Make Your Own Bouquets, Corsages, Boutonnieres, and Centerpieces

Make Your Own Bouquets, Corsages, Boutonnieres, and Centerpieces (Look at those FLOWERS.. and not my weird face- haha!)



Over this summer I had the chance to participate in some wedding preparations. In the attempt to save some money, two of my friends decided to make their own bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. It might be helpful to know that you DON'T have to be Martha Stewart (although we might want to be), to create a masterpiece and save some money. I am not a professional, but I am experienced!

Here are the directions along with some pictures.

1. Order flowers in bulk. This was done by going into Sam's club and placing an order in the floral department.

2. Flowers will be delivered the day that you specify. Usually, people order them to be delivered one day before the wedding. That means that the flowers will still look really fresh, but you're going to need to set aside a good 3-4 hours the day before the wedding.

3. When the flowers arrive, open the packages. (Side note: if you ordered Gerber daisies the floral shop might have netting on the petals to keep them closed. Don't take this off until a few hours before the wedding. There might also be plastic tubing on the stems. You never have to take this off so as to support the stems.) Cut the stems and lower leaves off and run the flowers under cool water. After running the stems under cool water place them in vases (the vases should include a kind of plant food/powder that was sent with the flowers as well water that is the same temperature as what you were running the stems under).

4. Leave the flowers in the vases in a cool room for one hour. We turned the air-conditioning on high in the bedroom. If they fit in the refrigerator, you can put them in there too.

5. After letting the flowers sit for one hour, you can now cut and arrange the flowers.

6. Select flowers for bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and centerpieces. If you're making centerpieces than those should go in a vase and back to the cool room/refrigerator. For bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres cut them slightly longer than you want them (since they will need to sit in a vase overnight).

7. Wrap the stems or arrangements with green floral tape. For wrist corsages a standard elastic florist wristlet is used for making wrist corsages. They can be found in most craft stores or a local florist shop.

8. After everything is cut, arranged, and wrapped, place back in a cool area.

9. On the next day (the day of the wedding), you will wrap the bouquets with ribbon (and cover the green floral tape). Start with a hot glue gun and hot glue the top of the ribbon to the very top of the bouquet stem, and then wrap the ribbon to the bottom of the stem. At the bottom, you may choose to glue or pin the ribbon (depending on how you want it to look). After this you're ready to walk down the aisle!