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DIY flowers : I need all the help I can get!

Knottie34559892Knottie34559892 member
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in DIY Wedding Forum

I am doing ALL my own flowers for my wedding. As of right now, I am wanting to use baby's breath, blue hydrangeas, and orange gerbera daisies.  My bouquet will be filled with all three flowers, the MOH will have baby's breath and gerbera daisies and my three BM will just have baby's breath. My groom with have a gerbera daisy boutonniere but his 4 GM with have just babys breath. Also I will need 6 corsages with mainly babys breath and gerbera daisies. I am also doing 30 centerpieces but they will all just be babys breath.


I need all the advice I can get because I've never done flowers before but will be saving a lot of money doing them myself and I'm very crafty!  

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Re: DIY flowers : I need all the help I can get!

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    ElcaBElcaB member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    I made my BM bouquets. I also just did flowers (arrangements, bouquets, boutonnieres) for my friend's wedding this past weekend to help her out. 

    Tutorials are your best friend!

    My tips:
    • Don't submerge the stems completely in water because then they will be wet & floral tape will not stick to them. I learned this the hard way when I did my BM bouquets for my own wedding. 
    • Use plenty of floral tape! Arrange a few stems, wrap, then add, then wrap & repeat. 
    • Make the bouquets & bouts the day of. They will be much fresher and it shouldn't take much time (I did my four BM bouquets while we were getting ready). This should be simple since the BM bouquets are just made of baby's breath.
    Good luck!
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    tj&cwtj&cw member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its First Comment Name Dropper
    Have you ordered your flowers? My mom and aunts are doing my centerpieces and some vases of flowers around the reception area. I am ordering the flowers from Globalroses. they have great flowers and good prices.
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    blabla89blabla89 member
    First Anniversary First Comment 5 Love Its Name Dropper
    My wedding hasn't happened yet, but I've been playing with flowers
    ElcaB said:
    I made my BM bouquets. I also just did flowers (arrangements, bouquets, boutonnieres) for my friend's wedding this past weekend to help her out. 

    Tutorials are your best friend!

    My tips:
    • Don't submerge the stems completely in water because then they will be wet & floral tape will not stick to them. I learned this the hard way when I did my BM bouquets for my own wedding. 
    • Use plenty of floral tape! Arrange a few stems, wrap, then add, then wrap & repeat. 
    • Make the bouquets & bouts the day of. They will be much fresher and it shouldn't take much time (I did my four BM bouquets while we were getting ready). This should be simple since the BM bouquets are just made of baby's breath.
    Good luck!
    This is all good advice! My wedding hasn't happened yet, but I've been experimenting with flowers for bouquets and centerpieces. The centerpieces can be made a day or two ahead, and should have plenty of water in them. Make sure just the ends of the flowers for bouquets are in the water. You can find lots of tutorials on making bouquets and flower care on pinterest.

    For the sake of my sanity I went ahead and made the bouts out of artificial flowers, because we needed lots of them and I didn't want to worry about it right before the wedding.


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    Knottie0839442 Knottie0839442 member
    First Anniversary 5 Love Its Name Dropper First Comment
    edited February 2015
    Practice the bouquets beforehand. Hydrangea isn't always the easiest flower to work with, especially in conjunction with baby's breath--it's a cluster flower, so you have a lot on the same stem; baby's breath has a net of flowers that will get caught on the hydrangea's flowers easily. Buy a couple bunches beforehand and practice so you can get an idea of what you're working with and how to make it look like you want.

    Hydrangea has woody stems. It can be very hard to cut. Have a pair of gardening shears ready. Don't cut any of the flower stems until they've been secured together (either before or after wrapping them; you can use a rubber band if you plan to completely cover the stems), otherwise they won't end up as even along the bottom as you wanted.

    Have two pairs of scissors, with one used only for ribbon. Not only will the flower-scissors be covered in green damp wetness, they may have also been dulled, and you'll wind up with ragged ends on your ribbon. Clean your flower scissors immediately after you're finished if you ever plan to use them for things other than flowers.

    Once you've got the bouquets down, use the practice flowers to practice with the boutineers and corsages. Bouquets can be fairly easy to make (even with more difficult flowers), but boutineers and corsages are usually much harder. You can sometimes buy frames with ribbon and all, and use floral glue to secure your flowers--this makes it much easier. We would reinforce gerbera stems with floral wire because they break easily during the making, but you have to be careful when doing this or you could end up with a sharp wire end poking out. Make sure to tuck the wire in carefully and wrap well with floral tape if you do this.

    Quilting pins are a better length than regular pins when it comes to securing them to outfits--the longer the better.

    If you decide not to make the corsages yourself, you can check with your local grocery stores and ask how much they charge to make corsages and boutineers. It's much cheaper than using a regular florist. You can make these the day before and keep them in fridge overnight to save time.
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    rcher912rcher912 member
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    As an additional question, since I'm also DIY-ing my flowers:

    How many flowers should I be thinking about getting? The whole point is to save money, so I don't want to overbuy.

    I'm using hydrangeas (which are huge, I know, so fewer of them - currently I'm thinking 30) and roses (100 yellow and 32 white) - this is all just for bouquets/bouts/petals around. Does this sound about right?
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    theartistformerlyknownastheartistformerlyknownas member
    First Comment First Anniversary First Answer 5 Love Its
    rcher912 said:

    As an additional question, since I'm also DIY-ing my flowers:


    How many flowers should I be thinking about getting? The whole point is to save money, so I don't want to overbuy.

    I'm using hydrangeas (which are huge, I know, so fewer of them - currently I'm thinking 30) and roses (100 yellow and 32 white) - this is all just for bouquets/bouts/petals around. Does this sound about right?
    I bought flowers from the grocery store to do a test run and see how many flowers I needed. Mocked up one centerpiece, counted up his many stems I used for each type, and multiplied it by 30 since that was the max number of tables I'd have. (I ordered my flowers well before RSVPs were due.)
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