Florist or DIY

Doing flowers the day before the wedding is VERY stressful and very time consuming. The cost difference in silk vs real is actually not what you what expect. It's practically the same cost for a florist to do real flowers. When I talked to my florist about her doing fake vs real, it was actually $140 cheaper for her to do fresh flowers, and I'm getting more pieces too.

Doing any kind of DIY project the night before your wedding is going to be super stressful. And I wouldn't call putting your bridesmaids to work "bonding time."

If your doing artificial flowers you can do them yourself and earlier that way you can work on them as you want to and take your time with them. That's what we're doing.

Allow vendors to comment as they have awesome advice.

I think if you decide to DIY you need to plan on doing this by yourself. It is not your bridesmaids responsibility to help you. DIY it is not necessarily a more cost effective option either. I encourage you to talk to a florist and see what quote they give you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Maybe consider a combo - DIY centerpieces and have a florist make the bouquets and boutonnières. After the ceremony you can also place the bouquets in vases for additional decoration. I looked into Costco a while ago, there were lots of good reviews from brides. (Edit for autocorrect)

I contemplated using Bloominous.com. They send you all the flowers and instructions on how to assemble everything. It was super reasonable and didn't seem too difficult. You can let them know what flowers your prefer and you can customize every aspect of your order! In the end though, I went with a local florist.

At my first wedding I used flowers.com. I spent about 300 for bridal bouquet, 3 bridesmaids, and extra flowers for about 10 tables. Everyone asked who did my flowers. I put them all together the night before the wedding and it wasn't bad.

I made ours myself! Didn't take much time at all! My bouquet is in the picture. It turned out great

I left vendors off for a reason thanks. I received 3 quotes from florists in the area and they were all $300-$600 more than even my highest guess. That's why I've been considering the DIY route! I definitely agree it would be super stressful to do the night before so I was wondering if my friends luck with diy flowers was out of the ordinary!

We kind of split the difference! I ordered bouquets, centerpieces, and FH's boutineer from the flower market downtown. Bouquets were $12 and are gorgeous (I'm using all tropical flowers)! We picked everything up yesterday and I'm so glad we went this route because it meant I got to hang out with friends and family after the rehearsal dinner last night instead of rushing back to put flowers together.

My best friend had us do the flowers the night before. Did I do it with a smile? Sure, because that's what friends do at that point. But, it sucked. The guys were all partying, and here we were working til pretty late. She was so stressed it was NOT fun. I vowed to just pay more to not make my friends work their asses off for our wedding.

The Bouqs is now offering pre-arranged flowers for very reasonable prices.

We are doing it ourselves! FH is helping and loves that kind of stuff. We are having a very laid back wedding and aren't stressing about it.

We are getting all flowers from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's!

I would get a florist, for sure. I wouldn't want to be up late the night before stressed out

I would be to scared too do them myself the day before. So many things can go wrong! If you decide to diy I would recommend nice fake flowers. That way you can start months before and can prepare an alternate plan if they don't look nice.

Did you try a local grocery store or Whole Foods? In our area there are about half the price of the local florists. Not sure why they're so much cheaper. Mine is doing everything a regular florist would do. Dropping off and setting up flowers at the church and the reception venue. And dropping off the bouquets to us in the morning.

I think it'll be HUGELY stressful for you to be doing your own flowers the night before, not to mention transporting them to the venue and setting them up for the reception- are your bridesmaids doing all the decor? That's a lot of work to ask them to do for free, IMO. My recommendation would be to find a florist that's in your budget and take that load off of you and your bridesmaids/family.

I decided on both- whole foods for the 10 centerpieces and silk flowers for the bouquets and boutonnieres that I made. Agree with others? that silk flowers can be expensive as well. Look into those wholesale stores like Costco etc as they deliver 2 days before so maybe you can do it two days before not the night before? To avoid being stressed. Just also consider if you have the appropriate storage (cold) and are able to deliver them. Sure I am spending more than doing all DIY but it's only about $200 more and for the sake of my sanity it's worth it.

If I were doing real I definitely wouldn't DIY. I'm using artificial and I still didn't diy the bouquets lol. My mom and aunt are making corsages and boutonnieres but they're skilled at that sort of thing.