Saturday 13 April 2013

MAKE-IT-YOURSELF-FASHION: DIY Bouquets

I've noticed that most Asian brides (the ones I have seen, anyway!) tend to go for bouquets more and more these days, whether it's for the wedding day, mehndi nights or even their registry, and it's a pretty touch for a bridal look, although I'm off the opinion that bouquets look better when the dress isn't too blinged out. I've seen a whole variety of bouquets, from colourful roses, gerberas, paper flowers, peacock bouquets and various different ones (One of the most favourite I have seen is my sister's reception/valima brooch bouquet), and it's nice to see an Anglo touch at Asian weddings, particularly when the bride is going for a 'fusion' look.

Not everyone may want to, or be able to, afford to buy a bridal bouquet from the florists, or from the growing market of bouquet-makers, and I'm seeing a lot of brides who also choose to buy flowers themselves and make their own bouquets. I've helped friends make bouquets a couple of time, so thought I'd do a quick post about how to make a DIY bouquet - it's surprisingly cheap, simple, and adds a very personal touch to a wedding.

For Roses:

This is a simple bouquet I made with a close friend of mine for a family wedding a few years ago, which we kept simple by only using roses. Our main problem at the time was getting roses which would be opened enough in time for the wedding day - so I researched this and found that it can be done very simply. There are a lot of tutorials on the internet (like this one), and all it involves is simply pulling the rose petals outwards, gently so that the petals don't get pulled out, and firmly enough so that the rose opens.

We kept the roses in water until the day of the wedding and them spent about an hour opening the roses and then binding them together - it helped that the stems are straight and didn't have thorns, so we could tie them together with string first. We then covered the string (so it didn't look messy) with a blue coloured ribbon to match the bride's dress, and tied a bow to leave some ribbon trailing as well. The end result was simple, but very pretty (excuse the bad quality second picture, it's all I could find!), and we also tied in the theme of pink roses by making a few rose centrepieces for the main tables, and scattering pink petals on the tables.




Other Flowers

A very good friend of mine got married a couple of weeks ago, and wanted a simple bouquet for her mehndi night. She decided to go with gerberas because the colour would look striking, and they would also go with the gerberas which would be put in her hair (she originally opted for roses, but roses would have been harder to keep in hair, because they're not as flat as gerberas). We shopped for red gerberas the day before, and also got smaller chrysanthemums, daisies and carnations in white to fill out the bouquet, as well as the smaller spray of flowers for the finishing touch. This was slightly harder to make because the stems were all different lengths, and the flowers were different sizes, although unlike the roses, I didn't need to open up the flowers because they were already open.

The main part of the bouquet (because of the use of different flowers) was arranging the flowers so that the bigger ones were in the middle to make them prominent, and the smaller ones filled inn the gaps and bound the whole bouquet together. I used five gerberas in total for this bouquet, using four gerberas as 'corners) of the bunch, and the last flower in the middle of the 'square' to that it faced upwards. I then used the bigger carnations and daisies to fill the gaps in between, one stalk at a time, and finished the bouquet off with the spray on the outside. I then tightly wound sellotape around the top of all of the stalks (under the flower heads) to bind them together, then went over all of the stalks to neatened it up with gold ribbon.

The end result was simple but pretty, and bride was quite happy with it!



In both cases of making the bouquets, I thought that although the bouquets were simple and didn't have any added bling, they looked pretty and added a nice personal touch, which the brides loved. Bouquets are not difficult to make (as long as the stems are long enough to bind) and they save a lot of money for brides. It's definitely something I would consider for my own wedding, simply to keep costs down and to add a personal touch. 

What do you think - would you make your own bouquet?

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