Wedding Flowers on the Cheap!

I'm sharing something very useful today – how to do wedding flowers on the cheap! I spent about £200 on flowers – good going when you think some brides spend the same amount on their bridal bouquet alone! Everyone has different priorities I guess, and I decided to keep my floristry budget to a minimum. Here's what I did (with lots of pretty pictures).

Firstly, I decided whether I actually liked the idea of flowers at my wedding, and when that turned out to be a yes, I considered the types of flower that would make my heart sing. After a long time spent reading mags and cutting out pictures, I came up with the concept of a mixed bag of dainty wild flowers with that just-picked look.

After that, I employed the best florist on the planet: Becky from Peony Flowers. Becky helped me to design a delicate bridal bouquet, consisting of a variety of seasonal wild flowers. I didn't want anything too large or heavy to hold so I opted for a small-sized bouquet (which also kept costs down).

In addition, Becky incorporated my home-made paper flowers into her arrangements for my bouquet, the bridesmaids' corsages and the groom's buttonhole. The other buttonholes comprised small flowers, similar to those in my bouquet, with stems wrapped in old book pages. Not only did the paper flowers tie in with my vintage theme, but they were also an inexpensive substitute for real flowers. (I'll tell you how to make my paper flowers in another blog.)

I didn't adorn the church venue with flowers, as this was not a priority of mine. For me, the focus was on the ceremony, not the decoration. In any case, the church had already been dressed beautifully with flowers, by the church wardens. Why pay to replace perfectly good stuff, I say?

At the reception venue I used a combination of flowers from a supermarket and my mum's and her neighbour's garden. I displayed the flowers in old jam jars that I'd been collecting for yonks, to add to the home-made feel. The piles of old books added to the vintage theme.

Although I gladly left the production of my bouquet, buttonholes and corsages to the professionals (thank you Becky), I managed to save so much money by creating my own paper flowers and centrepiece arrangements, with the help of Auntie Glinda, my mum and Janine. If you have the time, give it a go! It's not as scary as you might think.