Guide to Preserving Your Wedding Bouquet

Once your wedding day is over one of the few remaining artifacts that can be preserved forever is your wedding bouquet. After all, you invested a lot of time and wedding budget choosing a perfect design and you want to maintain it so that you can enjoy its beauty forever. The floral experts at Marco Island Weddings have a few great ideas about how to preserve your wedding bouquet, from professional services to do it yourself ideas.

For a professionally-styled design that will last, choose a service that can complete the freeze-drying process, which requires professional grade equipment and can take several weeks to months to complete. Many vendors will present your dried flowers in a framed box or other design, ready to display. A few of our favorites are:

• Freeze Frame It
• Queen & I
• Nature’s Beauty
• Everlasting Flowers
• Pressed Garden

To dry flowers yourself, there are a few options available:

1. Press flowers individually. Take your bouquet apart and place each individual bloom between two pieces of parchment paper. Lay flat between pages of a very heavy book (like a textbook) and place another heavy object, like a brick, on top. Leave blooms undisturbed for a few weeks. Peel parchment paper away carefully then design pressed flowers any way you choose (we love using a large picture frame).
2. Hang your bouquet to dry. Keep your bouquet in tact by tying string to it and hanging it upside down in a cool, dark space for several weeks (like a hall closet). Spraying the blooms with hairspray or a finishing spray from a craft store before hanging can help preserve the color and shape of the blooms as they dry. When finished, place in empty vases or hang on a wall to display.

For more ideas and tips about preserving your bridal bouquet, talk to the floral designers at Marco Island Weddings to see what kind of services we provide or can refer you to. Remember that the preservation process begins as soon as you get your bouquet from the florist- keeping it free from damage the day of the wedding and beginning the drying process as soon as possible after the big day will ensure a beautifully preserved design.