Florals on a Budget

We’re doing real flowers and are going through a flower shop to order what we want in bulk. Surprisingly, this option isn’t too pricey in our area. We’ll be making our own arrangements- bouquets, center and accent pieces. I’m planning on using mine and my bridesmaids bouquets as head table centerpieces to help cut the cost down too.

I was riding my bike along a local creek the other day and spotted thousands of baby's breath and Queen Anne's lace along the the trail, so I will be spending some time there in the next few weeks along with fiftyflowers.com to create beautiful centerpieces for my daughter's wedding.😂

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Good to know! I've been looking at them for my DIYing. Thank you!

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I had a visual of people going around touching flowers in centerpieces and decor. Gave me a little laugh! Thanks for sharing.

Heyyy so i bought a faux bouquet and it’s absolutely gorgeous in my opinion i got it offf this link https://www.etsy.com/shop/RENTANDRETURNFLORALS?ref=search_shop_redirect



They are rent and return but i asked her to make my bouquet for me to keep she does centerpieces and arch decor as well for rent and its so cheap i think im going to order more from her . If you message her she has an actual website with more products.

This is my bouquet

I got our florist to cut their original quote in half and went with it. This mean smaller centerpieces, tall vases with floating flower petals on the sweetheart table and I don't regret it; when I look back on the day, I don't think of the flowers - I think of the people and food.

We are skipping all decoration flowers, so no centerpieces. All we are doing is my bouquet, the boutonnieres, and the bridesmaids have flower crowns. And we are getting an arch decorated. It will all cost about $1,000 which was all I wanted to pay.

I plan to go with something borrowed blooms - they have affordable rental options that they will ship to you!

$65 bridal bouquet

$32 bridesmaid bouquet

$5 bout

They have centerpieces, aisle decorations, hairpieces, even dog collars!

Hobby lobby had beautiful artificial bouquets in their wedding section. I’ll be using those myself and when they have 50%off they con out to be about $20!

When I read that florals should be about 10% of your total budget I about DIED. What?! No. I originally intended to DIY all my flowers but I know myself well enough to know this was just going to be constant stress up until I am literally walking down the aisle. I know I would be stressed and obsessing over what to order / when to order, would the florals look sloppy in the pictures, would this be added stress for my Mom and Bridal Party ……… I ended up deciding on a floral budget and contacted eight florists. Most of them were very nice and politely told me that my budget was too low to meet their minimums, but two of them listened to what I wanted and understood my budget and where I was coming from …. and ended up coming in BELOW my budget. It felt like a miracle! So while you're deciding what to do maybe it wouldn't hurt to reach out to a few florists and see what is or isn't possible. A few ways we saved is not having any Bouts for the Groom / Groomsmen (he thought they looked "prom"ish and I wasn't going to fight him on this), no corsages for the Mom's, and very very simple centerpieces. Best of luck!

PS - I also have asked for Wax Flowers instead of Baby's Breath Love them!

I’ve also seen people use dried florals recently that look gorgeous! Would’ve never thought of that! ❤️

I'm keeping the floral budget as low as possible. My bouquet will be real flowers however everything else will be fake currently. I'm blessed to say my future MIL is crafty and can make the corsages and boutonnieres. Not sure our plan for the bridesmaids bouquets yet, but I don't think its worth spending a lot of money on. We will be checking out Michaels and Hobby lobby for our flowers.

I want to Etsy and found the types of flowers I wanted in silk and paper form and they look amazing. It stayed my so much money rather then doing 10-12 centerpieces out of real flowers. Also for the bridesmaid boutiques I did baby breath only and it was not expensive at all.

I’m planning on having my bouquet and 2 bridesmaids bouquets done by the florist ($500) and I’m DIYing or using fake flowers. I got beautiful foam boutonnières from lings moment and a garland for our sweetheart table from there decently priced (~$50 for both). For my centerpieces I’m planning to order from fabulous florals and put them together myself. I also found “the garland guy” where I plan on ordering some eucalyptus garlands. They’ll probably be pretty basic but it’s going to save me money here in Massachusetts considering 3 bouquets already costs me $500

I’m doing real flowers for the wedding party but then artificial for all the decorations. We’re also DIYing all the arrangements and decorations. I picked up the artificial flowers from a mixture of places: a yard sale of a friend who got married 2 falls ago, and local dollar stores. Granted I think I’ve been to 3 different Dollar Trees in this past week. It’s crazy how the same store in different towns has such a different variety sometimes.


One of my bridesmaids and her husband enjoy doing flowers for friends and they’ve offered to help me with my flowers, but the last time I talked to her about flowers she was giving me a hard time about daisies might not available in October, but Blooms by the Box says they’ll be available then, so if he can’t get them then I know where I’ll order them myself.

I actually love the brooch idea for my bouquet 💐 and will be going with that. Luckily, one of my friends owns a store on Etsy making them and I am excited to add some old elements from family to my one of a kind bouquet. It will be something that I will eventually use to decorate my home as well. When it comes to any other flowers I don’t have to have real flowers though I love the smell we will be doing a lot more with lights and silk flowers.


Flowers are definitely expensive and I would rather spend more on photos.

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That's awesome! I wish I could find something like that around here.

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That's so pretty with the colors!

I'll look them up, too and see what they have. Thank you!

Guess how much we spent on flowers? $160 total!! Granted we had to have a COVID wedding and it was totally not what we had planned...but the flowers and all the things were beautiful. Lucky us we live with great people at our apt complex - they planned our whole impromptu wedding at our dock. They made the trellis, my bouquet, and we even scoured the surrounding wild flowers to supplement.

This is very unconventional - but after COVID postponed our large wedding plans we decided to get creative. If you are a Costco member, you can order a set of 16 boutonnières and corsages. It typically comes with 8 of each but you can adjust that as needed (we ended up doing 12 boutonnières and 6 corsages) for $99 which is super reasonable! If you have a trader joe’s nearby, they have fresh flowers that are very inexpensive. I think a dozen roses is only around $7, and they have cheaper options as well. We decided I would carry one of their premade bouquets and we’d buy a few small bunches of other flowers to take apart and make small bouquets for the bridesmaids. This obviously requires you go with what’s in season and you wait until the last minute to know what flowers you’ll have everyone carry. For us it is a great way to incorporate real flowers on a budget! I honestly couldn’t find fake, silk flowers for as cheap as we are doing real ones from Trader Joe’s. Fresh market also has relatively inexpensive flowers, but they are higher in price than Trader Joe’s. Just a unique idea I thought I’d share!