Our Wedding: How To Prepare DIY Wedding Flowers and Floral Cost Breakdown

Inspired primarily by a Weddingbee boards poster and Mrs. Earrings (who inspired my wedding in many, many ways as you'll see in these recaps), I had decided to DIY my wedding flowers, from bouquets to centerpieces, after getting a ridiculous estimate from a florist.  After a few trial runs with flowers from Kroger and Fresh Market and help from a few YouTube videos, the only things I "outsourced" were the boutonnieres and corsages, which I didn't feel like I could do well.  

On the Thursday before the wedding, the boxes arrived!  To get the variety of flowers I wanted and save money, I ordered from three different websites.  I had won a gift certificate from a contest I entered at Inspired Bride to Blooms by the Box, which helped our budget a lot!  When I called about the gift certificate I got to speak to the actual general manager of the company, Larry Fox- which boosted my confidence about ordering flowers online and in that company quite a bit.

This is what wholesale flowers should look like when they arrive!  Wrapped in foil bubble wrap, then plastic wrap around the flowers and cool packs.  The hydrangeas also had wet cotton around the cut ends of the stems to keep them as moist as possible.

I'd purchased the set of plastic rose strippers shown here from afloral.com and was so glad to have them once the flowers arrived.  The strippers made everything much easier.  You just slide them down rose stems and they take off the thorns and leaves.  I also cut the stems at an angle using gardening shears.  When I was done, there was a huge pile of organic material for the compost pile!

One the stems were stripped and the ends cut, the roses went into buckets.  I ran out of buckets, though, and had to call Mr. Spin to come to the rescue!  He brought every single bucket he could find from his family's house and a few more he bought en route.

The hydrangeas made me the most nervous because so many websites talk about how fragile they are.  Following the directions in the nice .pdf file Blooms by the Box sent me, I trimmed the stems at an angle between the "knuckles" and cut a vertical slit of about an inch to help them take in more water.  I kept them in COLD water and away from drafts, and we turned the air conditioner as low as we could stand.

Around the time I was finishing up with the hydrangeas, BM Philly arrived to stay at my house for the wedding weekend.  As soon as she unpacked and she and Mr. Spin caught up, it was time for she, my mom and I to head to Roanoke for some pampering.  I'd scheduled a "Girls' Night Out" at my now-favorite nail salon- manicures, pedicures, and champagne for all the ladies involved in the wedding.  I highly recommend it!

Here's how many flowers I ordered.  It was actually waaaay too many for my 4 bouquets, 15 centerpieces, and altar and cake decorations.

Blooms By the Box (*HIGHLY RECOMMEND*)

- 100 40 cm. Cool Water Roses

- 200 40 cm. Vendela Roses (only needed about 150)

- 10 large blue hydrangeas

- 10 large white hydrangeas

Fifty Flowes (*WOULD NOT RECOMMEND*)

- 20 stems purple hydrangea (These came very late in the day and unlike the nice packaging you see above from Blooms by the Box, came wrapped in newspaper with no cold packs.  Over half of the flowers were wilted and brown.)

Bunches Direct (*RECOMMEND*)

- 5 bunches leather leaf fern (only needed 2 bunches)

- 5 bunches baby's breath (only needed 1 bunch)

- 7 bunches limonium (only needed 3 bunches)

TOTAL SPENT ON WHOLESALE FLOWERS: $671.41