Florist?

Artificial flowers and doing it ourselves

We’re doing non-floral centerpieces, and our decor will already be decorated for the holidays so we’re all set there. I do however prefer real flowers and was fine paying the price since we didn’t require much. For $600 our florist is making: my bouquet, 4 bridesmaids bouquets, 9 boutonnières, 3 wrist corsages and cake flowers.

We're going through the floral department at a local grocery store for the bouquets, boutonniere, and wrist corsages. They do beautiful arrangements and the costs is considerably cheaper than going through a private florist.

We are doing traditional flowers, but there are so many other routes you can go..feathers.....gems and bling......artificial flowers, etc.

I'm doing sola flowers off etsy.com. For my bouquet I intend to do a cascade and then just a MOH bouquet as my wedding party is just MOH and BM. Two boutonnieres for the groom and best man. We ordered a toss bouqet for 45 dollars to see how we like it and will just repurpose the flowers for the cake decor. All comes to $400 dollars. The bouquets are inexpensive - for an 8" round it's $75 with free shipping. These are items I will be able to keep for a very long time. I see it as a piece of art.

I was quoted by two florists both with minimums. One was 2k and one was 3k. No way, no thanks!

I'm buying a bouqet holder clamp (~$20) for the sweetheart table that will hold my cascading bouquet at the front which will give our table some decor.

I'm doing petals in water in vases with a floating candle so that will be my only floral expense and I might even just pull petals myself for it depending on which is cheapest.

I am not crafty so I got great deals on ready made bouquets on Etsy.

If you plan on doing flowers yourself I’ll probably recommend fake flowers then. Although I'm not a fan with enough time you can find beautiful flowers that look real at a good price. The days leading up to the wedding there’s a lot going on and making arrangements yourself is just a task you want to avoid so you don’t stress out. Flowers are not necessarily easy to handle, they don’t all open at the time and requires the same treatment. On another hand if considering buying multiple different flowers for all bouquets you might spend around the same as if you have a local florist shop make you the arrangements.
So I say diy fake or get them at a local shop. They are not that expensive and you can arrange for someone to pick up the day off so no delivery charge.

For my centerpieces I purchased my flowers from a local farm. The flowers were very reasonable. For my bouquet my 2 bridesmaids, 2 groomsmen, and our mothers they came from a florist. The florist was a little pricy but well worth it.

DIY is a great choice but if you don't want to do all the work see what quotes a local grocery store will give you. We did ours through a store and received a great quote! But also keep in mind the quotes will depend on what kind of flower you want. I went with daisies because they're my favorite but also cheap.

FMIL did her own bouquets. Really simple with some roses and baby's breath. They looked so pretty 😍

For my mom and sisters weddings, we bought fake flowers at craft stores and made bouquets, turned out beautiful. I plan to do the same, and have a friend who is a florist to help me put them together. Pretty ribbons and a little sparkle can really step them up!

We got all of ours from Hobby Lobby 50% off. I spent less than $200 for all bouquets, bouts, and corsages. I definitely could've gone cheaper too, I just avoided the super fake flowers, which are the cheapest.

I'm doing paper flowers thru Etsy. Until I discovered them, flowers weren't happening at all.

Following up because we got our photos back! Here were our bouquets... mine was from a florist but for the bridesmaids bouquets, we got the flowers from the grocery store and wrapped them ourselves the day before. You can definitely tell the difference but I still think theirs are gorgeous!

View Quoted Comment Wow! That’s amazing, everything looks stunning and if your not looking for the flowers you can’t even tell. Thank you for the picture!!

View Quoted Comment

I think the only difference is the color of the roses (which of course they were bought at different places so it couldn't be matched exactly) and that mine was a little tighter and neater than theirs... but I don't think either of those are things that make them "less good" even, just different!

And we spent $30 total on all 4 of their bouquets!

I'm using Bloominous.com, there's a ton of pre-designed options that you could customize if you want and it's DIY. It's pretty affordable and easy. I did a trial with the DIY that came out great.