DIY Wedding Bouquet: What You’ll Need and How to Make Yours Beautiful

Adding a bouquet to your wedding day ensemble is one of the best ways to make a statement. After all, everyone present will be able to see the beautiful arrangement as you make your way down the aisle. And your bouquet truly can be as unique as you are. But what’s a budget-friendly couple to do if they’re looking for a super affordable bouquet option? If you’re DIY savvy, or even if you’re not terribly crafty, there’s still a great option for you. Enter: a DIY wedding bouquet. 

While it may sound intimidating to make your own wedding bouquet, it certainly is possible. With simple materials and a few steps, you’ll be able to put together a stunning, custom arrangement to serve as the perfect accessory for your big day. 

The Benefits of a DIY Bouquet

If it fits your wedding budget, opting to have a floral designer create a gorgeous bouquet is a great option. However, much of the cost from a professionally crafted bouquet comes from the labor involved. Certainly, there’s cost associated with sourcing fresh blooms, but the cost goes up depending on the amount of time spent and the complexity of the design. If you’re able to skip it and do the labor yourself, you’ll definitely be able to shave quite a bit off of your floral budget. 

How to Source Flowers for a DIY Bouquet

First thing’s first, decide the type of blooms you want to incorporate into your bouquet. According to Caroline Eells, it’s important to start by considering the style of your wedding dress, as it will reflect the tone of the entire wedding. Then, consider your color palette. Eells suggests thinking about whether you’d prefer complementary colors or if you’d love to integrate contrasting colors to add a bit of drama. 

Determine Your Style

Be sure to also decide if you’re hoping for a classic, tight bouquet or something a bit more whimsical, such as a garden or cascading bouquet. “If you’re going for a more modern and simple design, I suggest only using one to three varieties of florals, very little to no greenery, and florals that have a lot of textural interest,” she says. “For more of a garden-style, I suggest five to seven varieties of florals and greenery and flowers with a lot of different textural and gestural qualities.” 

Source Fresh Blooms

Once you’ve made a game plan to create a gorgeous bouquet, you’ll need to source your flowers. If you have access to a garden, whether your own or a friend or family member’s, Eells suggests first looking at what’s blooming there. If you don’t have access to a budding garden, look at local farms or grocery stores to source the floral varieties you’re hoping for. As a last resort, you can check online to order flowers in bulk. 

When and How to Prep a DIY Wedding Bouquet

One of the key considerations of making your own wedding bouquet is timing. “I like to make the bouquet the day before the wedding,” says Eells. If a wedding is on Saturday, she typically sources her flowers on Thursday, creates the bouquet on Friday, and then adds the ribbon on the wedding day to finish it off. “For your wedding day, you want the blooms to be at their best,” she adds. 

Materials for a DIY Wedding Bouquet

Once you have your blooms selected, you’ll need a few other tools for a stunning bouquet. Be sure you have the following on hand to be set up for success:

• A bucket with water
• A sharp pair of floral snips for trimming
• Rubber bands
• A beautiful ribbon or floral tape  

Flower Preparation

Before you dive in on constructing your bouquet, you’ll want to make sure your flower stems and greenery are prepped and ready. First, strip all of the leaves off of your floral stems. Then, for each stem of greenery, remove the leaves from the bottom halves. Snip each individual stem at a 45-degree angle and keep the stems in a bucket of water while assembling. 

How to Assemble a Bouquet

Once your stems and greenery are prepped, you’re ready to assemble your bouquet. Start by building the shape and framework of your bouquet first, thinking about dimension along the way. Eells suggests standing in front of a mirror while you assemble your bouquet so you’ll be able to know exactly what it looks like in the front. 

As you assemble stems in your hands, start with a base, and then add in your larger, focal flowers. Then, continue to add smaller flowers and greenery, balancing the design as you build. Once you’ve constructed a bouquet you love, snip the stems to trim them back and wrap the entire bouquet with a rubber band. Be sure it’s wrapped tight before adding floral tape to hide the rubber band or tying a beautiful ribbon around it. Tightly wrap a ribbon around the stems for a clean, classic look, or allow the ribbon to cascade down for a more relaxed, garden-style look. 

Along the way, don’t be afraid to get creative with your bouquet. Typically, a bouquet follows an odd number rule of design, meaning three or five of a certain bloom are intentionally added. But you can certainly break that rule if it feels right. “Sometimes it’s that one stem of something from the garden that sets it all apart!” says Eells. 

As you’re building your bouquet, keep in mind that it’s not worth stressing over. “I can’t tell you the number of times in 10-plus years of designing with flowers that I’ve ripped apart a bouquet and started over,” Eells adds. “Just take a deep breath and enjoy the moment in time that you get to create something beautiful with your hands. And remember, flowers are very resilient.”