So you're about to get married and you're wondering what to do with your beautiful bridal bouquet you've spent thousands of dollars on!
You've spent spent hours trawling through Pinterest pinning perfect bouquet ideas and then spent even more time trying to find a florist who can create your dream wedding bouquet.
Bridal bouquets and wedding flowers are an essential part of every wedding. I can't think of a single wedding I've been to where flowers weren't a prominent feature. They compliment the bridal party and set the tone for the whole wedding.
Florists spend hours and hours artistically sculpting beautifully bouquets and flower arrangements.
The wedding day comes and goes... and all that is left is a few photos to tell the story... and let's be honest... how often do you drag out the big wedding album to reminisce!
So what can you do with your wedding bouquet after the wedding…
When the guests have all gone home and the bride and groom have hit the road for their long-awaited honeymoon? It really is such a shame seeing bridal bouquets hung to dry only to go mouldy or worse still thrown out!
Here are three ways you can preserve your wedding bouquet
1. Have your flowers pressed and preserved by a professional floral preservation artist and turned into a piece of pressed flower art!
My favourite option (obviously!) is to have your wedding bouquet preserved by a professional floral artist. We have practiced and practiced
and learned how to deal with the different flowers in a bouquet. We know which flowers will press whole… or which will need to be pulled apart and pressed petal by petal. Flower pressing is quite a tedious process and much care is needed to ensure they don’t go brown or worst still go mouldy!Like all flower preservation options - flowers will change over time. White flowers will generally go more of an antiquey brown colour. All flowers change in some way during the preservation process. I’ve had burgundy tulips change to purple during the pressing process! So stunning! It’s a transition to be embraced I say!
2. Hang your bouquet upside down and let it dry out
Hanging your bouquet is a very common way to save your wedding bouquet. This is a pretty quick option and you can just palm it off to a friend or family member the night of the wedding and hope it turns out ok. The best way to ensure it dries best and doesn’t go moldy is to pull it apart and hang flowers in smaller bunches in a non-humid area. Flowers once they are dried can be displayed in a vase
The risk with this option is over time the flowers may pick up moisture and/or get covered in dust - which is tricky to deal with once they are all brittle. The bouquet pictured is my bouquet from 2020. All of the white roses browned.
Some preservation artists will accept already dried bouquets and look at options to turn them into art in a 3D shadowbox frame. Or you could give it a try!
3. Dry your bouquet in silica and put them in resin or frame them.
Silica is a very fine sand like substance that can be used to preserve flowers. It efficiently draws out moisture from plant materials with less discolouration than pressing or hanging. The flowers will hold their 3D shape so can’t be displayed between glass. Flowers preserved in silica can be great for resin castings or to put in a shadow box type frame. Below is a piece from Toowoomba resin artist, Meadows by the Sea.
If you're getting married and haven't got a plan for your bouquet it would be an honour to preserve yours for you!
Please see my bridal bouquet preservation page for more details and see if your date is free.
Last minute bookings are fine too... just please don't let those flowers shrivel up and die!
What did you do with your bridal bouquet?
If you’ve already tied the knot, I’d love to hear what you did with your bouquet? If you didn’t preserve it what do you wish you had done?