Make Your Own Bouquet

Written by The Tie The Knot Team

The flowers you carry can offset your dress and make such a statement that I can understand why they were left to the professionals. But if you’re even vaguely artistic, no-one knows better than you which flowers and colours are going to accent your wedding ‘look’ best.

Often a few stems held artistically together with ribbon far outshine a classic dome shaped wedding bouquet. Whilst doing it yourself is not necessarily cheaper, you do end up with what you want. Here are a few tips:

Where to get the flowers:

Go direct to the source and buy from a flower market
Visit a fashionable florist (some flower shops these days are more like flower boutiques) and select your flowers and colours beforehand. They’ll keep them in a fridge for you
Pop down to the local flower seller
Get ‘in season’ flowers – no good setting your heart on roses when it’s the middle of winter

What tools you will need:

Floral shears
Floral tape
Bouquet pins
Wrap of your choice (ribbon usually works best)

The details:

Remove all the lower leaves and foliage from the stems
Cut all the flowers to more or less the same length (leave them longer if you’re not sure, you can always cut them later)
Choose roughly 3 flowers to act as your bouquet’s ‘anchor’ flowers and tape them together with floral tape
Add other flowers and filler foliage in a ‘bunch’ until you have the look you want
Don’t be scared to mix colours and textures for a more exciting look
The size will depend on you, but you don’t want to overwhelm your dress, neither do you want the bouquet to disappear
As you add, tape the flowers to the rest of the bouquet, or you will quickly lose the composition
When you’re finally there, wrap the whole length of the bouquet in floral tape, right from an inch below the flower heads to roughly 4 inches above the end of the stem
Cover the tape with ribbon – voila!
Wrap in tissue
Store in the fridge until you’re ready to leave