Ah, our wedding flowers. They were totally affordable and 100% DIYed – by people with ZERO experience in floral arranging and for a whopping $183.52 TOTAL. Also? Half the flowers I sourced where fabulous and half were a big fat fail. Read on for the details:
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Ah, our wedding flowers. They were totally affordable and 100% DIYed – by people with ZERO experience in floral arranging and for a whopping $183.52 TOTAL. Also? Half the flowers I sourced where fabulous and half were a big fat fail. Read on for the details:
Image Courtesy of: Miranda Laine Photography
The Centerpieces: My centerpieces were about as simple as you can get. Handfuls of wildflowers (sourced wholesale for $100 from a local wildflower farm) in old spray-painted food cans and empty jars. I think my day-of-coordinator arranged all the flowers in like, 15 minutes. They looked casual and pretty and non-fussy… perfect for our backyard rural wedding. The wildflowers are zinnias, snapdragons, and black-eyed Susans.
Image Courtesy of: Miranda Laine Photography
The Bride’s Bouquet: This was THE best surprise of all the flowers. I had originally wanted to make a trip to the local wholesale flower market the day before for peonies (they were selling them $20.00 for 6 stems) but just never got the time to make the drive. So, instead I hit the floral section of our local supermarket the morning of the wedding (Holla to HEB!). I had no set plan in place – I just decided to be flexible with whatever they had in stock. Once there, I discovered that the selection of flower types was VERY limited but the ones they did have had many color choices. I made the decision to go with a monochromatic color palette and get flowers in shades of pink. At the last minute, I also grabbed some blue hydrangeas – they’re just so pretty!
Once home, I realized that I had packed away my floral tape in a room that was completely inaccessible. I frantically called my best friend/matron-of-honor and asked her to swing by Target and pick up some “green tape” or masking tape. She arrived at my house with this:
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And you know what? It TOTALLY worked. I was getting my hair and make-up done so my bridesmaids grabbed the flowers and started making bouquets. They have NEVER made bouquets before and had no instructions, tutorials, or videos to follow. They literally grabbed handfuls of flowers, bunched them together until they looked pretty, trimmed the stems and taped them securely. Here’s my gorgeous bridal bouquet:
Image Courtesy of: Miranda Laine Photography
It’s just tulips in various shades of pink and some snapdragons. I had some pretty blue double-sided satin ribbon and they used it make a simple bouquet wrap (just the ribbon wrapped around the stem and then tied in a loose bow). Funny story – after that photo was taken, I completely forgot about my bouquet until a week AFTER we returned from our honeymoon! When I went back to see if anything was left, I found the ribbon wrap + the camo packing tape in perfect shape! Ha!
The Bridesmaid and Junior Bridesmaid Bouquets: Remember how I mentioned that some of the flowers for my wedding were wonderful and some were not-so-much? Yeah… the bridesmaid/junior bridesmaid bouquets weren’t that great. And it was 100% my fault – poor planning + exhaustion = lame bouquets.
First, the bridesmaid bouquets where just the stems of blue hydrangeas that I had picked up on a whim with some pretty lighter blue ribbon for a bouquet wrap. The bouquets were SO pretty… for about five minutes. Once they got outside in the hot Texas sun, they completely wilted. By the time the ceremony rolled around, they looked AWFUL but I didn’t have any more flowers to make new bouquets. Oops… bridal fail.
Image Courtesy of: Miranda Laine Photography
The junior bridesmaid bouquets were made from purple dahlias (which held up great) but, I neglected to buy enough so the bouquets were ridiculously small. My bridesmaids (remember they were the ones DIYing the bouquets) begged me to let them use some of the centerpiece flowers but I said no (They did end up sneaking some black-eyed Susans out of the trash and adding them). Looking at the photos – I wish I had given in and told them to use more fillers. Oops… another bridal fail.
Image Courtesy of: Miranda Laine Photography
Did any of you DIY your wedding flowers? How’d it go for you?
Sara says
Wow – that’s unreal. And they look great!