DIY Wedding: Bridal Bouquet

Good Day Everyone,

As much as my hubby and I wanted the ‘perfect’ wedding day we didn't want to spend the best part of £20,000 on just one day of our life. So, in order to save costs I made my own bridal bouquet the evening before the wedding.  

Saving money wasn’t the only reason we did our own flowers, I absolutely love colour and really wanted to have a go at doing my own flowers because working with such pretty, colourful things makes me really really happy! Now, the sensible voice inside me would say to you that if you ever intend on doing your own wedding flowers (or make up etc) then you must practice beforehand! And that is indeed the advice I would give to others. But how often do we take our own advice? Not very often, let me tell you. So no, I didn't practice making my own bridal bouquet or table flowers beforehand. In fact, we didn't even know which flowers we were going to use for the table flowers until we went out and bought them the day before the wedding!

From my previous wedding post (read here) you’ll know that I wanted a bridal bouquet of pink roses with a few white ones. I had originally planned to buy the flowers from Marks and Spencers online and turn them into my own bouquet but a week before the wedding, whilst shopping in Manchester city centre, we came across a street florist and got chatting to him. He had had the same flower stall in Manchester city centre, by St. Ann’s church,  for the past 14 years. We had a look at the types of flowers he had and agreed that we would be back a week later to purchase pink and white roses from him, as we’d much prefer to support a small local business.

The street florist stall

For all the things that I needed to make my own bridal bouquet, my best friend who has a bridal shop in Leeds, recommended a store called Country Baskets (website) which is a kind of wholesale store for floristry, bridal and party supplies. You have to become a member in order to shop there but membership is free and open to the public and the prices are very good. This store was amazing! I was like a child in a sweet shop! Somebody like me, who likes to make colourful, pretty things could sooo easily get carried away in there that I had to force myself to go in with a list of things to buy and stick to the list.

The morning before the wedding we were at the flower stall in Manchester where we purchased 3 bunches of white roses and 6 bunches of pink roses giving us 15 white roses and 30 pink. We knew that if we ran out we could always pop back the next morning as the wedding was in the afternoon.

What I used to make the bridal bouquet:

·         Flowers – I used 25 pink and 11 white roses

·         Ribbon - I bought ivory organza ribbon with gold glitter

·         Steel scissors

·         Green cloth tape

·         Diamante pins

·         Pearl headed pins – I used white and cream coloured ones

The pink & white roses we used

Tools needed to make the bouquet

Before I get into how I made my bridal bouquet, a couple of tips for storing flowers. As soon as we got the flowers back to our hotel we put them in a bucket of warm (not cold) tap water and kept them outside (not inside) in order to keep them in optimal condition. We purposefully booked a hotel room with an outdoor area for this reason. We left the flowers sat in water for most of the day so that they were well hydrated and I started to make my bridal bouquet in the evening.

How I made the bridal bouquet:

1.       I carefully stripped the thorns and leaves off the rose stems.

2.        I picked the most perfect pink rose as my central rose and I then took 6 white roses (the white roses were smaller than the pink) and arranged them around the central pink rose but just marginally lower height wise to create a kind of dome effect.

3.       Using the green tape I taped the seven roses together towards the top of the stems. If you tape them too low down, the stems become floppy and it’s difficult to build the next circle of roses around them.

4.        Next, I arranged a circle of pink roses around the tied bouquet, again just a little lower in height to maintain the dome effect and taped them together. I stopped at this stage, admired my own work, and felt happy with the bouquet. I showed it to my hubby whose first response was, ‘Isn't it a bit small?’ but I’m a small person and I didn’t want it to look too big for me. Just then my friend came over who concurred with my hubby and so she helped me build another circle of pink roses around the bouquet.

5.       After this second circle of pink roses we reviewed our work and all three of us came to the consensus that the bouquet now looked too pink and so we added five white roses, intermittently, within the two outer circles of pink roses and voila we were happy with the result.

6.       Having made sure all the stems were taped together tightly, we then proceeded to cut the stems down (at a slight angle) to achieve the length that I wanted.

7.        Next we wrapped the beautiful organza ribbon starting from near the bottom of the stems, leaving a little bit of the green stems showing. We secured the ribbon in place using a couple of pins – inserting them at a slight angle instead of straight on

8.       We wrapped the ribbon up towards the top off the stems and then worked it back down thus wrapping the stems twice as the ribbon was quite sheer.

9.       When we got the ribbon back down towards the bottom of the stems we cut it at an angle and folded the edge under itself and secured it with the pins so that there would be no fraying.

10.   We then left the bridal bouquet in some warm tap water outside overnight.

Storing the bouquet outside over night

The next morning I inserted a few diamante pins in the centre of some of the roses for a bit of extra sparkle and voila I had made my own bridal bouquet with a little help from my hubby and friend :o) All for the fraction of the price a professional florist would charge and had a lot of fun making it :o)

The finished bouquet

A close up

The finished bouquet

What do you think of our efforts? Have you ever made your own bridal bouquet? Would you be brave enough?

Love Sheen xxx