Anyone make their own bouquet for bridal portraits?

EandE0919

Just looking for recommendations and tips. I don't want to pay my florist for a full bouquet just for pics, so I want to make a simple one myself. Let me know.

linzlars

I actually just took my bridal portraits this past weekend and opted to make my own bridal bouquet because I didn't want to pay for another bouquet from my florist. I used silk flowers from Hobby Lobby though, since I though they would be easier to deal with. I'm also planning on using it as my toss bouquet at the reception because I can't stand the idea of throwing my real one (I'm just sentimental like that). I had my mom help me make the bouquet, and we didn't really have a clue what we were doing, so I don't think I can give you tons of tips. The one thing I would suggest though is having someone to help you hold the flowers as you wrap the stems. I don't think I would have been able to make it on my own. We also choose to wrap it in layers, so the inner flowers all got bundled first, then we added layers of flowers with new layers of floral tape, if that makes sense. I have no idea if this is the proper way to do it, but it worked for us. To wrap the actual ribbon around the stem, we used glue dots to attach it to the floral tape at one end and then stuck it to itself on the other. That seemed to work really well and I didn't have any problems with the ribbon slipping the day of. I have a few pics of the bouquet itself in my bio under "Flowers" and a couple non-pro pics of my bridal session where I'm holding the bouquet under "Say Cheese". HTH!