I like the suggestion of kale but sometimes getting it to be at the right stage at the right time for a wedding can be tricky in a home garden. For an autumn wedding, you'd have to start it from seed in summer, transplant into the garden in autumn, and keep it sprayed to keep the cabbage loopers (I've been hand-picking them off cole crops all week longs) or imported cabbage worms from leaving holes in the leaves. You also could grow it in containers. I wouldn't try to raise kale plants in anything smaller than a gallon container, with one plant per container. You could put several of them in a really large container though, or grow a row in your garden to harvest and use as needed. Ornamental kale comes in green (kale's green tends to be a dark bluish-green), white, pink, red, and purple, although the red is not a bright red---it is more of a subdued wine red or almost burgundy. Most ornamental kale plants are two tone---like green and purple, green and white, green and pink, etc. Growing kale from seed is ridiculously easy---you grow it the same way you grow cabbage, broccoli, etc. Grasshoppers prefer edible garden kale to all other kale crops, at least in my garden, but rarely touch the ornamental kale. Maybe they don't like the frilly leaves. The ornamental kale plants in my garden were planted into the ground in early October from transplants started from seed in August, and they're about 1/2 grown now. They might be larger but early in the fall they had to fight a lot of hot, dry weather and grasshoppers. I have seed for pink, red and white varities for spring. For fall, I am growing white and purple ones. There's a special kind of kale grown for cut flowers. The variety of the cut flower kale with which I'm familiar is 'Crane' and it comes in several colors. It is a hybrid which means you would get fairly uniform plants with it, which would be important if raising them for a wedding. I'll link one example of crane below. Harris Seeds has a good selection of ornamental kale varieties as does Pinetree Garden Seeds. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Kale Crane at Harris Seed

Well, I've made a basket to use for the cards at her shower.... because of the wine theme, I tried to weave what's supposed to look like an Italian urn. I bought a few fake grape clusters and raffia to decorate it. I was going to attach them to the handles or rim -- or maybe make a raffia "belt" to hang the grapes at the front of the basket 'belly'. I'm not really sure how to decorate it at this point. Maybe I should weave a completely different basket??? This pic shows the color/shape well -- I made it quite large because she'll only have one shower and it will be a 'fee' shower:

usually most graduation parties are like a open house, where people come and go (or like us have double parties to attend)...i'd use some throw-away sterno heaters, and an iced tray and have everything ready, including the usual cake. use dental floss to cut it without "messing" the design too much... i'm so hungry right now i'd love to have your anniversary brunch! add a tray of mini-muffins, or small bagels and whipped cream cheese. that should help anyone with a egg intolerance...it might be easier to serve mini juices (costco or sams) keep them on ice in a tub...

maddielee I don't intend to keep this up forever, just the first 5 years and working with the traditional list makes it fun/challenging. sushi I considered art but decided against it - too personal and they have no place to hang art. yes mtn, they are literally in a tiny house, they have a now 3 year old daughter and a cat and a growing collection of outbuildings. Drying clothes on a line when they worked at Sequoia Nat' Park worked, but not in the PNW so they had to buy a dryer which then had to have its own shed..... mouse meet cookie. DS is project engineer at Olympic Nat'l Park, they live on rented land (private acreage), DIL is finishing up a teaching degree and will be doing her student teaching at the end of the year, I have to make sure any gift is worth giving. Made this wood recipe binder for DIL's last b'day because she saves family recipes. This is their house when DGD was a baby and before they added their big covered deck. But it's still tiny.