Fabric Flowers vs. Live Flowers

I am the third child of my immediate family, and seventh of all of my cousins to get married.  Add to that several close friends who have or will beat me to the alter by the time my wedding comes around, I have been to quite a few weddings in the past few years.  They have all been beautiful from DYI in a backyard to my sister’s fancy schmancy wedding at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago.   

The one thing that I regret is the amount of money that gets spent on live flowers for bouquets.  The cost is crazy when you consider that they last for one day if you make no effort to preserve them.  If you want to take steps to save them you have a few options.  

1) Disassemble the bouquet and press some of the flowers.  What now?  You then have to create a project to use or display the pressed flowers.

2)  Dry the flowers.  I have tried this and while it works, I am just not the biggest fan of the brown brittle thing that you are left with.  It is a shadow of what it once was.  And, this is my Mother in me, it just leaves a mess to clean up if it gets knocked or moved around.  It certainly doesn’t leave me remembering the beauty and life of the day that they came from.

3) The third option I have found is to freeze dry your flowers with a company.  This intrigued me because the photo samples I saw on their website were exactly what I was looking for, a snapshot of those live flowers forever.  Well this option costs a minimum of $400 at the company below, and you have to overnight your flowers within a few days to make sure they get processed before they wilt.  I don’t know about you but I hope to be not doing anything in the days right after the wedding.  http://www.mountainviewfreezedry.com/index.html

With all of that being said, if you love fresh flowers and the scent they bring go for it.  I haven’t ever been that girl.  At high school dances when I would be given flowers I felt like they were always awkward on my wrist when I wanted to be cutting a groove on the dance floor.  

So I propose, fabric or ribbon flowers.  I am going to keep posting pictures and tutorials of DYI flower options to support my argument.  Important detail, I work in a theatre with costumes and part of my job is sewing.  For me, it seemed like making the bouquets and boutonnieres for my wedding was a great way to bring in some of my personality.  I am not making my own dress or my bridesmaids dresses because I didn’t want to deal with all of that stress.  This is a manageable project with all of the other things that have to happen.