For fellow DIYers, flower shops, farmers markets, and fancy grocery stores are all good places to source seasonal flowers. Most are still open during the pandemic and will appreciate the support. Start to investigate the available verities by calling ahead in the month before your big day. And then, Amy suggests, get your flowers a day or two in advance, so you can relax the morning of your wedding. “I broke my own cardinal rule, but unless you are a pro, going to pick out the flowers the morning of your wedding is not going to be as relaxing as you imagine,” Amy says. “And make sure you give yourself enough time to assemble your bouquet, at least 45 minutes just so you aren’t stressed. Long, streaming ribbons are always a romantic finishing touch.”
After Amy brought home bunches of garden roses from her own farmer’s market trip, she conditioned the stems by removing all of the excess foliage, giving them a fresh cut, and leaving them to rehydrate for an hour or so in a bucket before arranging them. “I started arranging with a few sturdy stems,” she says. “And then continued by rotating the bunch, adding more as I went. Sometimes I find it easier to make bridal bouquets in front of a mirror that way I can check the proportion and shape as I go.”
Once the bouquet was finished, she put a rubber band around it to hold it in place and made any final adjustments as needed. Then she finished it off with a quick wrap of floral tape and put the bouquet in a deep vase with water. “I added my ribbon just before we left so that it wouldn’t get wet!”
After Amy said “I do,” she didn’t want to let her bouquet go. “The garden roses were intoxicatingly fragrant, and their smell will always remind me of my wedding,” Amy says. “I couldn’t bear to leave it behind when we went on our honeymoon, so I took it with us and used it to decorate our hotel room, rearranging it as the days went on. I pressed some of the flowers and petals in my journal, which I’ll add to our wedding album one day.”