Affluent but Frugal

For me, making the bouquets was the hardest part, it was very time consumming. I tried several different "stems." The floral wires and bamboo sticks (suggestions of what to use I'd seen online) were both really rigid, which I found made it hard to put them together and shape the flowers in the way I wanted. After some trial and error, I chose a main flower to put in the middle of the bouquet (a large one) and put that one on a bamboo stick (the kind used to make shish kabobs) and attach floral wire to all of the other flowers which I then wrapped around the main flower's "stem." If you are planning to do this, start at least a month before your wedding - it took FOREVER to make the bouquets and I only had mine, 3 bridesmaids, 1 flower girl and 1 toss. If you have a big wedding party, you will need help. Unfortunately none of my girls lived nearby and I did not ask any local friends because I wasn't aware that it was going to take up my entire life for ...

Let me say, this was my first time making boutineers and this is was the part I was the most worried about when DIY’ing my flowers for the wedding. I was comfortable doing it because my mom, who had done it before was going to help me but an issue arose close to our wedding and I ended up being on my own for flower making. So while I was concerned about it, I think it was possibly the easiest part, especially the boutineers, the bouquets on the other hand I wasn't worried about but they were a pain the rear! These are not the beautiful works of art you will find on pinterest but I would say they are as nice as a basic model from a florist. They are simple, in part, because my fiancé did not want a huge flower for himself, so I made his fairly small and then all the ones for the other men slightly smaller than his. Making the boutinners was really straight forward, I suggest you start with these because they are the easiest. Supplies needed: ·     ...

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 b...