Bridology

For brides on a budget, creating your own floral arrangements can be a huge money saver – but it’s not for everyone. DIY floral arrangements work best for brides who have a knack for being crafty, an eye for design, time to spare, and a willing troupe of helpers (bridesmaids, moms and sisters work well) to help pull it all together in the nick of time.  For ladies who are up to the challenge, we’ve come up with a list of tips that make creating your own wedding flower arrangements  highly doable:

1. Find beautiful flowers at a reasonable price

This is the number one rule for creating your own wedding arrangements, since buying overpriced flowers will negate the cost savings associated with DIY florals.  City girls should do some research to find their local floral wholesale district, and visit these markets when the public is allowed. In the Los Angeles floral mart, for example, wholesale prices are offered to the public at later hours than for vendors, but anyone can enjoy the same prices with a $2 entry fee to the mart.

2. Practice Makes Perfect

We suggest visiting the floral wholesale mart 3-4 months before your actual wedding to do a test run. Buy flowers and get your team together for a floral test run to see if creating your own florals is even feasible to avoid heartache and stress the day before your wedding.  For $50 you should be able to purchase enough flowers to practice making 3-6 medium sized arrangements, which will give you a good idea of how difficult it will be and how long it will take to make enough arrangements for the wedding.

Brides to be who do not have a local flower mart can order flowers online. The guaranteed delivery time and selection make it a great option, and buying in bulk can still save a lot of money over traditional wedding florist rates. For example, Organic Bouquet sells Two Dozen Yellow Sunshine Roses for $69, which are enough to create two arrangements with 12 roses each.  They also sell 10 Long-Stemmed Organic Calla Lilies, notorious for being pricey, for $55.

3. Use Narrow Vases, Or Vases with Narrow Openings

The width of the opening at the top of the vase can make arranging flowers very easy – or nearly impossible.  As a general rule of thumb, the wider the opening the harder it is to arrange your flowers nicely in the vase. Wide openings also require a greater number of flowers to look full, upping the cost of a nice looking arrangement. Unless you have an abundance of large blooms or need to pack in a lot of flowers, stick with vases that have openings smaller than 5 inches.

4. Know What Will Be In Season

If you have successfully located a reasonably priced flower source and created your own arrangements, the next step is to check which flowers will be in season during your wedding date.  Available flowers vary from month to month, so make sure you know exactly which floral varieties will be in season and how much they will cost.

5. Have a Backup Plan

No matter how well-thought out your DIY floral plan, there is always the slight chance that something can go wrong. Just in case, make sure to have some extra funds on hand in the rare event that you have a floral emergency. Unexpected overnight frost can kill flowers, heat can render them lifeless, and dogs can chew up carefully arranged blooms.  Keep the number of two or three local florists (that are open on your wedding day) on hand who you can call if disaster strikes. That way, even in the worst case scenario, your blissful wedding day experience won’t be marred by ruined flowers.