Everyone seemed excited and interested by my DIY flower dry run, so I thought I’d post wildly unprofessional tips, tricks, and thoughts on floral decorating.
- Don’t be scared. I’m not sure how we got so convinced that flowers were scary, but flowers are not scary. People have been doing flowers for weddings for thousands of years.
- Forget this “I’m an amateur, I should do something really simple, and not mix flowers” idea. Where did we even get that?
- Pin up pictures of arrangements you like and let them inspire your decorating.
- Mix textures, mix flowers, mix color. Be brave.
- Use crazy flowers! And herbs! And spiky things! And leaves! And twigs! And feathers!
- Too much of just the colors you love will be bland, use something different to make it pop (yellow or white for dark colors work really well)
- Work in pairs. One person will be your eyes while you are the worker bee. Then switch.
- Remember scale. Just because you can afford to have flowers the size of your head doesn’t mean you want to have flowers the size of your head. Or maybe you do. Just remember that flowers are heavy.
- Make your peace with the fact that your flowers will not be perfect, and that you’ll need to make them the day before (hot tip: if you paid for the flowers they wouldn’t be perfect either, but you would pretend that they were).
- Every time you make something, sit back and guess how much a florist would have charged you for it “$75!” you’ll say, “No, maybe $150!” Then applaud your cost savings (feel free to be wildly inaccurate with these numbers).
- Throw a flower decorating party the day before your wedding. Provide lots of wine and/or tea. You are not there to be the flower slave driver, you are the guest of honor, and are there to be spoiled. Remember that.
- On your wedding day, enthusiastically throw that bouquet in the air on the way out the door. Forget having a “tossing bouquet.” After all, if you want your wedding bouquet later, you can just make a new one!
