My hus­band and I mar­ried dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, we chose to have our wed­ding in New York at Our Lady of Shko­dra in Jan­u­ary. Every­day brought the pos­si­bil­i­ty of new lock­downs and clo­sures, so we kept things sim­ple with DIY wed­ding flowers!

Busi­ness­es were clos­ing their doors per­ma­nent­ly and I heard rumors things were going to get worse before they would improve. We faced the risk of los­ing our deposit on venues, chang­ing dates with­out notice, and a con­stant­ly chang­ing guest list. I decid­ed that there would be no way to rely on a florist to deliv­er with all these vari­ables, and I would have to make the bou­quets and bou­ton­nieres myself. 

Where do I start? How many peo­ple are com­ing? Will I be able to have a bridal par­ty and fam­i­ly attend? Even con­fin­ing the guests to fam­i­ly was a chal­lenge giv­en our size and dis­tance every­one would have to travel. 

When a big project is DIY, whole­salers can be a game chang­er. I came across Flower Mox­ie after a sim­ple web search, and I imme­di­ate­ly fell in love with the vari­ety of exot­ic flow­ers and green filler they had avail­able. (This is not actu­al­ly what I end­ed up buy­ing, though! In the end I chose the ros­es and green­ery that matched my wed­ding gown, which was a hand embroi­dered design inspired by my Ukrain­ian her­itage.) Pulling the trig­ger on a $450 order was not easy! But Flower Mox­ie did their best to calm my nerves and promised to change the ship­ping address if I had to switch it up, but no lat­er than two days before the ship date. This allowed me to pre­pare for the two worse case sce­nar­ios: I could just get mar­ried in Indi­ana, or else use the flow­ers for retire­ment homes and iso­lat­ed neigh­bors and friends! 

It was a big sigh of relief when we mar­ried as planned on Jan­u­ary 30 in New York. The flow­ers arrived three days pri­or via FedEx Express. They came before noon right up to the apart­ment door. The box­es were imme­di­ate­ly opened, blooms wrapped, stems diag­o­nal­ly cut, and every­thing was placed in water for one hour. I used small plas­tic waste buck­ets to soak the flow­ers in clean water. (Do not put any­thing in the water. Flower Mox­ie said to keep the water clean and DO NOT add any flower food or vinegar/sugar mix.)

Not only did I use plas­tic trash bins from my stu­dio, but I also bought the cheap­est and small­est buck­ets at Wal­mart for addi­tion­al space. I tried to save mon­ey and go small, but a few of the buck­ets were too small and I had to cut the ros­es a bit more than I orig­i­nal­ly want­ed just so I had some­where to keep them. The best buck­ets were in the 2.5 or 3 gal­lon size range. You can find these at Wal­mart. Flower Mox­ie has a vari­ety of how-to videos for when the flow­ers arrive and how to build pro­fes­sion­al look­ing flo­ral arrangements.

After one hour with the blooms soak­ing in (clean) water, I removed the wrap­ping around the blooms and made sure all the flow­ers were spaced nice­ly in the buck­ets. I kept them by the win­dow where it was both cold and sun­ny. (The win­dow was a good spot dur­ing cold win­ter days. I would not soak flow­ers by win­dows and sun if you have a spring or sum­mer wedding.) 

I also bought a cou­ple of bunch­es of white Cost­co flow­ers. These flow­ers were also express shipped to me 3 days before the wed­ding. Not all of the ros­es were in the best shape when the pack­age arrived. The flow­ers did not arrive until after 8pm and some of the ros­es fell off the stems when I unwrapped them. Despite this, the white ros­es were a great price and per­fect for bou­ton­nieres, fill­ing the bou­quets, and extra flow­ers to have on hand for guests who decid­ed to attend at the last minute. 

My hus­band and I made the bou­ton­nieres and wrist cor­sages the day before the wed­ding. We watched a lot of YouTube videos! We made about 20 pieces and it took near­ly 6 hours. After each piece was made, we sprin­kled a lit­tle water on it and stored it in a plas­tic con­tain­er in the fridge. 

The biggest headache in mak­ing DIY wed­ding flow­ers is…transport. We had to move all the flow­ers to a hotel suite 30 min­utes away the night before the wed­ding, and then move them again on the day of the wed­ding.  When we trans­port­ed the flow­ers, we put about 1” of water in the bins and car­ried them in big box­es, in which we cut holes to more eas­i­ly car­ry them.

The absolute best part of order­ing from Flower Mox­ie and mak­ing my own bou­quets was hav­ing all the flow­ers in my family’s big hotel suite before the wed­ding. Not only was it a gor­geous ambiance for din­ner and drinks, the fra­grance was over­whelm­ing and helped calm nerves! The sen­so­ry ele­ments will ensure I keep these mem­o­ries of love and laugh­ter for­ev­er. I close my eyes and even now see every­one wak­ing up and enter­ing one large bloom-filled room with face masks and robes, drink­ing cof­fee among the ros­es gleam­ing in the morn­ing sun! 

My mom, sis­ters, and I made the bou­quets a few hours before the wed­ding. I end­ed up doing the Lay-Down Tech­nique for the adult bou­quets. We had so many flow­ers that our bou­quets were enor­mous! We used zip ties to hold the stems togeth­er and then wrapped the stems with rib­bon. I give my sis­ters a lot of cred­it for help­ing me with this. It was a bit more work than I antic­i­pat­ed (isn’t it always?) and they had all the kids to dress, too! 

Tools need­ed for bou­quets and boutonnieres:

~Wire 26 and 22 Gauge

~Zip Ties

~Dark Green Flo­ral Tape

~2–3” Rib­bon

~Wire Cut­ters

~Flo­ral Pins

~Plas­tic Con­tain­ers (I bought dis­pos­able con­tain­ers at Hob­by Lobby.)

~Heavy Duty Scis­sors or Flo­ral Shears/Cutters (Cut Stems)

~About Ten 2.5 Gal­lon Trash Bins

~Flo­raL­ife Quick Dip (Dipped bou­ton­niere and bou­quet stems after they were cut)

~Crown­ing Glo­ry Flo­ral Solu­tion (Sprayed bou­quet after it was cre­at­ed) Crown­ing Glo­ry Fresh Flo­ral Spray | Flower Mox­ie | DIY Wedding

~Wrist cor­sage ( Sil­ver Wrist­let With Elas­tic Tool )

I also made my wed­ding gown, flower girl dress­es, MOB jack­et, bow ties and adult female coats & capes for our wed­ding. I’ll post more about these projects over the next few weeks.