Make your own wedding centerpiece

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. If you are looking for super quick instructions on how to do your wedding flowers, you won't find it here. But it is informative if you really want to go through with this.

I had quotes upwards of $3000 for all our flowers. That was a LOT more than I was willing to spend. So I hired Jan Giordano to do all the bouquets and ceremony flowers and decided to the reception flowers myself! Or more like with the help of my wonderful bridesmaids and Mother-in-law! The flowers made me most nervous throughout planning. This couldn't be done weeks ahead like almost every other DIY project. It had to be done in the most stressful 48 hours leading up the wedding! I definitely had my doubts.

Enter Geny's Wholesale, my life saver. Located in Nashville, this place is amazing! You can order flowers, take flower classes, or use a consultant for help. I went into this without a clue but they were so helpful. I had planned for a combination of (19) small and (7) large arrangements. I bought the small vases at Dollar Tree and the larger ones at TJ Maxx, which required lots of trips.

In order to figure out how many flowers I needed, I attempted a test run with flowers from the grocery! Here I am going to focus on my larger centerpieces. My smaller ones were much simpler and don't require much instruction. I originally planned on using roses, hydrangeas, hypercium (green berries), white stock and greenery filler. I didn't quite stick to this in the end. I'll explain later. Other than the flowers, here's what you need:

• large vase, any height with 5-7 inch diameter
• floral tape, waterproof works best
• flower shears
  
• fresh floral foam, a good sized piece but must fit on the plate
  
• a clear plastic plate, I used 7.5"

Wet your floral foam. Place onto the plastic plate. Tape the floral foam tightly to the plate by wrapping the tape all the way around. Set on the vase.

Begin adding the greenery filler all over. You will add more later but you want to get a base on it so it won't cover up the flowers you add later. Be sure to stick the stem as far towards the center/bottom as possible so it stays.

Here I am testing the look. This is where I decided not to use hydrangeas. The cost had something to do with it, too. Beware: while hydrangeas are beautiful, they wilt quickly and require lots of water. They do not sit very well in the floral foam and can be tricky if you don't have experience working with them. Everything else turned out to work pretty good. I ended up adding some green buttons, carnations instead of hydrangeas, and gypsophila (baby's breathe), and bells of ireland (inside the vases).

I found it was best to seperate the different flowers in different levels. Start at the top. Our venue had high ceiling so I used the Stock (5 stems) to create height. Then I added the roses (5) at a 45 degree angle. Then the carnations (8) parallel with the table. I used more greenery, the gyp and buttons to fill in any wholes. I filled the vases with water and (2) Bells of Ireland and put the plate on top.

All in all, I spent almost $350 on the reception flowers, about $12.50 on each centerpiece. It may seem like a lot to some of you, but my quote was $45 for each centerpiece. So I ended up saving a lot. Our prep the day before took about an hour. On the day of the wedding, my MIL and I worked on these from 6am-9am. Not recommended but well worth it!

Here's a closeup!

Here is what they looked like complete and on the table. Love them even more that I did them myself! So proud! These also work great for wedding and baby showers, really any type of party!