Wedding Flowers | DIY Wedding Flowers

Flowers can make a big impact on your wedding day, they can be a grand statement with huge floral decorations and trailing wedding bouquets or they can be simple hand picked posies. Flowers can also make up a significant part of your entire wedding budget with many couples spending thousands of dollars to get the perfect floral arrangements.

When trying to choose the right wedding flowers there are a few things you need to consider:

Your wedding budget
While you may want imported lillies from the Amazon your budget may only stretch to daisys. Be reasonable with your expectations if you have a limited budget. Talk to your florist about what kinds of flowers will fall within your price range.

Flower Season
Most flowers only grow in certain seasons, for example orchids are readily available in the winter, but would have to be imported in the summer.

Roses and calla lillies are popular because not only are they available year round, they look gorgeous in wedding bouquets.

Your personality and wedding theme
Your wedding flowers are a big part of the whole theme of your wedding, if you're going for a classic elegant theme, then roses might be best suited for you. If however, you are having a fun, funky wedding then a bright coloured bouquet of colorful gerberas would be perfect!

If your budget is a little stretched, but you still want beautiful wedding flowers, then why not give it a go yourself? You could always enlist your bridesmaids, mother and future mother-in-law to help you out. Just make sure you are well organized so you aren't stressing on the day!

What you will need:

• Bouquet holder for each bouquet
• A bouquet stand - something to hold the bouquet upright while you arrange the flowers
• Your chosen flowers and foliage (greens, flax etc)
• Wire cutters
• Scissors
• Floral tape
• Floral wire
• Ribbons, beads, lace, tulle (any decorations/accessories)
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

How to arrange your bouquet

1. Place your bouquet holder into your bouquet stand making sure it is on an even surface and the holder is straight.
2. Start by placing your flowers against the holder and putting flowers next to each other just to get an idea of what they look like and how they look together.
3. For a good size round bouquet the stems should be cut to about 6" or less, so start cutting your flower stems, if need be you can cut them shorter later, but you can't glue the stems back on if you've cut them too short!
4. The first flowers to be placed are your main flowers (so if you have a rose and lilly bouquet place your dominant flower now). Place them on the outer edges of the holder so they look like an evenly spaced cross. You can also place some greenery behind each of the flowers if you like.
   
5. Take one large focal flower and place it in the dead center of the holder.
6. Take four more main flowers and shape them around the center flower into a square, they should be angled out towards the first four flowers and just below the center flower.
7. Your bouquet should now look as though it has three layers of flowers.
8. Next fill in around the last four flowers with another four flowers on the same layer. They should be placed on top of the first four flowers that made the cross. They need to be cut a little shorter so as not to cover the first layer.
9. Now go back to your first cross layer and fill in around the edge. Depending on how big you want your bouquet you can either put one or two flowers between each of the original four.
10. Now you have all your main flowers, tweak them around to your liking. Your bouquet should appear round from the front and side. If not, adjust the length of the flowers.
11. Now you can fill in any gaps and empty spaces with your greenery and filler flowers until you have your perfect wedding bouquet.

Remember practice makes perfect, so keep trying! Whatever you do, don't leave this to the last minute, make sure you've had at least a couple of run throughs before the big day.

Good luck!

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