This DIY Flower Arrangements post is sponsored by Fifty Flowers, however all opinions and ideas are entirely my own.

I knew several months ago that I wanted to do my own flower arrangements for our wedding, and I didn’t go into it blindly. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I was trying to make our wedding as personal as possible. I knew there were certain things, like wedding photography New Orleans, that I wouldn’t be able to do myself but everything I could do, I wanted to do. I absolutely love flowers and gardening, and I take great pride in my flower garden. Our wedding was in early May, and I knew that very few of my own flowers would be blooming. I searched online to find a wholesale flower company that sold directly to consumers with two criteria in mind, price and variety. I knew that I wanted to use garden roses, hydrangeas, and peonies. Garden roses can be difficult to find, and thankfully Fifty Flowers has a wide variety of garden roses. Today I’m sharing how I made one of my short DIY flower arrangements with a few tips for selecting and prepping your flowers. I’ve also included a Fifty Flowers discount code exclusive to A Southern Mother readers at the bottom of this post.

You might call me crazy, but I find arranging flowers soothing. I don’t think I could do it all day long, every day, but I do enjoy working on arrangements from time to time. Creating DIY flower arrangements isn’t hard either, it just takes time and a little creativity. I work off the trial and error method, cutting stems and relocating flowers until I get my desired shape and height.

The most time consuming part of doing my own wedding flowers was trimming leaves and cutting stems when they first arrived. It took me hours to process all the flowers that I ordered, and I quickly realized I had ordered too many. I guess there are worse problems to have when doing your own flower arrangements, but I didn’t want to waste any flowers. If you order them from a flower wholesaler such as Fifty Flowers, they won’t be ready to arrange that day. They will require a few days to fully open to know the final shape and size.

Before ordering, you need to make sure that someone will be home to receive and process the flowers as soon as they arrive.

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Someone will have to open the boxes, mix up flower food and water in large buckers/containers, trim excess leaves, cut the stems, and place them in a cool dark place. I didn’t have anyone around when our flowers arrived. It took me at least 4 hours to open boxes and process over 500 stems. I suggest getting a friend or family member(s) to help. It will make the task much less daunting, unless you aren’t processing many flowers.

Note: Washed and rinsed cat litter buckets are great to soak flowers. I collected them from family members instead of buying 10+ large buckets. If you don’t have cats, you can always pick up inexpensive buckets from your local home improvement store.

Don’t stress if your flowers are wilted or look ugly when they arrive. My flowers perked up considerably once they had been in water and plant food for a little while. You’ll want to store your flowers in a cool, dark place.

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My flowers arrived on Wednesday and my event was on Saturday, I didn’t change the water until I arranged them on Friday morning. I did frequently check water levels and made sure my flowers weren’t too crowded as they started to open.

Cut the stems at a sharp angle. You can to create as much cut surface area as possible so the flowers can absorb the water and plant food.

When you’re flowers are open or you’re ready to arrange them for your event, you’ll need to gather some supplies.

You need the following supplies for these DIY flower arrangements:

• Florist shearers or pruning shears
• Clear waterproof floral tape (available at most craft stores or you can order it online)
• Premixed or homemade cut flower food
• Vase
• Flowers

Choose your vases wisely. I used an assortment of heights and diameters, and most were easy enough to arrange. I’ll be sharing a tutorial for a tall hydrangea arrangement later in the month. buy tadalista online https://medstaff.englewoodhealth.org/wp-content/languages/new/tadalista.html no prescription

I found these beautiful balloon bottom lantern vases which were the absolute hardest to arrange. They’re the green vase featured in several of the photos. The flowers didn’t have as much support because the bottom was considerably wider than the mouth.

Aren’t these Patience Ivory Cream David Austin Garden Roses from Fifty Flowers gorgeous? They were probably my favorite flowers, and several ended up on our wedding cake.

The vase I’m using in this tutorial is roughly 6 inches wide and 4 inches deep.

Tutorial for DIY Flower arrangements:

• Fill vase 2/3 full with a mixture of water and cut flower food.
• Wipe the outside of the vase and rim dry with a clean cloth.
• Using the waterproof floral tape, create a grid across the top of the vase leaving a short piece of tape draped over the side of the vase.
• Keep in mind, the tightness of your grid will determine how much control you have over where a flower is placed. Just don’t make the open grid space any smaller than your largest flower stem, otherwise you could break your grid trying to put flower stems through it.
• Wrap a piece of clear waterproof floral tape all the way around the mouth of the vase to help to secure the tape in your grid.
• Recut stems at a diagonal to your desired length and trim leaves
• Place your largest flowers first and use smaller flower and greenery as filler.
• Don’t be afraid to relocate flowers or recut stems, just don’t trim the stems too short. You can always trim them shorter if you need, but you can’t make a stem longer if it’s cut too short.
• You can use leaves wrapped on the inside of your vase or ribbon on the outside to disguise flower stems. Our wedding was on our farm, so I didn’t mind that the cut stems could be seen through the glass. They matched our decor.

In you’re curious, I used the following flowers in this arrangement:

• 1 small White Hydrangea
• 1 cut stem of Pink Larkspur
• 8 Patience Ivory Cream David Austin Garden Roses
• 6 Standard Ecuadorian Roses

It can be really hard to calculate how many flowers that you need. The size of an individual flower can vary. I erred on the side of caution and ordered more flowers than I needed.

Larkspur is a lovely flower and easy enough to arrange, but if I had it to do-over I would have only used Golden Rod (Kentucky State Flower) as the filler flowers.

Note: These photos of flowers are not from my wedding day. I photographed this two days after my wedding with some of my remaining flowers. I’m still waiting on our official wedding photos. Here’s the only sneak peek that we’ve seen so far:

Our wedding was the day before Mother’s Day. I took some of our remaining flowers and used some mason jars that we had on hand to create a few small arrangements to give to friends and family for Mother’s Day. These DIY flower arrangements are a mixture of garden roses, standard roses, and red hypericum berries.

Please consider donating your leftover flower arrangements to a local nursing home or hospital, if you don’t have plans to distribute them to family and friends after your wedding. Fresh flowers could really brighten someone’s day. I couldn’t stand to see them thrown in the trash, and we didn’t have room to enjoy the 25+ arrangements that we had.

Whether you’re getting married soon or dreaming of your big day, I hope this DIY Flower Arrangements Tutorial can help. Please feel free to share with others who need inspiration and you can always pin this post for later.

For a discount on your next flower order from Fifty Flowers, you can use the code ASOMOTHER10 for 10% off your order.