge healthy plant of Eden which I had planned to use for the Bride's bouquet. The thrips had browned every bloom and they were not the sort that could be saved by removing petals. So I cut a lot of noisettes and had some small sized white and pink polyanthas and the Bride probably carried several hundred rose blooms.

Lesson 1: plan for alternative solutions.

Tennessee Lesson 2: the weather has a sense of humor, you will lose yours.

Make sure your irrigation system is working 100% maybe borrow a dosatron for slow fertilizer application. This fall buy enough Remay/ frost-proof very light material that can float over the roses and protect them down to 24F

Find rose friends who can supplement your blooms if need be. (I had two backups)

Lesson 3. Cutting the week before the wedding. Accumulate a couple of spare refrigerators and some max-min thermometers. You will need a place to store the roses that is cold BUT NOT TOO COLD. Work on the refrigerators until you TRUST them not to freeze and not to get over 40. The blooms must be kept vertical and at the same time must NOT touch the freezer above. Test them this fall at the temp range outside that you expect to equal next spring.

In the garden, spray bor black spot with a religious fervor that would put a Pope to shame. That very warm temperature that TN often gets the first week of May will bring out fungal problem (when you think through April you won't have any.)

Learn how to snap deadhead at the abscission layer the week before the wedding, you don't have the time to prune with Felcos and your thumb joint will thank you.

Consider buying fill in roses from Sam's club.

Nandina makes a lovely fern-y look and unlike a lot of ferns, Nandina foliage doesn't wilt.

Will write more as I remember more.

An alternative to being at the mercy of Mother Nature: Staging. Like they do (interiors) for real estate sales here. It’s a millennial thing. They’re very big on stainless steel.

It’s also done at, and around, the BJK National Tennis Center for the US Open. Each August, the City of NY and the USTA create a lush outdoor tropical paradise. The place is a beehive of activity 2 weeks before opening day.

Safe lifting and storage of your permanent plantings may be the biggest problem.

@stillanntn6b Actually, a bouquet made up of "several hundred" little blooms sounds to me incredibly charming!!! maybe more so than the more conventional type of bouquet that Eden's flowers might have made...

subk3 - it looks to me that stillanntn has given you the best advice - plan for the worst, and then you can relax and not worry, which is a good idea when planning weddings. Reality is likely NOT to be as bad as the worst weather, so you will be delighted, instead of crushed if the weather does not cooperate.

Jackie