When I began researching and talking to florists, the budget prices I was getting were quite disheartening. Since my mom and I knew we wanted simple arrangements, we decided to go the DIY route.
Before deciding to do your own wedding flowers, a few things to consider:
*Flowers cannot be done far in advance. They will need to be done the day or two at most before the wedding.
*Someone needs to arrange them. You and your bridesmaids will not be available during those couple days to do the arranging. You will need a couple friends you can count on to arrange the flowers and set them out for the big day while you are being...the bride.
*You will need a cool dark place to store the flowers in water prior to setting them out.
*Simple arrangements work best.
*If you are already overloaded, sometimes the price to have the work done and details worked out for you is just worth it.
They were great! Their website includes tips for prep and care, how-to videos, and FAQ's. For any questions you don't find answers to, their customer service department is quick to respond and offer assistance. The flowers we received were gorgeous!
Bridal Bouquet Recipe:
3 White Hydrangeas
8-10 Standard Cream Roses
Wrapped in burlap and Lace
Fastened with Boutineer pins
I absolutely adored how my bouquet came out. Since my dress not full with lots of layers, I thought a complicated bouquet might be too much. I just wanted something to add an elegant touch! I also loved that my bouquet was fairly light weight. You will be holding it A LOT for photos. :)
Bridesmaid Bouquet Recipe:
1 Hydrangea Green Antique Horizon
6-8 Light pink Spray Roses
Wrapped in burlap
Fastened with Boutineer pins
The girl's bouquets were so sweet! The green hydrangeas are quite large, so one is plenty. These bouquets were also very light weight. I love how they dry as well!
Pew Flowers:
Large white Hydrangeas
Light pink standard roses
Light pink Spray roses
Randomly placed
The little pew arrangements were so cute and easy! We had the vases hung and filled with water ahead of time, and just placed a few different flowers in each vase before the ceremony.
Altar Arrangements:
Large White Hydrangeas
White Stock
White Standard Roses
White Spray Roses
Various Greens
Vases lined with 1" Diameter brown sticks
I was crazy about these arrangements! They were so elegant for a wedding. They were a perfect taste of summer for our indoor ceremony. I loved the sticks in the vases to give an outdoor and garden feel.
Cake Flowers:
Light Pink Garden Roses
White Rose Petals
Centerpieces:
White Hydrangeas
White and light pink Standard Roses
White and Light pink Garden Roses
White and light pink English Roses
Various Greens
For our reception, we collected various size and shaped vases from thrift stores. We also used mason jars! We placed them randomly on tables then distributed the flowers around the room. It was simple but pretty. Such an easy solution to fill a large room with so many tables without spending a lot of time. :)
Some helpful tips:
Ordering:
*If you are unsure about ordering flowers online, place a small order of the flowers you have in mind to see how the come, how long they take open up, how they last where you plan to store them, etc.
*Place your order about a month before the wedding. There are certain flowers that are unavailable at times, so you'll want plenty of time to ensure what you need is available.
*We chose a delivery date of Thursday for a Saturday wedding. This gave plenty of time for the flowers to open up nicely, and they lasted just fine. Also, in case any blooms don't make the journey to you, a Blooms by the Box will send you replacements. You'll need a day to allow for new flowers to arrive.
Storing:
*Once the flowers arrive, they will need to be kept in a cool, dark place. We kept ours in buckets of water in the large refrigerator at our wedding venue on Thursday night.
*Flowers may also be kept in vases of water in a cooler surrounded by ice.
Setting up:
*We set our flowers up in the places in vases of water on Friday afternoon for our Saturday morning wedding. This worked great!
*There may be a bloom here or there that doesn't make it through the night, so have a friend do a quick walk through before the wedding to pull these out.
*We had a couple ladies who were so sweet to help my mom setting out the flowers on Friday. The last hours of preparation fly by, and you have so many details on your mind. Put a friend in charge of some of these details to clear some of it off your mind!
*If you choose to add sticks like we did for the altar arrangements, I would recommend arranging these the morning of your ceremony if possible to avoid the sticks turning your water brown.
Arranging Bouquets:
*Such simple flower choices made creating the bouquets easy.
*We cut tips of the stems to keep them fresh, and also decided to eliminate leaves.
*Each bouquet was arranged slightly different. We simply interspersed the roses among the hydrangeas randomly but evenly around the bouquet. We kept tried to keep the size of each bridesmaid bouquet the same.
*Each bouquet was wrapped with a strip of burlap and fastened with boutineer pins. Since our bouquets did not include a thick bunch of stems, boutineer pins worked best since they are not quite as long as corsage pins. Don't want to poke anyone! ;)
I have to give credit to my mom who did the planning and arranging behind our flowers. I absolutely loved how they turned out! If any questions arise, and you'd like to hear more on what we did, please ask! Or, like I mentioned, the
Blooms by the Box website is a great resource.
Just to note, we ordered the groom's, mothers', and grandmother's corsages from our local florist at
Lowe's Foods. We did not arrange those ourselves. :)
For groomsmen, I made corsages from paper, a project to share on a separate post!
Whether you're thinking the DIY route or not, Cheryl has a great guide to wedding flowers! Check it out
here.
