Frugal wedding flowers - Sola flower DIY, part 1 how to dye the flowers

When planning our wedding, most of which we paid for ourselves, I felt it was really important to prioritize which items were important to us and warranted spending more of our budget on them and which didn't. For me, that was an open bar, a good photographer and making sure our friends & family could all come and have a good time (ie bigger guest list).

So lots of fancy flowers weren't really a big priority, though I still wanted fresh flowers. I considered ordering flowers in bulk and DIY'ing the arrangements as I'm quite crafty but since I had zero experience in arranging flowers, let alone making boutonnieres and corsages, I decided that DIY with real flowers would add too much stress in the days before the wedding since they have to be made close to the wedding even when using the kits you can order online.

I had budgeted $975 for flowers including bouquets (1 bride, 3 bridesmaid), boutonnieres (groom, 3 groomsmen, 3 dads, 1 grandpa, 2 ushers, 1 ring bearer), corsages (3 mom, 3 grandma, 1 flower girl)  & other decorative flowers (ie for the ceremony). Plus an additional $250 for non-floral centerpieces. Honestly, I felt like this was even more than I wanted to spend but when I did the budget it was what seemed realistic for real flowers, even though I wasn’t picky about what kind they were.




I met with one florist/wedding coordinator and she was very nice but her asking me about the flowers and various details of the arrangements just put how little I cared about the flowers more into perspective. 

Since the wood flowers weren’t fresh, I was also a lot more comfortable DYI’ing them because I could play around with them and work on the assembly for a few months before my wedding instead of needing to do it all the day before. This was a much lower stress option, not that I didn’t have other things to do J. And if I made them myself, it would be much, much cheaper than ordering them from Etsy because a lot of the cost of items like boutonnieres is in the labor to put them together. I could donate my labor and my mom's for free. Don't I have a lucky mom?

I ordered a sample of the wood flowers from the Etsy shop ZonsGarden to see how I liked them and they were so cute! Let me say, I don’t like artificial flowers normally but in this case it felt like the sola flowers weren’t trying to be the same as real flowers but they were a totally different thing altogether. They did not look like cheap plastic but had a great texture. They kind of feel like thin styrofoam. They are similar durability to natural flowers, you can smash them but they are not so fragile that they will break apart when handled a little.

To make the items I listed above, I ordered:

• 18 4 in* dahlia 
• 30 3 in dahlia
• 45 2 in dahlia
• 18 3 in carnation
• 36 2 in carnation
• 50 1 in mini-rose buds (accent flower)
• 40 1.5 in blooming roses (accent flower)
• 4 7 in extra large roses to use for decorations I had in mind

For all of the flowers and shipping I spent $160 (reflects discount from the shop for a large order). If I did it again, I wouldn't order the 4in or probably many of the 3in flowers, they are huge! The 1in and 2in are a better size. I will use some in my bouquet and the other decorations but they're too big otherwise.

I bought acrylic paint in 5 colors blueish grey, teal blue (I did not like the original blue I bought so I went back to get another color), deep red, a slate grey and white. I had bought the white in case I wanted to add more paint to the water but not make the color darker, I did not end up using it.

Grey paint water!

Honestly, I was worried about the mixing of the paint with the water and what ratio to use but I couldn't find any clear directions online so I just winged it. I would say I used 3 cups of water and 2oz of paint (ie the whole bottle) but I was really just feeling it out to see if it was paint-y enough. There were also times I was running low and just added more water and no more paint (I was out) and it worked ok. You will also want to stir it occasionally while dipping as the paint settles to the bottom somewhat.

I used a bunch of different sized "throw away" plastic containers to dip the flowers a deep one with a wide mouth works the best because you want to fully submerge the flowers. I dipped all of my flowers twice over a two day period, letting them dry for a day in between. Let me say I also made a big mess and suggest you wear gloves and prep your surface well. 

The dyed flowers have a slightly different texture after being colored, they are more rigid which I feel made them a little more fragile.

Huge dahlias!

I only dyed about 1/3 of the flowers I planned to use, it wasn't hard but it was messy.
I will let you know how the assembly goes, I plan to do that with my mom the week before the wedding! Good luck!

The rosebuds are my favorite!

*ZonsGarden lists sizes in cm, I converted to inches to help me have a better reference for the sizes (1in = 2.5 cm).

Here are my posts on making boutineers and making bouquets.