DIY Flower people! Help?

alhaley88

Can someone please tell me everything you know about DIY centerpieces? We are thinking that we can do them ourselves, since my sister and I are pretty crafty. How do we store them until the wedding? Where do you recommend ordering from? We plan to do a trial run to see how many buds are needed for each centerpiece. How do we keep the foam thing inside the arrangement wet? FH and I are getting married on a Sunday evening over labor day weekend, so Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon can be spent putting them together (there will be only 12-14 tables and the bigger ones will be repurposed in the ceremony). Basically anyone who has done this, can you tell me everything you know, tips, etc! Thank you so much!

RussianCinderella

I'm looking into doing this actually. I know I will be ordering in bulk at Costco (same thing for Sam's Club, I've heard great reviews about ordering flowers in bulk from them), and I know it's common to create the center pieces a day or two before, then storing them in the fridge to keep them alive and fresh. 

I'm looking into doing the foam balls with flowers, but I need to research that one.

I'm doing a trial sometime this summer since the wedding is next year to see how I can do this. Just make sure you order in bulk before hand and give them a date to make sure they're as fresh as they can be. 

alhaley88

Yeah the only thing that worries me is a fridge to store the completed centerpieces in....i don't think I will have one to be able to do that with anything other than bouquets, boutonnieres, etc. I could probably get the smaller centerpieces in the fridge, but I plan on having big tall ones that just won't fit (not including the vase obviously )

RussianCinderella

Yeah, bigger ones would be more difficult. Can't help with that since I'm planning smaller centerpieces rather than tall, full ones. 

blabla89

I'm late to this - but I did my own flowers for my wedding this weekend and they turned out great. I did them in small jars and just filled them halfway with water so there was no need for foam.

Go to the grocery store and pick up some flowers to experiment with (trader joe's has a great selection of flowers) and once you settle on some flowers you like, you can order them in bulk from Costco, Fifty Flowers or anywhere else. Get all the supplies you need - buckets, vases, shears and clippers, flower food, floral tape and wire, ribbon, etc. I mixed up a pitcher full of water with flower food so that it was easy to fill the jars.

My best advice is to keep it simple and remember that it's okay if they don't look exactly the same. I used roses, peruvian lillies, mums, stock, and a few gerbera daisies and hydrangeas. Basically just cut the stems to the right length for the vase, stuffed the things with flowers and made them look pretty, and called it good. We did it two days before, and two of us made 20 of them within a couple hours.

ETA: I made the bouts and corsages with artificial flowers several months before the wedding. I'm so glad I did because I could not have gotten them all done the week of the wedding. I also did my own floral cake topper by poking floral cake spikes into the top of the cake and then putting spray roses in them with a little bit of greenery.

fyrchk

I know they have blocks of that wet foam stuff that florists use at Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I wonder if you can order it in balls? Then you just have to soak it, it'll stay wet and keep your flowers hydrated. (I'm looking into making my own centerpieces, also, but time and keeping them refrigerated is the killer!

larrygaga

Why do you need to refrigerate them? Don't do that. Just make sure they are delivered 2 days before your wedding. Trim them and put them in buckets of water to let them open. Just go to decorate earlier and vase them while you are there! This all worked for the last 3 weddings I was a bridesmaid in, all flowers from costco and sam's. 

You can't make a flower ugly, unless you destroy it. No stress!

blabla89

fyrchk said:

I know they have blocks of that wet foam stuff that florists use at Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I wonder if you can order it in balls? Then you just have to soak it, it'll stay wet and keep your flowers hydrated. (I'm looking into making my own centerpieces, also, but time and keeping them refrigerated is the killer!

They don't need to be refrigerated as long as they have adequate water. I've seen balls of floral foam in craft stores so they shouldn't been too hard to find.

swagandmoxie

You can get LOADS of wholesale silk flowers from flowermart.com. I also got alot of stuff for my flowers and center pieces from Dollar Tree. 

theartistformerlyknownas

I didn't refrigerate mine, just kept them in the garage where it was nice and cool and they were out of direct sunlight. Soaked the floral foam in the bathtub, hacked off a chunk the size I needed for each flower bowl, added extra water so it didn't dry out quickly (just regular water, didn't bother with flower food), and went to town. I did them all Friday morning for my Saturday afternoon wedding and they all looked great.

I also went with artificial flowers for my boutonnieres and made them a few months ahead of time, and I used a florist for bouquets.