I don’t recommend every bride do their own
flowers. Honestly I wasn’t even sure I
was going to pull it off, but I had already decided I wasn’t going to pay $300
for a rose bridal bouquet so there was no going back from there.
The whole process began when my friend Amy
recommended her florist from her wedding.
Since I had chosen pretty common and readily available flowers I figured
it would cost that much to accomplish the look I had in mind. I didn’t want to just go with the first
florist that was recommended to me so I started doing some research. As I got deeper and deeper into the prices of
simple floral center pieces I realized that even just 10 small floral
arrangements was going to eat my whole flower budget and then where did that
leave me for my bouquets? Over budget,
that’s where.
I was talking to my step-mom one day about flowers
and she mentioned that her boss’s son ordered wholesale flowers from a friend
who used to work with her and that he could save us a ton on flowers but we
would have to do all of the arrangements our self. So we went about buying some test flowers
from the Cloverdale flea market and spent an afternoon getting an idea of the
formula we would need to use to create all of the arrangements the day before
the wedding. After about 3 hours we
pretty much had it figured out along with how many and what kinds of flowers we
would need. Since our colours were teal
and red, we decided that all the flowers should be red since all the table over
lays would be teal.
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| We used flowers that were the same shape and size as flowers we would use in the actual arrangements. |
About a month later I went about finding a florist
to do just my bridal bouquets. Again, I
search online fro good reviews and low prices.
The lowest I found was $300 for a bridal bouquet and $150 for
bridesmaids bouquets. I guess we are
cancelling all our floral arrangements cause that’s our whole budget (Over
actually). I put in a call as well as several emails to the florist recommended
by my friend and received no response.
Maybe my order wasn’t big enough to justify a call back? I began
thinking about it. How hard could it be
to bind some flowers together? With that
I took to my computer once again and watched as many bridal bouquet tutorials I
could find. One piece of advice I’m so glad
I took was to allow for plenty of time to accomplish all of the bouquets and
also to do a trial run to absolutely determine if this was a task I could
accomplish.
One of my bridesmaids Kim and I took to purchasing
the right flowers for the job and my wonderful not-yet husband built us a
little work table to go about our business.
4 hours, tutorial videos on repeat, many alcoholic beverages and a sun
burn later we had completed ONE beautiful bridal bouquet! At this point we are feeling pretty competent
Kim and I. All liquored up and having
accomplished the one bouquet we are thinking we should open up our own
shop! All confidence dissipated a month
later when it was time to order the flowers and I began having nightmares about
hideous flowers. Too late now, just go
with it!
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| Not bad for newbies! We used three carnations bunched together to create the same size flower as a cabbage rose. |
Over the next 2 months I went about collecting all of
the supplies I would need to pull this off. Gardening shears (buy good ones
cause mine sucked), floral tape (green), green craft wire (for gerbera daisies
so they don’t wilt), fishing line (to bind each section together), ribbon and
corsage pins.
The night before the wedding, three of the most
wonderful ladies accompanied me to the hall where my flowers were awaiting
me. At 9:30pm at night we began the
arduous process of de-thorning and leafing the flowers and applying the wire
and floral tape to the gerbera daisies (note: do not go too far down the stem
because you will need to trim the stems and you don’t want the floral tape and
wire to be visible at the end of the stems when you are finished. Only about 5 inches from the base of the
flower is necessary. We got carried away).
Once we had 3 gerbera daisies wrapped and 25 roses de-thorned I began to
create my bridesmaid bouquets. I’m not
going to lie; I got better as I went.
The trick with creating a rounded bouquet look is to cross your
stems. I started with three in the
center and then added flowers working around the base, all the while crossing
the stems. It looks bulky at first but
once you bid them it isn’t at all. I
bound each layer so it would be easy to maneuver the bouquet as I worked. Once I had the size and shape I wanted I
would look it over from every angle, determine if there were holes, pull some
flowers up, push some down and then wrap the stems in floral tape starting two
inches from the base and working my way down.
Leave two inches of stem from the base of the ribbon and floral tape because
you will have to put the flowers in water. Trim your stems and then add your
ribbon. We tied our ribbon to the base
of our bouquets leaving two inches of ribbon to tuck and cover. Slowly wrap the ribbon around the stems in
the same direction you crossed your stems.
This will help keep the flowers in position. If you try to wrap in the opposite direction
you will be pushing the stems away from each other which will move the flowers
out of position potentially. Once you
have your stems wrapped, tuck the ribbon under on itself so you can’t see the
rough edge of the ribbon and pin with corsage pins.
We finished all 6 bouquets by 12:45am. That’s not bad when you think about all the
work involved. I finished my bouquet in
15 mins which I think was the record.
Because I used larger garden roses as well as regular roses and gerberas
it didn’t take as long. An all rose
bouquet has less forgiveness on shape than if you used fluffier roses or other
flowers.
I would definitely do my friends flowers for their
weddings since we are totally pro now! HAHHAAHAHAHAHAAHA
But seriously, I saved so much money doing my own
flowers. I ordered 5 bunches of 25
cabbage roses, 6 bunches of 25 roses, 7 bunches of 10 gerberas, 2 bunches of 25
carnations and two bunches of baby’s breath for $470.
If you have the time and patience and any skill
what-so-ever I definitely suggest going this route!
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