5 Things Every Bride Should Know
If you’re considering designing your own wedding flowers, then I’m proud of you. DIY wedding floral design is fun and rewarding, and I can’t lie - sometimes stressful. But life is stressful, and it usually goes a bit smoother if you are realistic about your plan. So, whether you’ve fully committed to the DIY wedding flowers route or you’re still on the fence about hiring a professional florist, take these five realities into consideration:
1. What you save in money will cost you in time.
Like any DIY project, designing your own wedding flowers will absolutely cost much less than hiring a professional florist. What it will cost, however, is your time. Wedding floral design requires many steps such as planning your arrangements (recipes), ordering flowers months in advance, making trips to the farm or florist to pick up blooms or being available for flower shipments to arrive, conditioning fresh flowers, and creating your wedding centerpieces and bouquets. You’ll also need to consider time to set up your flowers at the venue — which brings us to number two because…
2. You can’t do this alone.
Okay, yes, YOU probably can. But trust me on this, you will have a much better time if you round up some helpers. Get a few people on board to help you make all those wedding centerpieces or have your attendants make their own bridesmaid bouquets - get some snacks and make it fun! Delegate a few people (outside of your bridal party) who can help set up your DIY wedding flowers at the venue on the day of your event so you can relax and enjoy your wedding day. Do-it-yourself wedding flowers doesn't have to mean do-it-alone. If you’re hesitant to ask for help, let me just say, in my experience most people are pretty willing to get their hands on flowers and play pretend florist for a day.
3. You can design flowers anywhere, but you can’t store them anywhere.
In my years as a florist, I’ve designed wedding flowers in a lot of different spaces: a hotel room, a field, a barn, my itty-bitty kitchen, even a bathroom… where you create your arrangements really doesn’t matter. What does matter, however, is where you store your fresh wedding flowers. You don’t need a walk-in cooler per se, but you do need a cool space without direct sunlight. This could be a basement or garage floor, or a chilly air-conditioned bedroom. Plan ahead and make sure you have a designated space to store all those blooms or completed wedding arrangements. If you plan to deliver your DIY wedding centerpieces and bouquets to the venue the day before your event, you’ll want to take the same considerations and find a cool space.
4. It might not all fit in the car.
You'd be surprised by how many times I’ve seen someone try to fit an entire wedding’s worth of flowers into a sedan. When you’re lining up helpers for your DIY wedding flower project, make sure the person helping with transportation is also the person with a large vehicle. Wedding flowers take up more room than you think, especially when they’re fully arranged. And maybe it's because I live in Maine, but I feel like I also need to say: please don’t transport your wedding flowers in the bed of a pickup truck.
5. No one will judge your arrangements as harshly as yourself.
When you design your own wedding flowers, you’ll notice every little imperfection. But where you see flaws, others will admire your beautiful work, your creativity, and your capability in putting it all together yourself. So don’t worry so much about it - your wedding flowers don’t matter as much as you think they do. Let me put it this way: your guests didn’t come to see your flowers, they came to see you and your partner get married and celebrate!
If you decide to move forward with DIY wedding flowers, go into it prepared, realistic, and confident. Wedding floral design doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful, it just needs to be thoughtful and well planned. When you understand the time commitment, gather the right help, think through storage and transportation, and give yourself a little grace, designing your own wedding centerpieces and bouquets can be one of the most meaningful parts of your wedding planning process. And at the end of the day, the flowers are there to support the celebration, not carry it.
Staying organized just got easier with my FREE DIY Wedding Flower Timeline get your copy today and start planning the DIY Wedding Flowers you’ve been dreaming of! And be sure to check out Bloom Studio Workshop’s other resources for recipes, floral mechanics, step-by-step design instructions and how to condition your flowers so they’ll last!
