wedding flowers

Flowers at your ceremony and your reception are an integral part of a beautiful wedding, but they can cost thousands of dollars. Brides you can have fabulous wedding flowers and keep your weddings on a shoestring budget.

If you're buying the flowers through a florist order flowers that will be in season. Daffodils are beautiful and not very expensive in the spring but horrendously priced at other times of year. Roses, carnations and mums are year round flowers usually reasonably priced.

Be flexible on your color choice. Yellow and white are the most common flower colors, followed by red. Blue is rare, as is purple. True black in nature doesn't exist. If you have got to have black, use silk flowers. You can mix silk flowers with real ones as long as the silks have small blossoms.

Florist prices depend on the variety of the flower, how many flowers and how long it takes to make the arrangement. The simpler the arrangement, the less time they have to spend on it, the less expensive the arrangements. If you have got to have exotic wedding flowers like orchids, place one stem in a tall slender vase. You'll get the glamour at a lesser cost. You can use oriental lilies the same way. Usually there are three flowers on each stem. Place one stem in each narrow tall vase.

To keep your flower costs to a minimum don't use a florist. Grocery stores these days have a fabulous assortment of blossoms and bouquets. And they come in a variety of colors. If you want an arrangement for each table at your reception, buy an inexpensive glass vase and a bunch of flowers from the grocer. Place flowers in vase and you're done. If the colors are of paramount importance you can talk to the flower manager to see what she/he has ordered for the week of your wedding. You can then have the correct color bouquets saved just for you.

Roses are only expensive at two times a year, Valentine's and Mother Day. Other times of the year they can be had for as little as $10 a dozen. Buy five dozen and you have enough for ten tables when you fill in with greenery. You can also buy wedding flowers wholesale online. Just make sure that you don't need a retailer's license and that the minimum quantity is something realistic. 12 dozen roses sounds like a lot, but if you have 8 tables at your reception, the cake table, and a drinks table, you've just used 12 dozen roses. Keep in mind flowers from wholesalers are shipped in the tightly closed bud state. You will need some place to store the flowers and keep them in water. And leave enough time, two or three days after delivery for the buds to open up a bit.

Whether you order the flowers online or pick them up from your grocers the flowers need to be prepared. Strip off all the leaves from the stem that will be below the water line in the vase. Recut each stem at a 45 degree angle and immediately put in a bucket of ice water. If the buds are tightly closed and you want them to open place the buckets in a warm brightly lit room. If you want to slow down the flowers from opening place the buckets in a dark cool room.

The easiest way to transport the flowers from home to the wedding site is to keep them in the buckets and place them in the vases at the site.

After the wedding consider giving the wedding flowers to a Senior Citizens' Home or to a children's hospital.

P.S. It's a nice touch to carry the theme of your wedding flowers through your wedding invitations.