When it comes to saving money for a wedding, making your own flowers is a quick and relatively easy way to do so! If you're going for a more natural bouquet look, it's pretty easy to not only assemble bouquets and vases yourself, but boutonnières and corsages as well! After helping to make most of the flowers for three of my cousins' weddings, I knew that flowers were definitely something that I wanted to do myself.
I chose flowers for the wedding based on what I knew I could easily access in Minnesota in September. I fell in love with maroon and yellow celosia and decided to try growing it at my dad's, my grandma's, and my apartment. While we didn't end up with quite as much celosia as I'd hoped for, we still had enough for it to play a big role in our arrangements.
To add to the arrangements, I purchased a few bunches of things from Market Flowers in Minneapolis. They specialize in selling bulk flowers at prices that are close to wholesale. I really wanted Billy Balls in my arrangements, and was beyond thrilled when I found out that they stocked them there.
The last bit of filler flowers and greenery came from all around my dad's property. We used hosta leaves in the boutonnières, wild plume grasses in bouquets, and anything else that caught our fancy as we walked around the yard with a pair of scissors. The day before the wedding, my ladies of honor, aunts, grandma, and stepmom all offered their creativity as we made all of the floral arrangements for the following day. After making flowers for several weddings, I've found that the time spent with the ladies that day is so valuable and it's so much fun to be able to really enjoy the flowers. For some many weddings, there are gorgeous flowers that you hardly get to even smell! Making the arrangements yourself gives you the opportunity to really enjoy them, and enjoy each other. I loved that.
I was beyond thrilled with the way the flowers turned out! The colors were perfect, the shapes of the bouquets were just whimsical enough to make me smile, and the Billy Balls were so adorable! In the end, I think I spent about $200 or less on all of the flowers. I was pretty pleased with that price tag, and so happy with the finished product.
If you feel unsure of your flower arrangement abilities, take a class, watch some YouTube videos, or just start experimenting! It's really a rather simple and fun way to save money and your skills will certainly be called upon for years and years to come.