Bouquets-Are you looking for something simple, yet elegant? You are probably thinking that a bouquet is going to take up so much time and energy, both of which you don’t have much to spare the few days prior to your wedding day. These next few ideas won’t take up more than a half hour of your day one or two days prior to the ceremony.  To have something unique yet absolutely beautiful would be the Calla Lily bouquet.  To make the bouquet you will need 15-20 calla lilies, a roll of green floral tape, up to 2 yards of ribbon of your choice to tie the flowers together, and also a vase to hold the bouquet in after it is finished.  You can usually find the calla lilies at a local florist but you might want to call a couple days in advanced just to be sure they will have them in stock.  Be careful with these, they tend to bruise easily.  Once home with the flowers cut about an inch off of the bottom of the stem and put them in water with the plant food provided by the florist.  These flowers need to be kept in a cool place in water as much as possible until the day of the wedding.  The ribbon is completely up to the you, whether it be white satin, or a lace colored to match the bridesmaid dresses, there is a lot of flexibility and many choices when picking it out.  Both the floral tape and ribbon can be found at any craft store.  If you don’t want to buy a vase specifically for the flowers and you don’t have one, you can always substitute it with a water pitcher or anything else that will be tall enough to hold the bouquet when finished.  To start off you will want to take 2 calla lilies at a time and wrap the floral tape around them.  Repeat this step 1 or 2 more times before you start to add more.  Placement of the flowers is however you please, rearranging them as much as you would like until you get it just perfect.  Just remember every 3 or 4 flowers that you keep adding to the bouquet you will want to tape to the rest of the bouquet because if you tape them all at once the bouquet is less likely to hold up the way you would like it to.  When done arranging the flowers, take the ribbon you chose and start from the top and simply go around the bouquet where you put the tape and make sure it is completely covered.  You can play around with the ribbon depending on how much of the stems you would like showing.  Once you have the ribbon in place, either hot glue it down or use pearl-headed pushpins to make it stay in place.  After you are finished with everything you can then cut the stems no shorter than 1-1 ½ feet long so you still have plenty to hold on to.  Finally, place in water until it is time to go.  You could easily substitute the calla lilies with roses, tulips, Gerber daisies, and even carnations!  Follow the same steps to make bridesmaid bouquets just using about half the flowers put into the bride’s bouquet.

Boutonnieres-Thinking you would never in your life be able to make a boutonniere and actually have it be presentable enough for a wedding?  Think again, because they are way simpler than they look.  You will only need a few things: you will need 1 flower per boutonniere that you make, greens (you can also use baby’s breath or a piece of fern), floral tape and scissors.  When picking out the flowers, make sure that they are fresh and haven’t fully opened up yet.  Take the flower and cut the stem down to about 1 ½ inches long.  Starting right below the flower, wrap the floral tape in a downward direction covering the stem.  Next, take your greens and arrange them behind the flower how you would like them to lay against the lapel.  Tape these around the stem in the same manner you did as the stem itself.  I wouldn’t recommend making the boutonniere any earlier than the afternoon before the wedding so the flower won’t die or look like its days are number on the big day!

Chapel Décor- You have quite a few options for flowers when decorating the chapel or wherever your ceremony is being held.  One popular item is very simple yet beautiful.  To start off you will need card stock paper in a color of your choice, a heavy-duty glue stick, a single hole-punch, plastic wrap, ribbon and other small decorations of your choice, and also flowers of your choice.  It is hard to say how many you will need due to the amount of pews you will need to decorate.  I will be using roses as an example for this specific decoration since you can do more with them than most of the other flowers.  You will start out by taking a piece of paper and rolling it into a cone shape, with as big an opening at the top as you would like.  To make things easier, put a piece of tape on the inside to temporarily hold it together while you put glue on the paper to hold it permanently.  From there, you can easily decorate the outside of the cone to your liking by adding ribbon, lace, miniature bows, etc.  Your third step would be to hole-punch the top to put ribbon through to hang from the chair or end of pew.  Use as much ribbon as you would like depending on how low you would like your decorations to hang.   The rest is easy, take your flowers and just cut the stems down to about 6½ -7in. long and hold 4-5 roses together using plastic wrap at the bottom of the stems so the water doesn’t ruin the paper cone.  Set the flowers in the cone and there are your new aisle decorations.  You can also buy roses and use just the petals to fill the cones and those make for a fun walk back down the aisle while people on the ends of the pews throw the petals into the aisle!

Center Pieces- Elegant, Cheerful, Romantic? No matter what your theme is, floral arrangements can really make your statement when reinforced with super cute table centerpieces. One easy centerpiece with flowers is to get a ring of floral foam and a simple round medium height vase from your local craft store. See your flower wholesaler to get a large order or carnations, Gerber daisies, Queen Ann’s lace, and baby’s breath. Hydrate the foam and keep the plastic ring water ring as well. Cut the stems of your flowers and stick them into the foam ring until the ring is covered. Keep 1 or 2 Gerber Daisy heads aside. You’ll want to start with whatever your anchor flower is- usually, it is the largest or most showy flower, such as the Gerber daisy. Once the anchor flowers have been placed around the ring, begin with your fillers, starting with the largest and finishing off with the baby’s breath. You should end up with a full, plush floral ring. Next, fill your vase almost to the top with water. Clip the heads of your left over 1 or 2 Gerber Daisies and float them in the vase. Place the vase in the middle of the floral ring. Refrigerate this arrangement until show time.