Flowers

Buying (fake) flowers over time

So I'm currently planning my wedding for October 2021. We're working on a modest budget and one of the ways I can see to save on costs is to go with fake flowers. After some discussion and research on different fake flower types and what flowers/colors I'd like, my fiancé and I would like to start purchasing some of the fake flowers we'd like little by little over the next year so that we can spread the costs. My question is, how many flowers make up a wedding?

We decided to go for mostly greenery with some little whites sprinkled in here or there. But how much is ideally needed for tables, garland, arches (or in our case wooden mountain peaks)? If anyone has an idea of how much greenery we should plan on getting, that would be very helpful.

Thanks!

Re: Buying (fake) flowers over time

  • It will look less tacky if you just do real greenery and candles instead of fake flowers 
  • It will look less tacky if you just do real greenery and candles instead of fake flowers 
    There’s nothing inherently tacky about fake flowers and I think this is a little rude. 

    OP- I dot have experience with DIY flowers so have no real idea how much you’ll need, sorry!
  • A better idea is to save up as you go then purchase together.  One of the things I ran into with my pew bouquets was the ability to get enough of one type of fake flower for all of the arrangements.  Really, skip the centerpieces and garland as the question becomes "what are you going to do with this stuff AFTER the wedding?".  If the budget is that tight, it's better to spend that money on an upgrade like a second/larger entre' or larger slice of cake that your guests will enjoy far more.  

    Next, you will NOT save money by going with fake unless you purchase them from another bride on Marketplace, Craigslist, or Ebay!  Really, the nickels, dimes and dollars (i.e. the value of the cost of your time!) add up and fake flowers can cost as much or more as real.  Consider your list of needs and take the budget you're comfortable with in to a florist and say "what can we do for the money?" and you may be surprised it can stay in a modest budget!
  • Fake flowers are pricy, especially the nice ones, but if you've got some sort of special exotic bloom you love, a silk version will be cheaper. October isn't a major "flower month" either (most stuff is done blooming), so your selection will be wider simply because all that's left are major greenhouse flowers (e.g. you can probably get roses any time of year because everyone loves roses so all the growers grow roses with light timers and such that trick them into blooming even when it's not the right season outside).

    Also, silk flowers can be used to decorate your house after! Try that with a real bouquet and it'll look good for a week tops; faux lasts. So if you're the type to decorate your living room with arrangements, wedding flowers can be an investment (obviously if you've got cats like mine who like to knock things off and chew them up, maybe a pile of flowers on your coffee table isn't such a great idea).

    Plus, I personally like silk flowers better. They last. You can keep them and no one questions your decaying blob of used-to-be-flowers. I think cut flowers are emblematic for funerals, in that you want the pain to die away, but prefer either live potted flowers or silk for happy occasions (kinda like how it's bad luck to give someone in the hospital a potted plant because "you don't want their problems to take root" but in reverse).

    To figure out how much you'll need to cover is a math problem. You're got a certain square footage of tabletop you want covered, and a single flower stem covers a certain number of square inches. You'll want to only count the visible tips of the flower/greenery, obviously, because the butt end of the stem will be jammed into craft foam. So, a solitaire rose may have a 3" round flower head on a 9" stem; I'd count that as 7"sq, because pi*r^2 = 3.14 x (1.5)^2. If you've got a table 10' long that you'd like a 1' wide strip of flowers down the center of, that's 10sqft or 120"sq to cover and will require at least 17 roses.
  • If you've got a green thumb and the room, the greenery part could be potted plants or cuttings from plants you grow from seed in the spring and summer and then plan to add a few real or fake flowers to that. 
  • Please remember to check the date on a thread before replying to it...  This thread was from March 2020 and the OP likely married already..  

  • Interesting idea, thanks.
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