How to Make a Wedding Bouquet (Garden Style)

Hi, we're in Pass the Floor's studio today and we're going to be creating a garden-style bridal bouquet with neutral colors and some forged items. The supplies that you would need to build this bouquet are a pair of snips, some rubber bands, some green tape, either the regular floral tape or, I don't have the thick version, but the waterproof, thinner Oasis tape, and a pair of rose strippers. And I think we can get started. Our bouquets are normally very colorful, so this is a fun challenge for me to do something a little more neutral-toned. We'll be using quicksand roses that we have opened by hand. I'll show you how to do that. Toffee rose, which is a cousin to combo. For our greenery, we'll be using baby eucalyptus and gunni eucalyptus, some gunni. We have some white scabiosa, a couple dahlias that I pulled from the garden, this beautiful vine called porcelainberry. That'll hang down a little bit. Lushy-colored butterfly ranunculus. I love this flower because it just has so much personality. We have some spray roses, and we have this Tibet rose. If you can find some that are a little more open, you want your flowers to be blown open and really expressing themselves in your bouquet. Some people like to have their roses opened. I like that this takes up more real estate. It's more dramatic, but some people think that this looks too contrived, so it's totally up to you. But I will show you, if you do want to open your roses, how to do it. If there are any yucky-looking garden petals, you're gonna wanna tear those off. So you start with the outermost petal, and you use your thumb to reflex the inside very gently because they will bruise. And you work your way around, just carefully opening the rose. They're not all going to open the same way because every rose is different. The rose has its thorn, just like every cowboy. So this is what it's going to look like when it's open. So let's begin putting together our garden-style bouquet. Make sure, as you pull your flowers and greenery out, that the stems are stripped of leaves. The bride is not going to want to be holding leafy stems. And I kind of like to lay everything out on the table, so I think I'm going to do that. It gives you a better idea of what you're working with. And then you can just grab it and go. Most important thing, actually, is to prep your stems before you start building the bouquet because it's very hard to pull leaves off stems and to pull off any bad garden petals when you're in the middle of building a bouquet. So the first thing we're going to want to do is build the framework, the shape, the armature of our bouquet. So we wanna just have that base that gives us the idea of which direction our shape is going to go. I'm actually gonna leave these in the bucket because I don't want them being compromised sitting on the table. This I picked from the field. Like I said, anything that's buggy, you can just pull it off. You can always edit it as you finish up, too. I'm also using a mirror. Here, it's very similar to taking a picture of your work. It looks different when you reverse it. So I just use a mirror to make sure that the shape is what I want it to be, that we're going in the right direction. So we're starting with our greenery. When you're working with florals, pay attention to each stem and study what direction it wants to go. So this clearly wants to be somewhere in the front where it can droop down. It's okay, you want the stems to be going at an angle. You're holding your hands very loosely as if your hands were a vase. Some people like to use a rubber band to tie off their greenery to make sure that it's not going to move before they put the florals in. And sometimes I do that depending on how achy my hand gets, but today it feels pretty good, so I'm just gonna keep going. We're going to start adding the flowers. And again, keeping kind of with the shape that you want for your bouquet. As I said before, a garden style, so it's gonna be a little bit looser. And I tend to stick with all the same colors first. I don't know if that's just the way I do it. It can be tricky holding it sometimes. Give yourself some patience on this. And actually, I'm going to do what I said I don't do, and I'm gonna add in some spray roses. I also build my bouquets so that they're more one-sided. They are complete. They're not naked in the back, but there is a definite front and back to my bouquets. As you're building this, you want to think about different dimensions. You don't want everything to be on the same plane, which it kind of is right now, but once I add some more florals here in a minute, it should help. So I'm just gonna continue adding florals and making sure that they're on different planes and really fill it out and add some more little bits and bobs in between so that when we're done, we'll have a nice, full garden style bouquet. It's also really helpful to sometimes hold up the flower and see, is that actually gonna look good there before you put it in, before you commit to it? The flowers will shift. You just have to keep holding on tight. And you can kind of pull them out as you need to. You can manipulate these guys. You want to make sure that all your stems are long enough so they pay attention because when we go to put them in water, you want to make sure every stem is in water. I'm kind of liking the direction this is going and I'm gonna add the really fun stuff, some of the really fun stuff now. I may add some more roses, but I'm gonna fill in a little bit with these wispy butterfly radiculus. So this would be called a bridge flower because it's ivory slash blush, like some of the other flowers in this bouquet, but it's also got that little hint of brown, so it kind of pulls the two together. Since this is a bridal bouquet, I saved the best flowers for the bride. It is the statement piece of the whole wedding. It sets the whole tone. So you want to make sure that you're using the finest florals that you have for her. I like it. It's got a little wiggle to it. Wiggle it just a little bit. And when you get to this point, you have to just carefully start weaving the florals. See how I've kind of woven that into the back? Just weave it through. Some stems are flimsier than others, so just be cautious of that as you're doing that. I'm going to add one to the back just so that she's not looking at a flat surface. Dahlias are kind of a tricky flower as far as bouquets. They can be a little finicky. Sometimes their stems are a little bit compromised, and they can be very overwhelming, so I'm debating whether or not I even want to put this dahlia in her bouquet. I feel like it's a bit overwhelming, but I might use something smaller like this. And it's fine to put one flower in the bouquet. You don't have to be married to threes. I think it's actually kind of neat to have a little statement. We're starting to really fill out our spaces in here. I'm noticing that these two are on the same plane, so I might try to tuck this in a little more. I usually save the whimsical stuff for last. You don't want the florals to look like polka dots either when you're doing this, so you don't want three of the same variety on the same plane next to each other, so just really think about the placement of the flowers. And I like to let the wispies hang down a little more. Sometimes I'll put them all on the same side. I'll just kind of cluster them together, and then maybe carry them through on the opposite side. As you're looking at your bouquet, you can edit things. Just because this is in here doesn't mean it has to stay in there, and I'm not particularly fond of that, so I like a little bit, and I'm going to cut that out. Every floral should be able to shine. Hold it with your not-dominant hand. You're going to snip off around. I think I'm going to add a little bit of the porcelainberry. I cut off the purple berries because I like the vine, and I'm not sure if the purple actually fits in with her color scheme, so I'm going to add that right there, just as a little wispy to come off the side. So now we're going to take a red band, hold on to your bouquet, put it on. Some stems might shift, but you can just shift them a few ways. So you're going to want to do a final cut, and this time, this is why it's important to have sharp pencil. You're going to want to make it so they all are even, no stragglers. That would look kind of funny to be carrying that home the aisle. Sometimes you get these side stragglers, and you can just kind of weave them in. Now that we've completed our garden-style bouquet, I'm going to show you some ribbon options. So when you get to the place where you're ready to ribbon your bouquet, you can then take the stem, these stems, and wrap your green tape. I see a little bit of leaves there. I'm going to take those off. Just do a nice little wrap of green tape. It adds a little extra surface area to place the ribbon. Just twirling it around. And then you can lay your bouquet on the table or in a vase. It won't be out of water long. Flowers are amazingly resilient. So we have several different options as far as ribbon goes. This is a ribbon from Honey Silk & Co. It's a hand-dyed velvet ribbon, which would be a really beautiful, neutral color for this bouquet. Also from Honey Silk & Co., a ivory velvet ribbon. This is beautiful hand-dyed silk ribbon from Kate at the Lesser Bear. She does an incredible job. I use her ribbon all the time. And this ribbon is just your typical double-sided satin ribbon, which makes a lovely finishing touch for brides who want a simple cuff around the base of their bouquet. I'm going to wrap this one today in this beautiful ivory-colored ribbon from the Lesser Bear. This is silk ribbon. It's more expensive, so make sure that when you make your cut, it is the final cut. If you need to measure out how long you want it to be, however you need to do that. I like to cut my ribbon on the bias. Very important, ribbon scissors only. Don't let anybody use these for anything else. So we're taking the ribbon now, and we're going to place it around the front of the bouquet, crisscross it in the back. You want to make sure that you have a clean work surface, too, because you don't want any dirt getting on this ribbon. It's too special. And then we're going to tie it in the front. And you can either leave it long, add a nice, beautiful bow to your bouquet, and that's it. I could add another ribbon to it. I think that would be really pretty. It is beautiful to add differently. I like the difference, the asymmetry of having them be at different levels. I fold it over so that that gorgeous side is shown all the time. You don't want the back showing. And then you just take that and pin it. I hope you enjoyed your time with me today building a neutral-colored garden-style front bouquet. Stay tuned for more tips, tricks, and tutorials, and I'll see you next time. Bye.