So Saturday my Mom, my friend Mary and I practiced flowers for our wedding!
The flowers were delivered on Wednesday from wholeblossoms.com. Right when they came in we cleaned them, took off all the low leafs and got them in some clean water.
The first vase we worked with had a rather large mouth so in order to make the arrangement look full I decided we would try to use floral foam. All you have to do is soak the foam and it helps keep the flowers in place and fully hydrated. I was a bit nervous to use the foam but it worked out really well.
Our first learning came right away – we discovered I didn’t cut the stems short enough. If you have longer stems that is fine it just take a lot more to make the vase look full.
Next we practiced a hand tie bouquet for all the girls. These just take a bit of practice. I watched lots of youtube videos for tutorial for exactly how to do this properly. The big hints are to use one flower as a “focal point” and continue circling that main rose to create a nice circle.
The lesson I learned from this one is to always keep an eye on the bouquet from the top, to make sure it is round, and from a side view. Mine ended up higher on one side than the other when I was done.
When it came time to wrap them all up first we used a rubber band. This helped to secure them. Then we wrapped floral wire around followed by floral tape. These three steps help to secure the flowers very well. One lesson we found during my sister’s wedding in this part was try not to tie them too close to the top – you can easily snap the head off a rose or too if you secure too close to the top.
I bought a couple different ribbons to see which we liked the best – this one wasn’t my favorite. Another lesson: I figured out after we wrapped this ribbon that the stems were too long. We then cut them down a bit more. This helps to keep the focus on the flowers not the stems.
Here are the final arrangements!
This gold one was a bit trickier to use with the floral foam. We wanted the flowers to be a bit more floppy/casual. So to keep the flowers in place on this vase we used a bit of chicken wire on the top. This helps as another way to keep stems in place and making sure nothing moves around.
What do you think?
I feel much better about the wedding flowers now. We learned lots on this dry run and now I think we are all set for the wedding!
