Wedding Internet Flower Fears and Budget Woes

[WishfulThinking]

Hi everyone,

I have some questions that I think some of you flower-savvy folks might be able to answer.

Here are my questions more broken down so I don''t confuse people:

1. I know some people here have purchased flowers online for great prices and I assume done the bouquets, etc on your own- how was that? Was it completely nerve wracking to buy them online? I am considering flowerexchange because they have so many options and seem reasonably priced. I have read over the PS threads about internet flowers, but I am still sort of scared about it. Should I be? If I were in a different financial situation, I''d order them beforehand as a trial run, but I absolutely cannot afford to do that, unfortunately. It''s definitely not an option.

This brings me to the next question.
2. My flower budget is $200 dollars. Plus or minus at the very most $50, but even that "small" up is a lot for our budget.

I am honestly not sure if what I need can be obtained for that price, so I might have to sacrifice. The venue we are looking at [ugh, an entirely NEW one... long story!] is pretty large compared to the number of people we are going to have, so we were thinking that having more decorations might help to fill up the space so it looks less deserted/empty. We could probably rearrange furniture and make it work, but flowers other than the decorations would be a nice touch.

To give people a better idea of what I am looking for:
the idea is to use a brighter pink, red gerberas, and something dark purple

for the bouquets while having enough flowers left over to do some decorating. I''m attaching a pic of my "flower inspiration" below, which might be helpful. The inspiration doesn''t have any white... do you think that is okay? For some reason I have this hang-up about having a white filler flower or something in there, but it is really not affordable to do that, so would not having one look bad? Does the pic below look good? Could I just tie a white ribbon instead? Opinions on that would be awesome.

On to the color dilemma. Purple. I need a purple flower that won''t kill my budget. I looked at the purple hydrangeas on flowerexchange, but they are kind of a small amount [20 stems] for the price, so I am not sure about that with the budget. I also looked at these: http://www.theflowerexchange.com/scripts/prodViewn.asp?idproduct=993 which are a better price for twice as many stems. Is anyone familiar with Lisianthus? The purple flower in the picture looks awesome, but the others don''t seem to be... purple. Is that just how they are?

I''d love for the purple to match somewhat these votive holders, which I think we are getting: http://www.lunabazaar.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1252
Not a perfect match, but not too far off so it doesn''t clash. I would prefer for the flowers not to be light purple, since we''re really not looking for pastels.

Anyone know of a flower that fits the bill without breaking the bank?

Out of these flowers we are trying to make:
Two bride bouquets- not huge, but enough to look nice
One maid of honor bouquet- smaller, but not tiny
One man of honor flower/bout- one flower
Some flower balls [maybe?]
As many vases of flowers as we can, but with a nice mix of all of them thrown in

I have transferred the stress of venue-hunting [which had another fall-through yesterday, and I can''t think about right now... it is in the process of being resolved, but it''s overwhelming] so I am moving on to something that is [I think] more manageable.
If you''ve managed to follow me this far [sorry this is so disjointed], do you have any ideas? Am I hopeless?