DIY Flowers - Growing in Creativity
Coco Dietz
Every year the wedding industry grows and grows and as it increases the cost of the weddings follows close behind it. Once something has the label, “Wedding” on it they can automatically raise the price because of the importance that a wedding holds.
While some brides have the luxury of having a seemingly endless budget, others have to hold tight to each penny to make their dream wedding a reality. Much of the cost of that factors into the price in a lot of categories in the wedding needs is the cost of labor. One of the most effective ways to cut down costs in a wedding is learning how to make some things at home so that you can save that money for other expenses. One of the larger expenses that generally takes up 8-10% of your budget are flowers.
Flowers have been an integral part of weddings for centuries. Even when you are a child and playing wedding with your friends they generally include something to represent the flowers either when they are walking down the aisle or throwing them at the end. So, imagining a wedding without flowers is nearly impossible for most brides. With the hard rule not to cut the desire for flowers in place, that requires a more creative solution to the issue of how to bring the cost of flowers down so that it is much more manageable for the average household to handle.
During the week of your wedding, go to different super markets that have a good flower selection or local flower shops where you can buy the flowers by the stem, if you are able to buy them in bulk to save a little extra. Make sure you have enough buckets and flower food so that they will last until your wedding and then store them until the wedding. Next, go to your local craft store and pick up some floral tape, ribbon that matches your wedding color scheme, and floral pins. Select which flowers you would like to use for your different bouquets for the bride as well as the bridesmaids.
Once you have an arrangement that you like, take the floral tape and tightly wrap the bouquet starting from the top of the flowers working downward, make sure to leave room for the stems to be placed in water. Once it is all securely taped up, wrap the ribbon on top of it and then pin it down with the floral pins. You can add decorations and other embellishments on top of the ribbon, but the ribbon offers a prettier background to work upon.
You can use the same process but smaller for the bountanier or corsages if you choose to incorporate those as well.
