DIY Wedding Bouquets:

Have a limited budget for your wedding flowers? Then we suggest designing your own ‘All Rose’ bridal bouquet. When starting your first bridal bouquet, start by using a hardy flower with a big head such as a rose; they can survive being handled. You can make a bouquet 2 days before the wedding, and be sure to get extra flowers for practice. Here's a step-by-step guide on do-it-yourself bridal bouquets.

24 Roses, 1 bunch of variegated pittosporum, 22 gauge wire, corsage pins, clippers or knife, 1” green floral tape, silk ribbon 2” thick, buckets for water, bleach and Crowning Glory finishing spray.

Select your bundles of roses and greens, such as variegated pittosporum, and buy them 3 days before your wedding.

Remove excess foliage and thorns from the roses, and pull off damaged petals.

Fill a bucket with water, add 1 tbs of household bleach (to cut down on bacteria growth), use clippers or knife to cut the rose stems at an angle about two inches from the bottom and place the stems in the bucket to hydrate. Fill another bucket in like manner and place the greens to hydrate as well.

Allow the flowers to drink and bloom open for a day. Using roses that are ruffling open will create a softer working surface and provide you with that soft petal on petal look that is desired.

Start by placing the first rose straight up and down in your left hand (if you are right handed. If you are left handed your hands and direction will be the exact opposite). This is your ‘center stage’.

All other roses placed will be the seats around your center stage. Place the second rose crossing to the left, lying it down almost totally sideways and pulling it in so that it rests right underneath your center stage.

Turn the entire bouquet to the right after each rose is placed, forming your first circle of seats around your ‘center stage’. You will be repeating the cross to the left, turn to the right motion until the first row of roses is placed.

Once the first row of ‘seats’ are formed around your center stage, you will continue creating another row of roses, crossing to the left and turning the bouquet to the right until all 24 roses are placed. If done correctly, you should have a nice dome shape across the top of your bouquet. If your bouquet looks like a flat pancake across the top, you are not tucking your rows of roses tight enough under the last row.

After all of the roses are placed, take small clusters of the verigated pittosporum tucking them underneath the last row of roses. This creates a ‘collar’ of soft greens under the outer edge of the bouquet. When placing the greens, make sure only a small amount of the leaves are peaking out past the last row of roses. Make the greens to ‘bushy’ will take away from the finished look of your bouquet.

When all roses and the collar of greens are placed, you will need to secure the bouquet together using 2 or 3 pieces of 22 gauge wire.

Secure the bouquet with the wire by turning your bouquet sideways so that you can see the bottom edge of your bouquet and stem lengths. Place the wire high under the ‘chin’ of the bouquet, so that the wire will be wrapped as high underneath the rose heads and greens as possible.

Pull both ends of the wire tightly together around your bouquet like a horse’s reigns and twist the ends together securely against the stems of the bouquet. You will know the wire is tight enough when your bouquet holds firmly together and the materials do not shift in their places.

After the wire is in place, you can put your bouquet into a vase of water and spray it with Crowning Glory

(Crowning Glory is a finishing spray that seals in the moisture of the flowers. This product is available on Amazon.com) until the morning of the wedding.

The morning of the wedding, take the bouquet out of the vase and pat dry with some paper towels. Next, gently cut some of the stems out of the center of the handle of the bouquet. This slims down the handle and makes it easier to hold.

Once a few stems are cut from the center of the bouquet, you will need to wrap the bouquet handle with 1”

floral tape to smooth out some of the bumps of stems, etc. To wrap the bouquet, gently pull the floral tape and guide it down the handle of the bouquet slightly overlapping each layer so that no stems are visible. When holding your bouquet, you want to see approximately 1 ½-2 ½ inches above your hand to the chin of the bouquet and 1 ½ -2 ½ inches of tape below the bottom of your hand.

Now take the ribbon and wrap the handle of the bouquet in like manner, covering up the green floral tape. Once the tape is covered, cut the ribbon, folding the cut edge under and pin into place with a corsage pin. To pin the ribbon, gently insert the pin running up the length of the stems. Continue to insert corsage pins up the bouquet handle for an added touch of beauty.

The final step is to trim the stems of your bouquet straight across the bottom about 1 inch below the bottom edge of the ribbon. To keep your bouquet fresh until the ceremony, place back into a fresh vase of water and spray again with Crowning Glory.