DIY Bouquet (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly)

Wanna hear something crazy? I paid $28 total for the flowers at my wedding*. How I could I accomplish a feat so magnificent? Because the bouquet you see me clutching was the only floral element present the entire day!

Kali Leenstra Photography

I was going to go with a florist, have it delivered, and make things easy. Except I couldn't find anyone that didn't want to charge me $100+ for a silly bouquet! I've always loved walking past the rows and rows of flowers at Pike's Place Market and decided to be brave and assemble my own bouquet. I made sure to pack everything I would need and have it with me at the hotel (floral tape, scissors, pins, and ribbon). Remember to bring a vase with you to store the flowers in if you decide to go the DIY route! I forgot this little detail, but of course the fantastic Hotel 1000 had one delivered right up to my room when I asked.

The evening before the wedding That Groom and I walked over to Pikes Place to pick out something. I walked up to one of the stalls, saw some white flowers (what are they, Dahlias? Mums?) and said I wanted the whole bunch of them. The girls working the flower booth even gave me a few things for free since it was closing time! I picked out a few different extra things, thinking I would incorporate a few different elements. Turns out this was a mistake since I had no idea what I was doing. If you haven't practiced, and you aren't crafty like myself, just decide to make a bouquet out of one kind of element. The flowers I ended up using really only cost me around $12!

BM Princess Jess and I put the bouquet at around 9:00 the night before the wedding. She took all of the flowers, snipped the ends, and arranged them in a vase. She lifted the arrangement out of the vase and I tied floral tape around it. We wrapped a pretty iridescent ribbon around the stem and secured it with diamond head pins. It wasn't perfect but I was tired and ready to go to bed so we threw it in the vase and called it good.

This was not the prettiest bouquet you will ever see. This shot shows perfectly how absolutely uneven it was and you can see how some of the flowers are already pointing down.

Shaylene Rene' Photography

In the end this was the best choice for me because I didn't have to stress about taking care of a $100+ investment. I still loved it and carried it around like a proud mama, but when it came time to take formals like the one below, and I wanted to put my arms around my grandmothers, I simply set (okay, tossed) it on the ground in front of me.

I think it was passed around from babysitter to babysitter while I ran around direction things. That Father is the one you see holding it so nicely here.

Shaylene Rene' Photography

Apparently over time I began to use it as a kind of traffic director.

"Hey you, yeah you, cousin X, get in that picture!"

"No, no no! I said bridesmaids should be standing over on that side!"

In the end, the bouquet served it's purpose. I was the bride. I had a pretty dress, a veil, a darling groom, and a bouquet. In shots like this one you can't even tell what a DIY disaster it was.

Kelli Nicole Photography

After the formal portraits at the temple I'm not sure what happened to it. It isn't in any of the bridal part shots, but someone did grab it and set it on the cake table that night. It looked really ragged by then so I gave it away to one of my little cousins. I had intended on giving it away to the oldest married couple in the room, which I think is such a wonderful tradition, but it was so bedraggled by that point I would have felt embarassed handing it over to someone as a gift!

*Although I still paid a good amount for the wedding decor in general, I saved a whole bunch by going the DIY route with non-floral decor. And I get to keep everything (for what purpose I have no idea) now that it is all over!