Having a bouquet of flowers with a dainty wedding dress of your choice can make every bride a princess on that special day. Fresh flowers is a must for me, a simple hand tied flowers in season and accentuated with ribbon and pearl head pins just makes a perfect wedding bouquet. Before I decided to make my own wedding bouquet, I searched online for the store in San Francisco where I could buy the bouquet and end up very disappointed because of the price. The wedding bouquet that caught my attention but not quite what my heart sings costs $145 plus delivery charge. It doesn’t make sense for me. I was planning also to give a small bunches of flowers to all the girls in my wedding so it will cost me so much if I’m going to buy everything from the flower shop. The most important thing in personalizing my bouquet is I get to choose the style & color that I really love and get to customize the thickness of the bouquet that I could comfortably hold.
Cascading bouquet that would almost cover the front of the wedding dress just doesn’t impress me. It turns a bride into a goddess of Eden or a walking flower box. Too much of anything is an eye sore for me… irregardless whether you can afford to buy the whole Huntington Botanical Garden.
So, the plan was to make my own bouquet. What I did was I bought ahead the hair band, pearl head pins and off-white silk ribbon at Michaels. I already have in mind the colors of what my bouquet should look like. I want to have the combination of white, light yellow and light green flowers. I don’t have a specific kind of flower but I opted to have the ones in season for affordability and easy find.
A day before the wedding, my husband and I went to Safeway in San Francisco to buy bunch of flowers with the colors of my choice for the wedding bouquets and small bunches of flowers for all the girls in my wedding. We soaked the whole bunch in a bucket. I believe I had white tulips, white calla lilies, baby’s breath and light yellow flower which unfortunately I forgot the name already. I woke up early to arrange the flowers. Since the I had a 3:30pm wedding, I had enough time to do it myself.
How I made the wedding bouquet:
- Prepare scissors, pearl head pins, off-white ribbon (inch think), hair band
- Gather the flowers in your hand by arranging it neatly and pleasantly. I decided to put baby’s breath at the outer layer of the bouquet.
- Gather as much until you reach the desired thickness that you can comfortably hold.
- Use hair band to gather the flowers and this way you’re sure that the flowers will be in placed all through out the wedding. Put the hair bands in three different places in the stem.
- Cut the stem in your desired length evenly.
- Cover the whole stem with ribbon. Put the pearl head pin each round in the ribbon or depending how much pins you like to put. Each pin should be in line with the others.
- Put the pins sideways for your safety.
- Until you put your last pin, and there! your personalized bouquet!
For the small bunches of flowers, all I did was tie it with hair band and cover the band with ribbon. I gave the bunches to my niece, daughter of my very good friend, my sister in law, fiance of my husband’s best man and of course to my good friend since college who stand as my Maid of Honor.
Simplicity and personalization is the key. Don’t throw away your money on something you can save by doing it yourself and bring out the hidden creativity in you. Personalization is the signature that will always colorfully resonates on the day when everything is gray.
natural high. The downside ?… well, putting the whims and desires altogether in a period of time results pressure & tension thus creating a character of Bridezilla. Loosing patience because expectation is not met, playing blame game, wanting more in the process and disappointments for not meeting your standard. The bride is becoming an angry princess who feels so alone and thinking straight can no longer be absorbed. The reality is people around you is so concern with your happiness and the goal of pleasing you is the name of the game. Brides!… be reasonable!
gown, Indian veil (courtesy of my husband), pearl ensemble from my in-laws… made the bride very happy! and of course preparing my wedding favors was the best “me time” I had.