Do It Yourself Wedding Bouquet DIY Floral Arrangements

Making a do it yourself wedding bouquet and other flower arrangements can be helpful in keeping your wedding expenses down. Bridal flowers are expensive, especially when a florist is doing all of the work.

Now it is popular for brides to carry silk flowers so they can be kept after the wedding. Brides sometimes have a second set of flowers put together for the bouquet toss. This also applies with fresh flowers. Some brides choose not to toss the bouquet. So whatever you decide to do is fine.

Crafty brides are making their own silk arrangements to carry and/or throw and they are saving a ton of money, too. If you choose to make your own silk flower wedding bouquet, you can put them together in advance and store them in plastic bins to keep them dust-free and to avoid the flowers getting smashed.

Most brides still carry fresh flowers. They are so beautiful and most smell wonderful.

You can even make your own reception centerpieces and possibly church flower arrangements a few days ahead of time. This is only if you want to and if you feel that you have the time to do so.

By all means, get some help from family and friends if you are thinking of doing a lot of the pieces yourself! Have fun, relaxing evenings with friends and family who want to help you and who are creative. Get photos from magazines of the bouquets and flower arrangements that you want before you start.

Fresh flowers, if put together a few days ahead of time, should still be fresh on the day of the wedding. Of course, they will need a fresh water supply and they must be kept in a cool place, like a basement or an air conditioned room.

Making your flower arrangements can save you a ton of money. In order to pull it off, you will need expert help. You can get great tips on how to make do it yourself bouquets and other flower arrangements online.

Your do it yourself wedding bouquet should be made using your favorite flowers. My mom loves roses so she carried white roses with a brand new white Bible on her wedding day back in 1958. Roses are pretty but they are not my favorite flower.

My favorite flower is the daisy. My wedding colors were pink and white so I carried a beautiful mix of pink daisies with baby's breath and greenery. My attendants also carried pink daisy bouquets.

Pictured above is me on my wedding day with my beautiful pink daisy bouquet. In this photo, I was 96 pounds and in a size 5 dress. Shortly after the wedding, I got pregnant and I have never been so tiny since...

Ever since I was a little girl, daisies have been my favorite flower so it seemed natural that my wedding bouquet would be daisies.

My point--carry the flowers you love and want to use in your wedding bouquet and don't worry about what other people think. This is your wedding and its memory will be etched in your mind for always so make it the way you want it to be.

Do it yourself wedding bouquets are very popular, especially during the economic downturn we have been having in the United States. My daughter-in-law made her bouquet and it turned out beautifully.

Pictured above is my beautiful daughter-in-law, Cinnamon, holding her wedding bouquet prior to the wedding ceremony. She and her sisters made it, along with all of the bouquets for her wedding attendants in May of 2009.

Below are some directions for making easy wedding bouquets. Give it a try. You will be amazed at how easy they are to make. I suggest that several months in advance, you try making one out of inexpensive silk flowers as a test. Practice makes perfect. You can buy cheap fake flowers at Dollar Tree or any other dollar store.

For your real wedding bouquet, you can choose beautiful silk flowers or you can buy some flowers wholesale or even use some from your own backyard. If you choose to use fresh flowers, make the bouquets a few days before the wedding and keep them in a cool cellar or in a refrigerator, just like florists do.

Making do it yourself wedding bouquets is fun and will save you a lot of money.

Below is a closeup of Cinnamon's wedding bouquet after the wedding ceremony. You may notice the 3 pretty hot pink roses are gone. Andrew and Cinnamon got married the Friday before Mother's Day so as a part of their wedding ceremony, Cinnamon gave a hot pink rose to her mom, her stepmother, and to me. It was a very beautiful part of the ceremony.

A reader shared her how-to with us to make a bridal bouquet. Her story is below:

I've worked with silk flowers and arranging for a very long time so I would need to say that I have some experience but as far as making a bouquet, it is not as difficult as it may seem. The trick is NOT to overcrowd with many flowers and to try to keep the bouquet as natural looking as possible so it doesn't appear "fake". For the bridesmaids: The color of the flowers do not have to match exactly to the color of the dresses but should have a few accents that do.

I suggest for a first timer to make a standard bouquet using a "grip" slanted sideways (I'm not sure what the exact term is) but it looks basically like a styrofoam ball cut in half with a "doily" attached to the back of it along with a slanted grip. These are sold in most craft stores, or you can make one yourself by cutting a medium sized styrofoam ball in half and gluing a heavy cut off floral stem.

Supplies you would need:

A glue gun
A good pair of wire cutters
styrofoam ball (to cut in half)
or
premade "grip" with doily, etc.
Pictures of bridal bouquets
Floral stems

Cut floral stems from 4 to 6" from the flower itself.
Keep a few longer stems to accent the bottom, etc.
(DO NOT GLUE IN YET) First insert the "main" flowers (in my picture, they are pink roses and white lilies) fairly spaced apart. Then the "filler" which are the smaller flowers. Remember not to overcrowd or crush the main flowers. Not every bit of space needs to be taken up either. When they are all in place, then reaching in with the glue gun, glue at the base point of each of the stems inserted into the styrofoam.

I was married on 8/15/08. This was my 2nd marriage and as shown in the picture, this is my bouquet I made in under 2 hours at a cost of about $40.00. I was a bit rushed so I used the "grip" type of bouquet style.

Make A Bridal Bouquet
by: Juanita


Thank you so much for your directions on how to make a bridal bouquet! The tips are very helpful!

Best wishes on your marriage. May the Lord richly bless both of you on your new journey together!

Wedding Bouquet

by Julie
(Detroit)

I made my own wedding bouquet and those of my maid of honor, and bridesmaids. I used silk flowers. Silk white roses for me with a few scattered pink ones, and the maid of honor had an equal amount of pink and white roses. The bridesmaids had pink rose bouquets. They were all circular in shape. This was an easy shape to make.

I picked out pink and white roses from Garden Ridge and inspected them carefully to make sure they looked good, including the leaves. I put the roses together until I got the right circular shape and taped the stems with green floral tape. I trimmed the stems with a wire cutter and taped the ends with floral tape so the wire ends would not cut anyone. I tied a bow of pink or white ribbon around the stems of each bouquet. My bouquet was larger than the others.

I also made a smaller version of my bouquet for the bouquet throw so I got to keep my bouquet. I made them a month before the wedding and stored them in plastic boxes on my closet shelf so they would not get dusty or crushed. Doing them ahead of time really took the worry and pressure off. They turned out beautifully and I was so proud to say that I made the wedding bouquets myself!

DIY Wedding Bouquets
by: Juanita

Wow! The DIY wedding bouquets sound lovely. Wish you had sent a photo to put up. Would love to see one.

I was looking at Wal-Mart over the weekend and they have bouquet collars and stems in the wedding aisle back in crafts to help put them together so they may not be as difficult as I thought they would be. There is also floral tape and a nice selection of silk flowers.

Hobby Lobby and Garden Ridge and Michael's have better quality silk flowers and they have other materials to make even fancier bouquets.

Wal-Mart also has a ready made wedding bouquet made of white silk roses in the wedding crafts aisle as well for those who are not brave enough to try DIY wedding bouquets.

I think I will get some of the materials and try to make some.

Thanks so much for the inspiration!

This one is a simple rose bouquet. You will need 12 to 24 roses, depending on the size of the blooms and how large you want your bouquet to be. You will also need some floral wire, floral pins, ribbon, and good household scissors and some small gardening clippers to clip the stems.

First, clip all of the leaves and thorns off of the stems. Next, clip the stems so they are 8 to 10 inches long. Choose the largest bloom and put that one in the center of your bouquet. (If they are all the same size, don't worry about it.)

Add additional blooms, one at a time around the center bloom, keeping the bouquet nice and round. When you think the bouquet is large enough, while grasping the stems right under the flowers, wrap floral wire tightly around the stems under your hand to hold them in place. Just be careful not to wrap too tightly because that can break or damage the stems of real flowers. Experiment a little to get it just right. Then inspect the stems and trim them so they are all the same length.

Next cover the wire with ribbon in the color of your choice. Begin at the top and wrap around several times to hold it in place and then spiral down the stem, covering all of the wire. You can choose to cover the length of the stems or leave several inches of the stems showing. Both ways look beautiful.

To keep your bouquet extra firm, spiral the ribbon back up and then secure the ribbon with a few floral pins. Be sure that the floral pins are stuck inside the ribbon and stems and are not poking out to prick you. If you like, add a bow at the top of the ribbon-covered stems.

I suggest using 24 roses for the bride's bouquet and 12 for each attendant so that your bride's do it yourself wedding bouquet stands out from the others.

Instead of roses, you can use other similar sized blooms such as daisies or carnations, whatever you like.

The second of my do it yourself wedding bouquets is almost the same as the one above, but instead of floral wire, you use floral tape.

You will need 12 to 24 flowers, either fresh or silk. You will also need green floral tape, clippers, scissors, ribbon, and floral pins.

Cut the leaves and thorns, if any, off of the flower stems. Trim the stems so they are roughly the same length. Choose one flower to be the center of the bouquet. This can be the largest or one of a different color, or a different type of flower than the others.

Add blooms, one at a time, around the center flower, moving in a clockwise direction as you add them. Keep the bouquet round as you add flowers. Secure the stems with floral tape. Pre-cut the floral tape in lengths of about 6 inches and wrap it around the stems, as close to the flowers as possible. Wrap it tight, but not tight enough to damage the stems if you are using real stems.

Then wrap the stems with ribbon, covering the tape. Wrap around the top 2 or 3 times to hold the ribbon in place and then spiral down. You do not have to cover the entire stems. It looks nice if you leave several inches of stem uncovered at the bottom. Fold the end of the ribbon to hide the end of the cut ribbon and secure with 2 floral pins. Make sure the pins are stuck inside the ribbon and stems so that you do not get pricked with the pins.

Experiment with these do it yourself wedding bouquets. Try mixing several varieties of flowers and colors. Have fun and best wishes as you create your Christian wedding.