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How to Preserve Flowers from Your Wedding

One of the most beautiful parts of your wedding is the bouquet. But flowers wither quickly, so you may want to learn how to preserve flowers from your wedding to treasure them as a keepsake.

Every bride puts a lot of thought into the specific colors and flowers they want for their flowers, and there are plenty of exciting traditions, like show-stopping floral centerpieces and the famous bouquet toss.

One tradition that has carried over time is that of preserving your wedding bouquet or other flowers from the wedding day. This makes it possible to keep a little bit of your special day with you throughout the rest of your life, and they make a really beautiful addition to any home.

Keep reading for more info on how to preserve flowers from your wedding.

Why Would You Want to Save Your Wedding Flowers?

wedding flowers in philadelphia

Brides have been preserving their flowers for years now. It’s an easy and beautiful way to keep a special memento of your wedding. However you choose to preserve or display them, you can always look at them fondly and feel transported back in time to your special day.

Considering the price of wedding flowers, it also makes sense to save them to get more use and beauty out of your purchase!

They can also be used as a beautiful piece of decor in your newlywed home. Dried flowers are a unique decorating piece, and these have a bit of extra sentiment behind them. They’re also something you can show your future children and grandchildren when you tell them all about your big wedding.

 

Ways to Preserve a Bridal Bouquet

There are several different ways to preserve your bouquet, and it all depends on your own personal tastes and what you think will look best in your home. Different preservation methods have different looks, so this is another way your personal style gets to run free in your wedding.

Some are also more DIY than others, so you’ll have to determine your own handiness and artistic ability. You only have a handful of flowers, so try not to be too ambitious. You don’t want to end up preserving them incorrectly and then not having any more.

Keep reading for several ways to preserve your wedding flowers.

 

Pressing Flowers

One of the most popular ways is to press your wedding flowers. As you can see, this method turns your bouquet into an actual art piece, something you can hang on your walls and keep forever. It also really highlights the colors of your bouquet. 

As you can see in the video, this is a really easy method. The first step is to collect several heavy books, like textbooks or dictionaries. You then place the flowers inside a paper towel and in the book for a couple of days to flatten it.

You then can buy a clear glass frame, where you can position the flowers how you’d like. 

They can stay there to dry for about two weeks. After they’ve dried, you can hot glue them to the inside of the frame. Then glue two sides of the clear frame together! You now have gorgeous wall art from your bouquet.

 

Topsy Turvy Drying

Another easy way to dry out your flowers is to hang them upside down. This is a pretty earthy look in your home, and an unconventional decor choice that will definitely pay off in cool points. 

The woman in this tutorial has the most beautiful room of dried flowers! She shows how to tie the flowers together with twine and to use twine to rig them up on your ceiling. She uses a preservative spray and then lets them hang for about two weeks.

After that, you can do whatever you want with them!

 

Sand for a Beach Wedding

If you’d like to continue with your beach theme, you can preserve your flowers in sand! This is an easy way to maintain your wedding’s vibes and to dry out those special flowers. After you preserve them, you can keep them in a glass case with the sand.

As shown in this tutorial, you literally just bury your flowers in a bowl of sand, and in a few weeks it will be totally dried. Putting it in an enclosed box with the sand would be a nice way to preserve it as well, maybe with a seashell from the wedding too!

 

Silica Gel, Resin, and Wax

Three more intense DIY ways to preserve your flowers are silica gel, resin, and wax. The video above shows how to use silica gel, which comes in little beads. This method takes a shorter time than the ones above. As you can see in the video, she was able to turn the silica into a solid piece!

Preserving them in resin is a longer and more intensive process. You need a large mold and a pair of gloves to properly handle resin, and you may need to do several layers to properly stack the flowers to get the kind of look you want.

You will also need a face mask, as resin is pretty legit stuff! This method gets you an absolutely stunning product but is definitely advised for pretty experienced DIYers.

Of all three of these methods, wax appears to be the easiest. You literally just melt wax in a bowl, and dip the head of the flowers in! They may not last forever this way but they will last quite a while.

 

What to Do With Preserved Flowers

You may be wondering what to even do with these flowers? Well, if you went for the hanging method, you could just leave them there! Hanging flowers look really cool in any room, and will surely get any friends you have over talking.

You could also put them in a nice vase! While you may think that this would look strange, it’s actually really cool! The muted colors give the bouquet an earthy tone, and is especially great if you had non-floral plants in your bouquet or elsewhere in the wedding. 

If you plan on moving sometime in the future, you can put your dried flowers in a sealed jar, like this one. This might help them maintain their color for longer than usual. This example has a cute piece of twine tied across the top.

For a sweet gift, you can place them in ornament baubles and gift them to your wedding party. They can put them up every Christmas and think of the sweet day you all spent together.

 

How to Store Preserved Flowers

If not stored in an airtight container, your dried flowers will last about 1-3 years. You should keep them in a dry, bright place. If they are near somewhere with a lot of steam, like a bathroom or a kitchen, they may grow moldy. This is why it’s important to seal them at some point.

You can read more about preserved flower care here

 

Disposing of Preserved Flowers

If you’re tired of your flowers, there are a few things you can do depending on how you treated them. If they are simply dried, they can be composted or thrown out, as they will soon decompose naturally.

If you coated them, like in wax or resin, the regular landfill will be the place to go, because they will preserve longer. This is unfortunate, but they will need longer to naturally break down, especially in resin.

You can also donate resin-saved flowers to a place like Goodwill, just as you can for framed flowers.

 

More About Wedding Traditions

Here at Yeah Weddings, we’re happy to bring you all of the wedding traditions you may need. From garter toss ideas to how to wear your wedding rings, keep reading for all sorts of info.

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Katie Sheets

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