How to Make Beautiful Flower Arrangements

Sister just announced her wedding date and I am in charge of a ton of stuff, like the table centerpieces for the reception. Love to find some webpages that give step by step directions on how to do this and lots of ideas! I will do the silk table arrangements and probably we will also have some fresh flowers for her to carry. Thanks for your help & enthusiasm!

I’m helping my mother in law plan a wedding for my brother n law…I was just at Michaels (craft store) and have they have pamphlets with do it yourself ideas with a complete material list and steps to walk you through how to make many different things involved in the wedding. I don’t know if all of these ideas are on their website, http://www.michaels.com/art/online/projectlist?categoryid=62&cm_ven=2007WeddingBrochure&cm_ite=Wedding%20Day%20Decorations but here’s the link if you want to have a look…there are more than 50 items to choose from.

Hi. I’m trying to get an idea of how much money I saved (if any) by doing my own wedding flowers (middle to high quality silks). Anybody out there (brides, florists, etc) who can make an educated guess of how much the following list of items would have cost me if I had used a traditional wedding florist? All of the flowers used were roses, and some filler flowers and fall leaves were used as accents.

1 very large round bride bouquet with 2-3 dozen large open roses, fall leaves, and filler flowers, with handle fully wrapped in satin ribbon

2 large round maid of honor bouquets with 5 open roses and 10 rose buds, few fall leaves, some filler flowers, handles fully wrapped in satin ribbon.

5 medium sized bridesmaids bouquets containing 4 open roses, and 8 rosebuds, few fall leaves, some filler flower handles fully wrapped in satin ribbon.

3 mother wrist corsages, 2-3 roses each

11 single rose bud boutonnieres

1 groom boutonniere with 2 rosebuds, accent flowers

16 pew markers, containing satin bows and 3 roses each

4 medium sized church arrangements containing about 2 dozen roses each

2 small swags and 2 garlands, 4 additional decoration bouquets
FYI, I already have the flowers. The list above is everything that I have and have already done. The bouquets look real from a few feet away. Actually, a few months ago I bought a bouquet of fresh orange roses from the grocery store and then compared them to my silks and they looked extremely similar…actually the silks looked better because their color was more vibrant. Honestly, flowers weren’t all that important to me…I mean I want them to be nice but I didn’t want the flowers to be one of the biggest expenses of my wedding. There were other places I would rather spend money, on things that mean more to me. So that is why I went with silks. But I’ve just been wondering what I would have paid ballpark for all of those fresh roses if I had gone through a florist.

I worked as a florist of a couple of years. What I know its that good to high quality silk flowers cost about the same as fresh. The advantage is that when you are finished with them they are still around to appreciate, for years to come. Where you have really saved your money, is in the labour of making all the arrangements say around 20.00 per hr. Where you will receive your biggest savings, is if you resell all the florals as done pieces to another bride for their wedding.
Hope this helps.

Okay here’s the thing I had to change my colors to my wedding due to lack of flowers and since it is in December I decided to go with red and silver and do a christmas theme. Well my best friend just got married an did the colors red, white, and black and she used red and white roses and I would like to know what kind of floral arrangements I could do to make mine different? I was told I can use some kind of flowers to place in for my greenery so I wouldn’t have to coordinate it in through my b/m’s and or the groomsmen b/c the color looked a little tacky to me with the red and silver but I don’t even know what kind of flowers to do.I would like them to be silk flowers and not real.Also I am on a tight budget so I can only spend about 300 no more than 400. I had asked so called experts an instead of getting advice they tell me they don’t know. Well I figured someone on here could help with advice.Any ideas will be more than helpful please! My wedding is in 11 and a 1/2 weeks it was short notice but I need help! Thanks so much!

Silk flowers are just as expensive as real ones, but you have the advantage of doing them ahead of time.

For the table centerpieces, just buy one pot of amaryllis or one pot of pointsettias. This alone will keep costs down. http://viette.poweredbyindigo.com/images/products/AmaryllisMinervaS.jpg
Amaryllis in Dec are forced blooms (similar to forcing tulips to bloom in the winter instead of spring), and can be ordered ahead of time. Or, you can buy them about 1 week before your wedding from anywhere; the blooms last a really long time.

For your bouquet, you could do white irises with red tulips, or red lilies. For a little more money, you could do white orchids with red roses.

For your bridesmaids bouquets, keep it simple and pick only one flower out of your bouquet, to be in theirs only. For example, all irises, or all tulips. Their bouquet should be smaller than yours.

Making corsages are really really easy, but remember to make extras because the groom’s always gets crushed when he gets hugged. Make it yourself for < $2; buy it for $10.

The cake we have chosen has flowers on top. I am making my own bouquets, etc, using silk flowers. Want to use same ones for cake.

How would I go about making the cake topper arrangement? Just bundle them as in a corsage and stick the stem part into the middle of the cake? Or do I attach them to a cake board of some type and just lay that on top?

If you had flowers on your cake, please share how it was done?

Any ideas, or suggestions appreciated. Thanx!

For the flowers on the top of a cake, choose the flowers you would like. Go to a craft store and find a styrofoam ball or florist green ball. Cut in half. Trim flowers and instert in ball. Put on top of cake.

Hope that helps, we did it to my daughters with fresh white roses and it came out perfect.

Congratulations! Wishing you a lifetime of love and happiness!
Karen

I’ve googled and got sent here. All silk arrangements don’t include bouquets etc, i’ve seen a few people say they used fake flowers SO WHERE DID YOU GET THEM FROM????

I’m making my own stuff from here:

http://www.afloral.com/