For a wedding for about 300 people and about 34-36 tables my friend decided to go though the DIY flower centerpiece arrangements. It took about 8-9 hours to create a bouquet of 15 roses (salmon and light pink color) for 30 odd tables. Though for the first few hours it was just two people making it but it sure got a whole lot quicker when five people were bunching them up. If you're going though the DIY route you better have time set up for:
1. re-hydrating flowers ( can take up to 12 hours)
2. make sure you have enough buckets and room to store them.
3. good pair of gloves and shears etc (if you need to de-thorn them)
(not all roses are created equal- the salmon colored one had bigger but fewer thorns compared to the pale pink one)
4. Watch or print out some DIY tutorials on how to arrange flowers.
5. great slaves... I mean friends to help you out.
All in all the flowers (600-700 roses) and four bridesmaid bouquets, 1 bridal bouquet and a throwaway bouquet (all premade) and vases roughly came out to under 2k. They were ordered from
Grower's Box (For some reason they don't deliver on Mondays but the flowers did arrive earlier then expected by Fedex. They have instructions and I think they also provide some tools to help cut the flowers. The flowers were fairly fresh and looked nice) . Another similar site is
Fiftyflowers. The vases the flowers were put in were at a dollar a piece came from
Dollar Tree (They can ship it to the store to be picked up and let me opened and inspect every single vase before I left the store).
It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun as we all rushed to make everything ready for the wedding that turned out to be an awesome time!
On a side not I'll be vending at the
Brooklyn Flea this Sunday so if you're in the neighborhood stop on by! Also I'll be announcing a new contest sometime this week and it's going to be a doozy!
Until next time... have an awesome day!