When I was planning our wedding, I seriously considered doing my own flowers. I searched all over for reviews of online wholesale flower sites because I was pretty nervous about ordering flowers online. While I didn't find very many reviews or choices of wholesale flowers, I finally settled on www.growersbox.com. (Note: things have gotten better since then... here's a link with a listing of different wholesale flowers http://www.diybride.com/2007/08/02/where-to-buy-diy-flowers/).
Since I still was uneasy about ordering bulk flowers online, the dilemma was doing a test run. But when you buy in bulk, and truly want to test various types and colors of flowers, you are talking at least $200. Since that defeats the purpose of trying to save money doing your own flowers, I decided to have a "Flower Party". I set up an evite (www.evite.com) and invited friends and family to a bouquet making party. Each person was instructed to bring their own vase with the anticipation that they would get to take their bouquet home with them. I charged everyone $15, and with 20 people, I had $300 of my cost covered. I also picked up some ribbons, floral tape and pins to assist in the creative process. Not only did I get to test out the quality of the flowers, I got so many good ideas for different bouquets. (See a few of my flower party pics in my profile).
In total, I ordered about 250 roses and some fillers. The customer service phone rep from GrowersBox was awesome. He even helped me order a wider variety of colors then is available on the website itself.
My advice would be:
- Send an email out to gauge the interest and time availability of your invitees before placing the flower order.
- Follow all instructions regarding the care of the flowers that is usually included on each website.
- Have a lot of clean buckets available to put the flowers into water.
- Have the flowers delivered a few days before the party / event. Don't do it the day of as the flowers won't have time to perk up after shipping.
- Wear gloves if handling roses!! (I learned the hard way).
While ultimately I had Petals in Tosa do my wedding bouquets (and they turned out beautiful!
www.petalsck.com ), I had so much fun at the flower party that I have been dying for an excuse to do it again.
Tags: flowers DIY budget
