I originally decided to do my own flowers because I couldn't make peace with spending $2,000 on a florist. When I came across Fifty Flowers I loved how easy it was to navigate the website to find the flowers that I wanted. However, I was still a little nervous about undertaking such a big project right before my wedding with no prior floral arranging experience. But after spending months on this site and reading all of the other brides stories, I was confident that I could make it work.
My biggest worry was that the flowers would wilt before the wedding, and that I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. So I read and printed out all of the flower care instructions and bought some additional products to help my flowers stay hydrated. First off, 5 gallon buckets are a must, don't try to store them in anything else. Second, I bought Floralife QuickDip, Crowning Glory, and Floral Food to keep my flowers healthy. These products worked great, because my flowers looked perfect the day of. So getting some additional things to help the flowers retain water is a good and pretty cheap idea that could make a big difference if you're worried about wilting.
Getting the flowers prepped takes a long time, so make sure that you have someone to help, or that you're able to set aside your whole day to it. Once they're prepped make sure that you put them in a cold, dark room and just let them sit. I put them in an unused bedroom in my house with black out curtains with the AC on and some fans running and that worked out great. Also, I was kind of nervous about the roses not opening up on the day that I got them. But by the day of the wedding they were huge and beautiful, so it just takes some flowers some more time than others.
What took the most time were putting together the centerpieces, everything else was a total piece of cake. For the centerpieces I had a manzanita tree painted white, and then I secured it to a Lomey Design Dish by gluing it into a piece of crafting foam and then gluing the crafting foam to the dish. Then I filled the dish with floral foam, and started off by putting various greenery in place. After the greenery was pretty full, I placed two of each kind of flower in the foam on opposite ends.
We also had a TON of leftover flowers. I was able to run out and pick up some cheap vases that we filled with flowers and placed all over the venue. I think we probably had about 20 vases of flowers around the venue in addition to everything else.
Overall I am super, super happy with my choice in Fifty Flowers. I saved a ton of money and was still able to have the flowers of my dreams. Also putting them together with my bridesmaids was a ton of fun, and probably one of my best memories of that day. I would recommend them to anyone!
