How to Preserve Your Wedding Bouquet

Every bride loves to have keepsakes of her wedding day. While most preserve their dress, some preserve their wedding bouquet as well as a lovely reminder of the day! Here are some ways to go about it…

Talk to your florist about preserving your bouquet

Your florist can advise you best about which flowers in your bridal bouquet can be preserved well and ones that tend to wilt quite fast.

  • While roses are considered to last the longest, flowers like hydrangeas, peonies do not fare too well.
  • If you’re planning to have your florist preserve the bouquet for you, find out how soon after the wedding you need to send your flowers to them. The time frame is normally two days or less – if you’re leaving on your honeymoon soon after, be sure to arrange to have your trusted maid of honour or family member drop off the bouquet for you.

Consider your DIY options

preserve-your-wedding-bouquet

Photo via Fizara

If you want to try and preserve the bouquet on your own, there are few things you can do:

  • Find a cool, dry place and hang your bouquet for several weeks so they dry out beautifully (check out a tutorial here).
  • If you like the good old pressed flowers option, line pages of big, heavy books with wax or parchment paper and arrange flowers individually, without any overlapping. Keep the book closed over a couple of weeks and soon enough you should have a bunch of beautifully pressed flowers. You can then stick these or have them mounted on good quality handmade paper and have it framed.
  • You could also create a montage of different frames if you had various differently colored flowers. They could occupy a place of pride say above your headboard in your bedroom!
  • If you’re feeling a little more ambitious, you can dry them using silica gel. This is usually found in most craft stores. You’ll have to make sure to coat all the flowers well with silica gel or leave them in a container filled with it. This will dry the flowers and after a few weeks –typically 8 or so, you should have your flowers dried and ready, albeit a little darker. As with the pressed flowers, you can frame them. Since these will be a little sturdier than pressed flowers, you can arrange these in the form of beautiful wreath and have them framed. If you had lace or ribbon tied around the flowers, incorporate it into your wreath too.
  • Another way to always hold onto your flowers is to convert them into jewellery. You can use a small bloom and have it placed inside a pendant or make dainty earrings from them. These can be used time and time again and you can be sure to make a statement with them. They can also be converted into hanging ornaments.
  • You can dry the flowers by hanging them upside down and once they’re dry, you can use them as a centerpiece for your dining table or preserve them in a box frame so they retain their shape.

pressed-framed-flowers

Photo via Martha Stewart

Get it done professionally

If you’d rather leave it to the experts, you have several options:

  • They can be freeze dried or silica gel dried and you have the added benefit of retaining their three dimensional shape.
  • The bouquet can be displayed in a glass dome or you could arrange it in a shadow box in an arrangement of your choice.
  • If you had roses in your bridal bouquet, consider arranging them in the shape of a heart and having them framed.
  • Check around and see if your flowers can be converted into a paperweight – that way you can use it in your home office.

Main photo by Thomas Stewart via Style me Pretty

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The girls at weddingsonline

The girls at weddingsonline

The girls from the UAE's newest wedding community with real weddings and lots of gorgeous inspiration!

  2 comments

  1. pretty colors! Pastel and tender! Love it!

  2. I like photographer’s style.

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