Mrs. Tulip, DC
Age and Occupation: 36, Retired
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Counsel/DOO for Small Gov't Contractor
Engagement Date: August 8, 2007
Wedding Date: March, 2008
Venue: Still Looking!
About Me: In all my dreams of the man I'd someday marry, I never pictured anyone as perfect for me as Mr. Tulip. So now we just have to make it through the craziness of the wedding and the moving in together! I love crafts, sewing, jewelry making, and photography, so am looking forward to this chance for DIY fun. When not wedding planning, I'm playing with our dog and 4 cats, Ebay shopping, or watching too much TV (often simultaneously!).
DIY Flowers — Real, Fake… Or Both?
June 13th, 2008 @ 9:31 am by Mrs. Tulip
From the start, I planned to save funds by DIYing our wedding flowers. Martha Stewart’s DVDs, which I checked out from our local library, made it look amazingly easy. But I had nightmares about trying to wire together bouquets on the busy day before the wedding.
So, we went with silk flowers for our bouquets and bouts, purchased months in advance from Save-on-Crafts. And I was quite impressed — they were high quality at excellent prices.
These orchid boutonnieres were only $1.44 each. (Though we had to purchase a 24-pack for that price — there were definitely extras!) We replaced the original white ribbon with red to match our color scheme.
The girls’ orchid bouquets were from the same source.
For my own bouquet, I again took advantage of the silk-flower savings to purchase a beloved flower that’s pricey when real — in this case, peonies! The bouquet was filled out with roses for contrast.
(Peonies from Save-on-Crafts were $2.79 for red, $3.49 for white. Roses were $1-4, depending on size.)
But I was slow in deciding what to do about centerpieces. And FMIL expressed a strong preference in favor of real flowers for the mothers’ corsages. So, a couple of weeks before the wedding, I was back online in search of live flowers.
We ended up purchasing through an online wholesaler called FiftyFlowers. And I highly recommend them. The flowers were beautiful at prices lower than the other sources I checked. Their customer service was fantastic — they phoned to recommend a change to our delivery date so the lilies would open by the time of the wedding, and they called again with reassurance when FedEx had to deliver a day late. The eco-girl in me feels guilty about flying them in, but logistically it’s pretty amazing that they were in the ground in South America one day and at my house the next!!
We purchased 100 stems of red Peruvian Lilies and 50 white Anastasia roses, for $110 each.
I found the lilies to be slightly disappointing in terms of color. That may be what happens when you order sight-unseen off the Web, but then again I’ve heard many stories where brides received something unexpected from their florists. Maybe that’s just how it goes with flowers…. Here’s the color of the real thing, versus the photo above:
But the roses were spectacular — enormous, snowy, and completely glorious. Rather than cutting them down into vases, we left them in enormous long-stemmed bouquets for tables at the ceremony and reception buffet. Sadly, no photo, but trust me on this one if you’re in the market for roses!
Overall, I was surprised by how long the fresh flowers survived. We received the lilies on Wednesday and the roses on Thursday so they would be open for our Saturday wedding. In fact, they peaked the day after the wedding, and both types remained beautiful for several days thereafter. So, a note to DIY brides — if you buy flowers that are tightly closed, you may be surprised how far in advance you can make the purchase.
In the end, I loved the ease of silk but the vibrant freshness of the real flowers. Each has its benefits for DIY brides. And, when in doubt, you can always mix and match!
Are you planning to “DIY” your wedding flowers? Will they be real or silk?
17 Responses to “DIY Flowers — Real, Fake… Or Both?”
Neither, clay and paper for us! I love the look of all your flowers, well done!
My mom works in the floral department at Michael’s craft store, so there was absolutely no question that she would be doing all of our flowers and using silk flowers. I don’t know, maybe I just have a bad eye, but I find that I often have to touch high-quality silk flowers to see whether they’re fake or not. Mom is trying to get all of the bouquets out of the way this summer…for my February wedding! I told her maybe I didn’t want all of my floral decisions to be final yet (she’s also making my dress and she’s giving me until August to make my final decision on that!), but I definitely appreciate the fact that with silk flowers you can do a lot of work well in advance.
my bouqet is a bunch of red origami roses, the girls’ are smaller versions of mine in ivory, the guys are wearing single red origami rose bouts, and the centerpieces are all origami rose ball topiaries. 
those orchid bouts are amazing!!!
I’m DIYing the flowers, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to use silk. (I forget they have improved a lot during the last 20 years!) I like the idea for the bouts, because then I don’t have to worry about wilting. Thanks for the tip!
I want to DIY my flowers but She is saying that she doesn’t want me to take on too many projects and She definitely doesn’t want me stressing about flowers the day of our wedding.
That is so great! We also used silk flowers for our bouquets and ordered our centerpiece flowers and roses from fiftyflowers.com. I love that craft website, thank you for sharing!
They do look like real flowers…
that’s amazing!!!!!!!! i couldn’t tell the difference! I guess it’s in what silk flower you buy right?
Those look amazing! In person, did they look real or could you tell they were fake? I’m just wondering if they really are that good or if you just had an amazing photographer.
Thanks for the compliments, everybody! (Blushing…)
AmandaRyan, the flowers really did look real. The orchids in particular. If you get “natural touch” flowers, even the feel is more substantial than some of the wimpy fabric things of the past…. Mr T was in a wedding last fall that used fake bouts as well, and it took me a long time to figure that out. I finally had to stroke his flower to be sure!
And I love some of the other options people are going for — can’t wait to see how everything turns out, Miss Pineapple! And, @futuremrsbrown, origami sounds AMAZINGLY cool — I’d love to see them!!! (Boards post, perhaps?)
I have favorited Fifty Flowers. thank you!
I used FiftyFlowers to order rose petals for our flower girl basket and to line the aisle for the ceremony - but I had a very different, and extremely negative, experience. I ordered lavender petals to match our wedding decor. However, not only did my petals arrive a day early (so that they started to decay early), but they arrived in the TOTALLY wrong color - alternating bags of hot pink petals and cream petals. Since it was so close to our wedding and such a small part of the decorations, we chose just to toss the hot pink petals and use the cream petals for the aisle. When I later contacted FiftyFlowers, they refused to even issue a partial refund and gave me no explanation as to why the mistake had occurred in the first place. They seemed to have no concern for the satisfaction of their customers at all.
If you read the reviews on WeddingWire (http://www.weddingwire.com/vendor/VendorViewRating?vid=9c05a50ef942847a) you’ll see that several other brides have had similarly bad, or worse experiences. I decided to go with FiftyFlowers because they were the least expensive, but I essentially ended up paying for the wrong product with zero customer service. I would not recommend FiftyFlowers, but would recommend looking into one of the alternative flower sites (Grower’s Box, http://www.wholesale-wedding-flowers.com, etc.) instead.
@nole, I hadn’t heard of the problems with FiftyFlowers, so thanks for letting people know. I’m really happy with my experience, but better for people to know the full range of possibilities….
I used Fiftyflowers for my wedding and bought over 1500 worth of flowers ~ which a florist would of cost more than $8,000 to arrange. I had Equadorian Roses, Spray Roses, 24,000 petals, Garden Roses and more. I had a very positive experience with amazing customer service, they called me once I placed the order and even corrected my mistakes on ordering so the flowers arrived on time to bloom. I would highly recommend them. Sorry to hear you had a bad experience but mine was great.
I was a DIY bride and I had a great experience working with Fiftyflowers.com so I think it is necessary to share this with you all. First of all, after checking the products they offer online I called the toll free number. I asked a few questions to the lady I talked to, I was skeptical before about ordering online but after talking to this lady I knew this was a serious company. She explained me the whole process, I always think in the what If’s so I asked her how do they deal with problem orders and she told me they have a Solution Department that will work for you personally but she also said they need to know about any problems 24 hours after the delivery since they have very strict policies. In your case Nole, I know that you had lots of thing to do but I am sure that if you would have advised them within the 24 hours, they would have worked for you and arrived to a solution.
I loved working with Fiftyflowers, they made all my planning so easy. Their customer service is great, I even was assigned to a wedding consultant who worked with me all they way long. I did all my wedding flowers with them, I ordered: rose petals, roses, peonies, hypericum berries, hydrangeas, some greens and calla lilies. As soon as I placed the order online, I received a phone call from a representative and she verified all the order with me. Then I received an email with the tracking numbers the night before of the delivery as promised. So it was great, I could see the status of all my packs all day long. As brides we have lots of things to do so it is relieving to know that someone else is taking care of your flowers and doing their best to help you have a wonderful wedding.
The flowers arrived two days before the event, they were properly packed. I was kind of nervous when opening them but when I did it I was sooo impressed, the flowers were absolutely beautiful. When the flowers arrived, I received a phone call from a representative she helped me with some tips in how to take care of them.
I was so satisfied with Fiftyflowers, they made everything so easy. All my guests loved my floral arrangements and my flowers lasted more than 7 days after my wedding day. I will definitely recommend them and have them in mind for future events.
