When you are dealing with a small wedding budget and still want all the beauty of a platinum style wedding you have to cut corners in a lot of places. While planning my wedding in June I found that a florist will charge hundreds of dollars to create your bouquets for you.
Silk flowers can sometimes look cheesy or cheap but all it takes is the right combination to achieve that professional look we all desire on our wedding day. It really is easier than you think and everyone will be able to keep their bouquet forever if they want to.
Once you have chosen your colors it will come together nicely, try getting your girlfriends together for a night at home arranging flowers. Mix in a girly movie or music add a few snacks and cocktails and it will be a wonderful memory for all of you. When planning your own wedding you really do “get by with a little help from your friends.
My colors are Red, White, and Black with just a hint of silver for the BLING effect. I visited my favorite web site for wedding supplies, yes EBAY, for the flowers. You may spend a couple of hours online finding the best deal but it will be well worth it. There are literally hundreds of E Bay stores selling silk flowers of all colors and styles. If you want pink roses, calla lilies, tulips, anything~ just type it in the search engine and walla!
I suggest you choose the larger bunches whenever possible. It is amazing just how many flowers it takes to make a good bouquet. I purchased them in lots of 84 or more and still ran out once I got to the designing phase. You can get 84 roses for less than $20 after shipping, that is less than half what it would cost at walmart or a craft store and a fraction of the cost of the florist.
Once I received my flowers I had to take them out of the package and fluff them back up a little. They will get a little flat during shipping but came right back to shape pretty fast.
Look at plenty of pictures, you can find them everywhere! You don’t have to pick an exact style or decide anything but the more photo’s you see the more inspiration and ideas you will get. You may want to get some ribbon in your wedding colors as well, it makes a good filler or stem wrap and if you don’t use it there odds are you will use it somewhere!
I made the 5 bridesmaid bouquets mostly out of red roses and added a few black ones to the Maid Of Honor bouquet. I decided not to use the pre made handles but if you want them they are fairly inexpensive at walmart. I bought one and when I began making the bouquets it was prettier without it. You can get away with less flowers by just cutting the stems even and wrapping them in floral tape and ribbon.
I liked the medium sized round bouquets I had seen so what I did was cut all of the roses free from the main stem so that each rose was on it’s own stem. I left the leaves and baby’s breath attached for filler but scooted it all to the very top of the stem touching the bottom of the rose. Start with one flower in your hand and just keep adding them around in a circle holding the stems tight. It took two bunches(12)of roses for each bridesmaid bouquet and 3(18) for the MOH bouquet, you can keep adding until they are the size you desire.
Once you are happy with the size you will want to wrap the stems together with floral tape, start at the top and wrap as tightly as possible down to the end. You want the stems to be long enough to fit comfortably in the hand but not so long they feel awkward when holding them. If you need to trim them down a good pair of wire cutters will be fine. Don’t worry if it looks a little crooked at first, most of the silk flowers will be on a wire stem so they will be easy to form and manipulate once you have them together.
Since I am adding a little bling to my wedding I decided to use silver ribbon to give the bouquets that extra sparkle. I cut pieces of silver fabric ribbon about 1 inch long and folded it in half making a loop. I attached the loop to a piece of floral wire with white curling ribbon and then curled the ribbon with a scissor blade. I added about 6 of these to each bouquet by sticking them into the middle wherever they looked best.
Once you have it the way you want it you can wrap the stems again with satin, ribbon, or cloth. You can fasten it with hot glue or pins. Now all you will need to do is fluff and manipulate the way the flowers are until they look the way you want them.
People will ask you where you bought them and marvel over the beauty. Not only have you saved hundreds of dollars but it will also give you a boost of confidence knowing that you made those!
Supplies Needed for this project-
Plenty of silk flowers
floral tape
floral wire
ribbon
Hot glue gun and glue sticks or pins
Imagination and patience 🙂
