DIY Wedding Bouquet

Guys, not that I'm one to toot my own horn or anything but I seriously love this little gem of a bouquet. More so, I'm rather impressed with how pretty it turned out considering I have no previous floral experience or know-how when it comes to putting together a bunch of blooms. Can any of you brides out there please use these colours for your own wedding? I may have a new fave palette, lemme tell you. Below are some photos from my little DIY adventure and as always, a slight disclaimer about this tutorial; I am not a professional, and I am confident there is a correct way quite different from my way, to make a proper bouquet. However I am a firm believer that DIY sort of tosses out all means of professionalism and right-way-of-doing-things-ness out the door because after all, you're doin it by yo-self. So here's how I did it.

{Step 1} First things first, get your flowers from a flower market; they'll be cheaper. Then once you've picked your flowers for the bouquet, remove all leaves and thorns from the stems using your hands. Be careful not to pull apart parts of the base stem or flowers as you pull the leaves off. Lay out your blooms on your work station by type (roses with roses, carnations with carnations) as it'll be easier to see what you're working with when you construct the bouquet.

{Step 2} For blooms like lisianthus or spray roses where their stems are more delicate or there are multiple sprigs off of one stem, I used green floral table to fasten the stems together. I found this helped the multiple blooms on one stem sort of stick together and stand up straighter once they were clustered together with the other stems. Lisianthus blooms are so thin and tend to droop a little so this really helped with keeping them fresh looking.

{Step 3} For some of the thicker stemmed flowers like any type of rose, I used long floral wire strands to reinforce the stems. I started at the top of the stem closest to the flower and wrapped the wire strands down and around the stem. But after wiring a few roses I realized that most stems were either strong enough on their own that they didn't need wiring, or they were too delicate that the stems were snapping when I did try to wire them (which was the case with the lone daisy I had). Essentially I found that this step could have been left out.

{Step 4} Figure out what flowers you'd like to make up the center/middle of your bouquet. I used a garden rose, two regular pink roses, a carnation and a lisianthus. Using green floral tape I secured the stems of these flowers together making sure the bouquet had the basic shape I was after. You'll need to really hold on to the stems tightly as the secnd you loosen up your grip you risk losing the shape you had secured. Also be aware that floral tape is rather delicate.

{Step 5} Continue adding more of your blooms to the basic structure you've created, filling in holes and spaces as you feel fit. I added three to five blooms each time before stopping and securing them with floral tape to the base. since I wanted a really texturized feel, I tried to add in different shapes and heights of flowers/greenery to the middle of the bouquet. Continue to add your flowers until all of your blooms are taped to the base.

{Step 6} Using floral wire, tightly wrap the base of all of the taped together stems (this made the stems bundle closer to one another than they would have been had I just of used the floral tape). After the wire was added around the taped together stems, I went back around the spiraled wire with floral tape to sort of smooth out the surface. I added almost three layers of floral tape to make sure everything was perfectly in tact. 

{Step 7} Using floral pins or corsage pins with pearl-heads, I fastened two pieces of fabric to the stems, pushing the pins into the stems upwards. I used six pins to secure the fabric making sure to leave a few inches of bare stems at the bottom. I then used white rope to tied a bow around the pink fabric which was used to hide the floral tape and wire, in lieu of traditional ribbon. Et voila!

Whatcha think, friends? Happy flowering! xoxo