What happens to the big bouquet after your wedding? We may wonder because the bouquet connects us with special memories, and that bouquet may not have been inexpensive. But perhaps you don’t want to keep it propped up in a vase in bouquet-form indefinitely. Without fancy preservation (for example, this service), it will necessarily dry out and lose vibrance of colors. But regardless of appearance and vibrance of colors, perhaps the same bouquet sitting out year-round is a little much clutter-wise (and could be especially susceptible to dust). (The same goes for artificial bouquets – we decided we didn’t want one because then we’d feel like we needed keep it forever.) There are some more creative options for wedding flower keepsakes, including shadow boxes (my grandfather made me a lovely one with his dried boutonniere and a photo of the two of us on my wedding day). For @picosapiens and I, we knew we wanted to do something creative, but it it took some thinking to arrive at our preferred wedding bouquet keepsake solution.
We’re not sure if we saw the idea online or came up with it ourselves, but what we decided to do was preserve much of our bridal bouquet inside of clear plastic ornament balls. They’re intended for our Christmas tree/holiday decor, but they could also be used in other settings. Perhaps we came full circle in a way, as we gave another type of hanging ornament to our wedding guests as favors. For similar reasons – we didn’t want to clutter our guests’ homes, but wanted to give them a memento to enjoy on their own terms. We’re happy with how our bouquet ornaments turned out, and we hope that sharing our experience might help others with their own keepsake projects.
What you’ll need (generally):
- Dried wedding bouquet (more on this below)
- Clear fillable plastic ornament balls (we used 120mm/4.73″ diameter ones, these specifically – about $20 for a 12-pack as of this writing) – we recommend erring on the larger side
- Ribbon (or other decorative accents, etc.) from wedding bouquet (ideally, if you have them)
- Scissors (ideally)
Our wedding bouquet
We chose orange and yellow for our wedding flower colors. We had tiger lilies in both colors, and roses in orange (I believe the with the redder outer petals were removed). Our local grocery store florist was great, but getting everyone on the same page about us wanting crayon-orange was a bit of a process. Everything turned out nicely, including coordinating corsages and boutonnieres (the yellow baby’s breath was a nice touch!). If you really want to remember your wedding bouquet or other flowers on your wedding day – take lots of pictures!
Drying the bouquet
We decided to dry and preserve the wedding bouquet to keep our keepsake options open. We read online that hanging a wedding bouquet upside-down is a good way to dry it while keeping it intact. This is probably true, but the tiger lilies may very well have been doomed from the start. So we hung it upside-down from a bathroom shower curtain rod – I believe we used twine or string (perhaps keeping the ribbon binding the bouquet in place). Upon returning from our 10-day honeymoon trip, we found tiger lily petals all over the bathroom floor (and bagged them up separately). We still had a respectable-looking dried bouquet left, which sat on top of our china cabinet until we started making the ornament balls.
(Unfortunately most of the tiger lily petals didn’t make it into the ornaments – somehow that bag of petals ended up getting discarded. This in part serves as a PSA to clearly label your bags – I wish we hadn’t lost those petals! [Edit about a year later: The tiger lily petals were ultimately found among wedding materials, and added to the ornaments!])
Making the ornaments
We carefully placed flower petals and the nicest-looking greenery in half of each clear plastic ball ornament. We only used eight of the 12-pack, but we were happy to have the relatively large size (120mm/4.73″) as not to have to break too many petals or leaves (also a way scissors can help). This is why we recommend erring on the larger side.
As much as we would have loved to have included the entire bouquet in our ornaments (ahem, minus some tiger lily petals), we felt that the stems didn’t add to them aesthetically. Shortly after we finished the ornaments, I believe we thanked those stems for the joy they brought us, and escorted them outside to our compost bin.
I’m not sure how we decided on our approach with the ribbon, but one of the ornaments features a yellow ribbon bow in the inside (perhaps one with relatively little plant material), and a few others include a yellow ribbon accent at the top where the hook hangs (scissors can help here as well). Once confident the plastic balls are sealed, loop Christmas ornament hooks through the opening in the top.
Did I mention that we’re happy with how they turned out?
Happy Holidays!
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picocosm 