DIY Flowers 3/11 - Kara`s Vineyard Wedding

I probably don’t have to tell you that flowers are expensive, right?
Ya. So I won’t tell you because you already know, but I WILL tell
you that there are some workarounds to hiring a professional
florist.
It will take some extra work on your part, and you may need to
simplify things a bit, but if you’re looking for a spot to save
potentially thousands of dollars on your wedding budget, this is
it.
So what’s the deal with doing your own flowers? What are some
things to keep top of mind, some general tips? Let’s start here, so
that you can determine if this will be a project that you want to
tackle, or would prefer to leave to the pros.
I think the most important question to ask yourself is if you’re
OK with floral arrangements and / or bouquets that are
simple. In my humble opinion, and this is not the law, it’s just my
opinion, DIY flowers are going to be the most successful both
visually and financially if you keep it simple.
And guys, let me say here, this goes for a lot of other things in
planning your wedding - simple is good, simple is your friend. I
could rattle down an entire list of things that are cheaper and turn
out better if kept simple, I’ll stick to flowers for today but really
embrace this concept of keeping things simple.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
What does this mean? Well, I’m going to encourage you to stick
to just one or two colors or types of flowers. Preferably one,
and I’ll give some specific recommendations for types in a minute.
Those big bouquets with a thousand stems that have 20 different
colors and types of flowers are better left to a professional florist,
I’m just gonna say it.
You probably COULD figure it out, but that much variety is going
to be expensive, and you’re going to risk tearing your hair out and
crying on the day before your wedding if you can’t get it right.
There are some can’t-go-wrong ways that will make your life
much easier, but you should fundamentally in your heart be OK
with going the simple route.
HOW BIG IS YOUR WEDDING?
Second general thing to consider, is volume. If you’re having
a large wedding with 200 people, and 20-25 tables, and there are
10 bridesmaids and groomsmen in your wedding party - that’s a
LOT of DIY flowers. Now, you CAN organize your ten
bridesmaids into helper bees and have everyone be a part of
assembling the centerpieces and bouquets the day before, but
keep in mind - you’re going to need a staging place to do this where you can realistically house all of those vases and
bouquets, where they are going to stay cool and fresh, and with
that many flowers, this could be a challenge.
Nothing would be more heartbreaking than doing all the work
to find day-of the wedding that the flowers are drooping
because they weren’t stored properly after they were
assembled.
If your wedding is smaller, say 7-10 tables and you’re doing 5
bouquets and 5 boutonnieres, I think you’re going to have a much
greater chance of success with DIY flowers.
OK, so simple arrangements, smaller wedding sizes. What else
should you consider?
ALTERNATIVES TO LIVE FLOWERS
Let’s talk quickly about flower alternatives. The workaround to
flowers dying or wilting is to use fake ones. Now, I don’t know
about going to the craft store and buying silk ones - you CAN find
beautiful silk flowers, but in all honesty for quality stems you’re
going to spend as much or more than you would on real flowers,
kind of defeating the money-saving goal.
Something that is very on-trend right now is paper flowers, in
all shapes and sizes. The fabulous news is that paper flowers
are relatively easy to make, and I have tons of DIY Pins over on
the Paper Flowers board in Pinterest.
Tissue paper, crepe paper, coffee filters, you name it, and there
are detailed DIY instructions out there. And I’ve said it before,
paper is pretty damn cheap. So you’re looking at time, if you
have the time and creative energy to burn, then consider doing
paper flowers for your centerpieces and even your bouquets.
With paper, you could do the work as far in advance as you
want - you could assemble everything a month before the
wedding if you had somewhere to keep them all. This
loophole is valuable because with real flowers, you are
forced to assemble everything in the day before the wedding,
when time is really tight and tensions can be high.
I had a questions from a bride named Wendy (hi Wendy!) this
week about actually mixing paper and real flowers. I hadn’t even
thought of that, but she asks about making DIY crepe paper
peonies and using one real stargazer lily with two paper peonies
in the centerpieces and bouquets. This is an interesting idea, you
would basically be cutting the cost a lot by not buying real
peonies, well minus a little expense of buying the paper.
I would test run the idea from start to finish and assemble an
arrangement to see exactly what it looks like. My concern, which
goes back to the principal of “keep it simple” would be that the
colors and or texture wouldn’t quite match each other - which is
OK - but I think it would look as nice to just stick with ALL paper.
I know real peonies are very expensive, you could do all paper
peonies together, and all stargazer lilies together (lilies are huge
and affordable, making them a PERFECT DIY flower candidate,
more on that in a bit). That way they would match perfectly, you
would have three blooms that were all the same color, same size,
same texture in each vase. You could have the tables split, some
with just peonies, some with just lilies, OR you could place them
together on the same table - the lilies in a taller vase, with the
paper peonies below in a shorter vase.
Logistically, IF you used the paper and real flowers in the same
vase, the real lily stem would have to sit in water, I wonder in my
head how the paper peonies would then sit, maybe on plastic
stems down in the water with the lily?
In any case, I think it’s a project worth exploring, I would just
recommend that you do a full and thorough test run well in
advance of the wedding so that you know exactly what it looks
like together.
Stargazer lilies are a beautiful & affordable flower for
wedding centerpieces. You do need to buy ahead and give
them time to open up. When they do open, take your fingers and
gently pull the yellow pollen stems out from the centers, so the
petals don't get stained. The blooms can be as big as 10” or
more inches wide, and on tall stems they are dramatic and
beautiful, and just a couple stems will go a long way.
Another question about paper peonies specifically was how much
crepe paper to use for making 40 peonies. This is really hard to
say because the size of your flowers is going to be the biggest
factor in determining how much paper you will use.
I pinned a specific Pin with very detailed how-to instructions about
making DIY peonies to the Paper Wedding Flowers board in
Pinterest. This Pin suggests using “floral crepe” versus regular
crepe paper, and gives a link to a website selling beautiful crepe
papers for $7 per unit. I’m going to post a link to a website called
Paper Mart, selling very similar, highest quality crepe paper for
less than $2.
My ultimate advice for DIY Paper flowers, and any wedding
project really, is to start early, experiment with a couple
different supplies, and test, test test. The only way to know for
sure how much you will need is to make a few of them, and use
that as your multiplier for how much the overall project is going to
take.
Time is your friend, and if you plan ahead and leave yourself
plenty of time you can order the $2 crepe paper in a couple
colors, see it in person, and if it’s perfect then great, but if you
need to try another kind or other colors or whatever, then you’ve
left yourself time to do that.
With DIY flowers is it wise to have someone else take care of
your bouquets since they are made in the last few days
before the wedding? (which seems like a stressful time to be
diy-ing)
Yes indeed, if you’re using real flowers in your bouquets, they
should ideally be made the day before the wedding and you’re
really down to crunch time. This is a perfect lead into bouquets,
and some specific recommendations I have for using real flowers.
My favorite type of flower for a DIY bouquet are roses and
hydrangeas. Not mixed, just all roses, all hydrangeas. Let
me start with Roses.
Did you all have a chance to listen to my episode titled “A Walk
Through the Flower Warehouse”? If you haven’t listened, be
sure to go back in your feed and download it, it’s the episode
dated February 19th and I share how priceless a resource a floral
warehouse / wholesaler is.
I encourage you all to do a google search for a floral
wholesaler in your city that is open to the public. I’m not
going to rehash too much of the episode here, but go back
and have a listen so you have a foundation for what I’ll talk
about here.
Roses at my local warehouse start at $9.99 for TWO DOZEN. 24
roses bundled together make a gorgeous bouquet - no other
fillers or fancy floral gadgets are required. My tip when using
roses is to buy them a couple of days in advance - wait let me
back up and say the first tip is to test this well before the wedding,
again so you know exactly what you’re in for and there aren’t
surprises at crunch time. Trust me, spending $10 to visually
find out exactly what this will look like is totally worth it.
So you’re going to want to give the roses a couple of days to open
up, get really big and fluffy. Then it’s literally as simple as
arranging them in a circular way and binding the stems together.
Some of you may be thinking yeah right, easier said than done.
Fair enough. I have NO floral practice or formal training or skills
whatsoever, I can’t emphasize enough that you need to manually
practice it well in advance of the actual day. It isn’t terribly difficult
to do, get your hands on some florals and try it out. I’ll Pin a
photo of my actual wedding bouquet to the board so you can
see what a $10 DIY bouquet looks like!
You also may be thinking, eh roses, no thank you. Another
perfect flower for DIY bouquets is hdrangeas, because they are
so big and fluffy, and have big bright green leaves. You can get
away with a big, full bouquet using 3 stems of hydrangeas, very
abundant in the summertime and prices may vary depending on
where you are in the country but the DIY bridesmaid hydrangea
bouquets I’ll post worked out to costing about $12 each, three
stems per bouquet.
I’ll mention baby’s breath here too, I have a couple Pins of a
thousand ways to use baby’s breath, well not really a thousand,
but this is a very affordable, delicate and romantic flower
alternative that you could use in place of more expensive blooms.
If you don’t have a floral wholesale nearby, there are lots of
places to consider for buying blooms in bulk.
Did you know that Costco take floral orders? Sam’s Club
does too, and there are a few well known websites where you
can order flowers specifically for DIY purposes. Just to name a
few, fiftyflowers.com, bloomsbythebox.com, I have a full Pin on
the Wedding Flowers board that lists a few other websites. Price
points vary quite a bit depending on the type of flower - just
remember to keep it simple.
If you are sold on doing DIY flowers, I encourage you to visit
the Pinterest boards we talked about today, shop around for
a wholesale warehouse and pay them a visit in person, and
take a look at Costco and the online floral companies I
named. The options out there are endless, but they don’t
have to be overwhelming - settle on a color, a couple of
flower types, and go from there.