Easy Wedding Bouquet Tutorial

Photo courtesy of Edith Jenkinson Photography

I made the bouquet for both of our weddings (yes, we had two ceremonies). On the day of our first wedding, I threw together a bouquet. Admittedly, it’s probably not the best idea to do this on the actual day of your wedding; however, if you have time a day or two before your ceremony and you can keep the bouquet cold, go for it. A refrigerator works great for keeping the flowers cool, as long as it doesn’t get too cold. I do have a a cousin whose flowers arrived frozen hours before the ceremony, she took it in stride, but I don’t want that to happen to you.

Make sure and use fresh flowers in your bouquet, so they won’t wilt by the end of the day and you should probably do a test run, just so you know what you’re getting into.

Why I made my own bouquet

My husband and I had a beach wedding in Florida. We planned the wedding in just three weeks and with such short notice we didn’t expect anyone to be able to attend. You can read about how we planned a beach wedding in three weeks here. Thankfully, my parents rearranged their plans and came to celebrate with us.

With only three weeks to iron out the details, flowers were the least of my worries. The afternoon before the big day, as my mom and I were sitting in the salon getting our nails done, we discussed my disappointment in not ordering a bouquet. Really, I was marrying the love of my life, did it matter if I had flowers? My mom turned to me and said “Why couldn’t we do it?”. We decided together, it couldn’t be that difficult.

The next morning, my mom and I took a quick trip to Walmart to get supplies. We bought some floral wire, green floral tape and a roll of wide burlap ribbon. We also purchased some pretty white ribbon, a box of corsage pins, and a small bunch of flowers. It was by pure luck, I had packed a pair of scissors but they came in handy. With all that on hand, it was pretty easy to put the bouquet together.

When our second ceremony rolled around, later that year, I figured we could save a ton of money if we did the flowers ourselves, so that’s exactly what we did.

How we made my wedding bouquet

Supplies

• flowers
• floral wire
• green floral tape
• a roll of wide burlap ribbon
• white ribbon
• corsage pins
• scissors.

Instructions

1. Group the  flowers into an arrangement that you like. Using flowers of varying heights and sizes looks nice, even adding some of the greenery or leaves that came with the bouquet, will help round out the bouquet. As you’re putting together your bouquet, peel off any excess leaves below the flowers, otherwise the bouquet will get too bulky. The most important part of this first step is to make sure you like how it looks–it is after all, your big day.
2. Twist the wire around the stems tightly (my mom held the bouquet in place for me). No extra hands? No problem, I’m sure an elastic band will work in a pinch and your bouquet probably came with one. Score!
3. Leave the stems long while putting the bouquet together because you’ll want to have about an inch or more sticking out unwrapped. This will make it much easier to cut a blunt edge at the end.
4. Wrap the wire and flowers with the floral tape, overlapping each layer of tape as you go, this will ensure a nice tight bouquet, you do not want it loose! Wrap the section about an inch wider than what your hand will hold on to.
5. Now that it’s a tight bouquet, it’s time to get fancy! Starting at the base of the flowers, wrap the burlap around the stems, I secured mine with more floral tape. Don’t worry about the tape showing up, you’ll wrap the ribbon over top of this.
6. Start about an inch below the top of the burlap and use a small piece of tape to secure the ribbon in place. Wrap the ribbon around the stems tightly and overlap each layer so you end up with a solid white “handle”.
7. Fold the end of the ribbon under and pin it with a corsage pin.  It may take a couple to of pins to hold it in place.
8. If you would like you could pin a line of these and it ends up looking like a string of pearls. This is what I did for the second wedding.
9. Trim the stems into a blunt cut about an inch or so longer than the bottom of the burlap. The easiest way to do this is by holding the bouquet in front of a mirror, this gives you a good idea of where to trim the ends.

I think the results were pretty spectacular, for such a last minute project.

If you make your own bouquet, please share. I’d love to see your photos or read any tips or tricks you’d like to share.