DIY Tutorial: Hand-tied bouquet

It’s sunny and warm outside and I thought today would be a great day to try my hand at assembling a bouquet. Since I’ve already entered the Blooms by the Box contest for $300 worth of flowers (voting starts Monday!), I really needed to see if I’ve been over-estimating my ability to DIY bouquets, or if it’s much tougher than it looks.

If you’re a bride considering DIY flowers, it’s essential to be open-minded about your vision (that includes colors) and not expect the same results you would see from a professional floral artist. For today’s experiment, I didn’t fret too much about the specific flowers I bought; rather, I just picked up a primary bloom, accent flower, and filler in the same color family from the 3 for $12 section in my local grocery store. In the actual pre-wedding scenario, I would have a lot more selection in the St Louis “Florists’ Row” OR I would have the flowers I hope to win delivered to my door! I also grabbed some floral tape and ribbon from the craft store and a few pearl-ended bouquet pins I had sitting around.

The big difference between buying flowers at the grocery store versus a online or local wholesaler is that store-bought bouquets already have their leaves and thorns trimmed off. This saved me a lot of time; I did this whole project in around 20 minutes!

First, I took one of the big yellow flowers, the medium-size pink accent flowers, and a stem of the dyed baby's breath and arranged them into a base bouquet around which the entire arrangement will be built.

Then, I added a few stems at a time, turning the bouquet and attempting to keep it symmetrical. I like the "straight from the garden" look for these particular flowers, so I wasn't shoving the blooms as close together as you would with a rose-only bouquet, for example. [An important side-note: On a single stem of baby's breath, the little sub-stems kind of explode out at varying lengths and make it really pesky to fit in the arrangement in a symmetrical way.] Once I got it looking the way I wanted, I wrapped the stems in floral tape.

I covered the floral tape with my $1 ribbon and inserted the pins to hold it in place and tied a bow at the bottom (next time I'd start wrapping the ribbon higher up the stems, closest to the blooms, and maybe start with the bow instead). This part was probably the most challenging to do with only two hands, so I definitely learned that an assistant is essential!

Finally, I trimmed the stems to a shorter length. I already know that my bouquets will have the stems exposed rather than wrapped all the way up, since it seems easier to keep the flowers hydrated and I prefer the more natural way it looks.

Hey, not bad!

Overall, I am pleased with the result and feel reassured that with some helpers and the option to [hopefully!] choose specific Blooms by the Box flowers, the process will be easy enough to do the day before my wedding.


Note: If it isn't obvious from my amateur pictures and lack of blog design, I am not being compensated to endorse any of the vendors I mention in my posts.