Lacking a Bronze Clematis

The eighth anniversary is the bronze-pottery-lace-tanzanite-clematis anniversary.  Sure, you knew that.  You gave your spouse a bouquet of eight clematis vines in a tanzanite-encrusted bronze urn with a side of lace pottery and can't imagine why the Mister and I aren't doing the same.
As of today, we've been married for eight years and an alloy flower forever representing "clever" and "intellectual"* might be just the the thing we need.
I imagine it's not, but alas, as with the desk sets we didn't give each other last year (seven years, you recall, is the desk set anniversary), we'll never know if it was.
As an alternative, I planned to commemorate the day by posting images of our wedding flowers and explaining their meanings (a la Language of Flowers).
So, here goes: the mixed flowers in unmatched vases mean that I really wanted lots of flowers around, but was unwilling to pay a florist to take away my fun of arranging them.  The big bridal bouquet means that I know when to call a professional.  The chocolate tortes with roses and lemon tarts with lavender suggest we value flavor over tradition.

Pragmatic and into food and flowers.  I'm not sure if I'm interpreting that correctly. I'm probably supposed to see love, happiness, sunshine, honesty, and grace in that bouquet and I see pragmatism.  But then I was probably not supposed to be so lazy as to not actually look them up. . .

Happy Anniversary Mister.  I'm glad you married me.  I'm glad were pragmatic into food and flowers.  Thank you for bringing sunflowers and iris to our relationship, whatever good things they represent.  Don't wait up for the bronzed clematis.

*While the anniversary gift websites reveal that clematis represents clever intellectualism, the flower always reminds me of a pamphlet from high school sex ed, "Chlamydia is not a flower."

**Photographs were taken by Krista Cooley of Cooley Photography.  I can't find a current page to link to, but she was fantastic to work with and highly recommended.