Wedding Floral: DIY or Hire a Professional?
Wedding floral is a large part of the vision when a couple pictures their dream wedding. From the bridal bouquet to each table’s centerpieces, the mulling over Pinterest and wedding sites begins right after the engagement.
Ambitious couples consider doing their own arrangements to either save on wedding costs or to express their own creativity. However, the actual process from start to finish can overwhelm anyone, especially when added to day-to-day life.
Questions soon begin to arise: What flowers are in season for your date? How many do you need to order so that you have enough to build all of the spectacular pieces you have planned? Do you have a place to store the flowers as you go through the building process? Hiring a professional to help with the research, planning, and execution will ensure the day is amazingly gorgeous. It also means LESS stress and more energy for you to enjoy celebrating with loved ones and friends.
A look behind the scenes might convince even the most determined to hand the floral off to a professional. This hand off could be one of the best decisions anyone can make. Besides the planning and research, the actual building of the floral pieces begins 3-4 days before the event itself! The person handling the floral must have the knowledge and techniques to complete everything on time and keep the original vision intact.
Behind the Scenes
Let’s follow along the journey of one particular wedding on a Saturday at our Texas Hill Country venue, Old Glory Ranch.
Wednesday and Thursday brought several deliveries of flowers to the ranch. The floral arrives in boxes that had to be unpacked and inventoried.
All of the floral and greenery must then be trimmed and properly hydrated. We performed floral triage on the entire order. Most of the floral went straight into the cooler.
However, other pieces needed warmer areas so their buds would open up properly by Saturday evening. The order contained substitutions from the wholesaler, which is common. Revision of the design began so no one was the wiser to the changes.
The flower girls arrived Thursday morning eager to start the process of turning the inventory into the couple’s dream wedding. After reading the instructions, a steady flow of work commenced as the vision began to take shape. Because personal pieces can easily be stored in the walk-in cooler, they were completed first. Bridal bouquets, groom boutonnieres, mothers’ corsages, and wedding centerpieces were all worked and reworked until they were perfect.
Wedding Day
Saturday is full of the excitement a wedding day brings. First on the team’s agenda, checking and hydrating Thursday and Friday’s pieces to make sure they were at their absolute best. The team then turned their attention to the larger arrangements. Just like the days before, each arrangement was made with care and redone as necessary until it was deemed worthy of its placement with the rest of the decor.
Another piece of the puzzle is weather. Weather such as wind, humidity, heat, and other elements require extra patience and timing. It plays a large role in the final preparations. Luckily, this Saturday’s weather was perfect!
Creating wedding floral is definitely not easy. When the couple and their family said that it looked better than they could have ever imagined, it was worth it! We loved that they could enjoy their celebration with family and friends without any floral worries.
Wedding Floral at Old Glory Ranch
Just like life, nothing in the floral world ever goes according to plan. The best part of hiring a professional is that the couple never knows there were any issues! All they see is the gorgeous outcome of all of the preparation and hard work. Exactly how it should be on their special day.
Check out other arrangements assembled by the Old Glory Ranch floral team.:
