DIY Wedding Flowers

According to Hitched.com, the average cost of wedding flowers is £1200-£1500! To keep costs down I’ve decided to buy artificial and to make my own bouquet. My total cost for all our wedding flowers was a very Thrifty £70!

I had initially planned on ordering some ready-made bouquet; I had a quote for £180 which I thought was really reasonable. However, I am quite a crafty person and wondered if I could create my own for less. The biggest hurdle was finding artificial flowers I was happy with.

There are so many available online but it’s hard to tell what the quality and colour is like; despite being a cheaper option I didn’t want to gamble with ordering from eBay or Amazon. Instead, Shane and I took a trip to Country Baskets – an artificial flower and floristry supplies wholesaler I found what I wanted but then ordered via their website to take advantage of the 15% off first orders.

My order consisted of: forty-eight red velvet roses, five grey rose posies, floristry tape, one hundred diamante headed pins and twelve stems of rose leaves and cost £65.93. I’ve since spent another £4 on ribbon from the haberdashery stall on the local market. This entire order has everything I need to create all the flowers and accessories for my big day.

Last Sunday I had a go at making my bouquet, it took around two hours to do and it was fairly easy. I was relieved I had bought ready made ones for the bridesmaids though as I think I would have got bored making so many. I love that I have made mine though, it makes it so much more special. I also made a matching buttonhole for Shane and I’ve got plans to make something a little different for my flower girls.

If you want to have a go at making your own, follow my step by step guide below…

You’ll need: artificial flowers and leaves, pins, florist tape, ribbon, double sided tape, wire cutters, scissors.

Step 1: Push the pins into the centre of the roses/flowers. I found it easier to do them all first rather than as I went. 

Step 2: Take one flower to be the centre then tape stems around it one at a time. Make sure the centre flower remains in the middle and keep adding flowers until it has a complete row around it. 

Step 3: Repeat the same process as in step 2 but bend the stems on the flowers slightly so they create the next row down. Continue to tape one flower at a time.

Step 4: I wanted a really full looking bouquet so at this point I added extra flowers into the gaps again taping each stem individually. This helped to fill out the bouquet without it being any bigger. If you want a bigger bouquet, you could add an extra row.

Step 5: Once you’re happy with the placement of the flowers, tape the bottom of the stems and cut them down so they’re the same length using wire cutters.

Step 6: Wrap the entire bunch of stems with florist tape to secure everything in place. 

 Step 7: If you are using leaves, add these to the stem now. Cut them to length and tape each one individually.

Step 8: Use the floristry tape to wrap the whole of stem until you have an even layer to create the handle.

Step 9: Add some double sided tape to the bottom of the handle then secure two pieces of ribbon over the bottom. This will prevent any stems poking out, secure in place by pushing a pin up in to the centre.

Step 10: Add a layer of tape at the top where the stems branch out and begin to wind the ribbon around and down the handle. once at the bottom repeat the process winding back up. Secure the ribbon by pushing pins upwards into the stem. Be careful that they don’t come through the opposite side.

Step 11: Use the leftover ribbon to loop around and pin to secure, this time pushing the pin down in to the stem. By looping around the excess ribbon it covers any rough edges and hides the stems.

And that’s it! A homemade bouquet after a couple of hours of crafting. If you can manage this then you can definitely make a buttonhole. It took me around 5 minutes to create one and it was a case of taping a flower and leaf stem together, wrapping with tape, then wrapping with double sided tape and finally wrapping with ribbon.

Happy Wedding Crafting,

 

Thrifty Clair x