DIY wedding flowers
DIY wedding flowers are personal
My husband and I met while working at an assembly-line wedding venue. I was a banquet waitress and he was a bartender and most weekends we’d work at least 1 or 2 or even 3 wedding receptions in a row. This was not a nice, historic hotel, mind you. It was a chain hotel with bad food and tired decor. It was the era of the Electric Slide and the Macarena! Needless to say, when we decided to get married a few years later we knew what we didn’t want: a wedding that in any way resembled our former place of employment.
So we got married under a tent in a local park, hired a natural foods chef caterer, served up craft beer and special wine, and a local farmer who my future mother-in-law knew from church did our personal flowers and my sisters and I created simple DIY flower centerpieces. It was all on a budget, it was fairly simple, and most of all, everything, including the flowers, was personal.
DIY is fun!
There’s a reason why I’ve made flowers my business: they are fun! Wedding flowers – especially simple centerpieces – are a fun and creative pre-wedding activity for bridal parties and families- unlike the venue or the catering or the cake or the dress. If you have the time, energy, and enough people, it can be a special experience.
Good news: I’m happy to help you with this! I don’t mind doing “just” personals. I don’t have a minimum spend. I actually love to sell you buckets of flowers so you and your friends can DIY your wedding flowers.
Choose the hybrid approach
The most successful DIY situations have been “hybrids.” I create the personal flowers and the ceremony decor, and you and your friends and family do the centerpieces.
Unless you (or a close friend or family) have real experience creating bouquets and boutonnieres and creating arch installations, you should hire someone who knows what they are doing to create these items for you. Do not underestimate the time, expertise, and skill it takes to create even a “simple” bouquet. The personal flowers and the ceremony flowers are going to be front and center in every single photo. Are you hiring a professional to take the photos? If yes, then you need to hire a professional to do the flowers that will be in the photos.
Best practices
DIYing some of your wedding flowers works well if you have (a) a group of people, (b) time, and (c) space. If you and your friends are able to stay the weekend or the night before at your venue DIY is a great way to go. Several of our local venues have this option. This does not work well if you hand it all to your sister in law or your maid of honor an hour before the event.
The day before is optimal. The day of can work, but only if there’s enough time.
The people getting married – the bride or brides, the groom or grooms – should under NO circumstances do any of this the day of the wedding. Trust me, you will have other things to do.
Another thing to consider, besides time: where will you be doing this? Playing with flowers is messy. Transporting vases is a little tricky. Many of our local venues are booked solid for all 3 weekend days, so make sure you check with them if you’re thinking of using their space to do any of this work. If the wedding is at 3 and you can’t get into the venue until 11 that is really pushing it if you don’t have everything done ahead of time.
DIY packages in 2025 start at $600 for a bouquet, boutonniere, and 3 DIY buckets. If that sounds good to you, let’s talk!
Some of the hybrid weddings featured on my site:
…and check out my Instagram feed for other photos.
