DIY Flower Update (PIP)

veijes

One of my best friend's is getting married tomorrow and we are DIYing the flowers from Costco and Sam's Club. I know some of you on here wanted to hear how it went. The Costco flowers arrived yesterday at 10 am. My friend and her mom quickly cut the stems of an inch and at an angle which took about 30 minutes and put them in buckets of cold water (375 roses). They had to sit like this for 3 hours with the cardboard still around them so they wouldn't wilt and could get rehydrated, here is a pic:



Then when I got out of school at 1, I came over and we took all the cardboard off, pulled all of the leaves off and dethorned them, then cut them down. This took 3 1/2 hours but it was really fun!! I love picking at stuff haha. She also went to Sam's Club to get a few more roses and some mini roses for the bouts. and some filler and hybercum berries for the bouts. All total we had about 500 roses. The flowers were completely closed, here is a pic after dethorning and deleaving and all that:


 I left at 8 at night after going in the hot tub and stuff and the roses were already opening up a ton! I'll take more pics today of the bouquets, bouts., corasages, and centerpieces. When I get done with school today I'm going to go help out with all of that so watch for more updates!

drdifabio

Very cool! I would love to see the next stage of pics!

Sara191431

Very cool, thanks, can't wait to see the rest!

Smt2004

Can't wait to see the rest! I plan on making my own bouquet too as well as assembling centerpieces with 12 roses. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!Please post more photos when you can!

veijes

So another update: When I got to my friends all the bouquets, bouts, and corsages were done, there were 3 people working on them and it took about an hour. Then we started on the centerpieces (24 to be exact), which took about 2 hours with 4 of us. It went really fast once we got our own techniques down. We used square glass vases with cranberries in them and red roses on top. We ended up having extra white roses so I made 3 tall cylinder vases with white roses and cranberries. We are also using extra roses to take the petals off and sprinkle them on the cake. I'll be taking pics at the wedding tomorrow of them on the tables. Here are some of the pics:
Let me know if you have any questions about how we did them and all that.
Centerpieces:


Brides Bouquet:

LittleSweetie

How cool!  I love seeing the process unfold.  Those flowers are beautiful - love the cranberries CP.  Are you keeping them in a fridge so they don't open too much further?

veijes

They were stored in her basement in a walk in closet with the heat turned way down and now that they are arranged, they are at coolers at The Mermaid until they go on the tables.

Sara191431

My main question in the end will be if it was worth it or not to do them yourselves to save money, or if in the end time wise etc. it may be worth it just to find a good deal and pay to get them done.....?

Have fun at the wedding!

veijes

I asked the bride that today...."is it worth it?" she said definitely. For how pretty and nice the flowers were, she saved a ton! I am guessing with how many corsages, bouts, bouquets, centerpeices, and little extras she got out of them, she would have paid even a reasonibily priced florist about $1200-1500. It really only took us all together about 8 hours split between two days and she only paid about $350-400 for them. I think it's worth it too but since my wedding is in the summer I'm just a little scared to do my bouquets so I'm paying a professional to do that, but centerpieces sit in water all day, not much can go wrong with those. And doing the flowers for those 8 hours was actually fun, we did it with all of our friends so we listened to music, talked, and snacked.....fun girl bonding time

coley351

those look awesome, how fun!