The Do's and Don'ts of Wedding Bouquet Preservation

Wedding flowers possess a surprisingly enchanting quality that radiates from every bloom and carefully crafted floral arrangement. Maybe their scent wafts luxuriantly through the air as vows are exchanged, or they perfectly complement the bride's dress. Your wedding bouquet isn't just some haphazard assortment of flora but a symbol of an utterly transcendent life event forever seared in memory.

Naturally, you'd want magic to linger pretty long in life. Holding onto that super special day can be done rather beautifully by preserving wedding flowers in a fairly unique manner. Before rushing in headlong, it's essential to understand the do's and don'ts, ensuring the best results almost every single time. Wedding Bouquet Preservation, like a pro, involves knowing various techniques for drying flowers or turning them into quirky keepsakes effectively nowadays.

Why Preserve Your Wedding Bouquet?

Your wedding bouquet represents sheer joy and immense beauty on that super special day filled with love. Preserving it enables various things.

• Keep a tangible memory of your wedding

• Create home decor that tells a story

• Pass it down as a family heirloom

• Get creative with DIY projects like resin flower preservation to make jewelry or framed art

Let's carefully dissect the do's and don'ts when preserving a bouquet to achieve the best outcome.

The Do's of Wedding Bouquet Preservation

1. Act Quickly

Time matters greatly in such situations. Flowers wilt rapidly within hours, and waiting too long makes preservation difficult afterward under certain circumstances.

Pro Tip: Ask a trusted friend or family member to take charge of your posies and stash them in a cool, dry spot.

2. Choose the Right Method for You

Bouquet preservation methods vary widely depending on factors like flower type and desired outcome, so no universal solution exists. You can pick from various options based on your style and flower usage plans.

• Air drying yields a delightfully rustic appearance on flowers with a faded vintage flair, usually after several weeks.

• Pressing blooms into art or funky stationery is excellent for creative folks with tons of patience.

• Silica gel drying maintains vibrant color remarkably well and retains its original shape better than air drying typically does.

• Foolproof preservation methods involve framing or resin casting, and this approach usually works exceedingly well.

  
  

3. Do Handle Flowers with Care

Handle the bouquet gently after the wedding ceremony ends, which happens rather abruptly nowadays. Keep it away from direct sunlight or heat and refrain from excessively touching delicate petals and surrounding moisture. Decay accelerates rapidly due to these factors, and preservation quality suffers greatly under their influence normally.

4. Do Trim and Prepare Before Drying

When carefully drying flowers at home, trim excess foliage and stalks vigorously. Gently pluck off browning or utterly wilted petals rather quickly. Gently wipe stems with a damp cloth, removing dirt and debris fairly effectively.

5. Do Consider Professional Help

Professional preservationists can be worth considerable investment if the perfection of your bouquet on the wedding day matters greatly. They employ advanced techniques to skillfully retain the color, shape, and structure of flowers, something rather tricky at home.

6. Think Long-Term

Think carefully about displaying or storing your preserved bouquet beforehand and choose a suitable method with great caution. Do you want it framed really nicely in some kind of shadowy display thing? A pretty bauble dangling precariously from her lobe or adorning a hat, maybe a flashy trinket? Preserving it effectively depends on the insight gained now.

7. Do Take Photos First

Snap a pic of your posy from various vantage points quickly before sticking it in a vase for posterity's sake. Something goes awry, and you'll still have gorgeous snaps that can aid pros in reconstructing or fixing preserved designs afterward.

The Don'ts of Wedding Bouquet Preservation

1. Don't Wait Too Long

Waiting days or weeks often results in nearly impossible to restore, with discolored sad petals suddenly everywhere. Beginning preservation rapidly yields significantly better results.

2. Don't Store in Plastic Bags

Wrapping bouquets in plastic might seem like a swift solution, but it traps moisture, thereby hastening mold growth quite rapidly underground. Wrap them loosely in kraft paper or use paper towels if needed, preferably with materials that allow airflow quite freely.

3. Don't Use Hairspray as a Quick Fix

According to a ubiquitous myth circulating horticultural circles and gardening lore, spraying flowers with Hairspray supposedly preserves them. However, it can make flowers brittle over time and discolor them quite badly, as petals stiffen temporarily in response. Perhaps skip it altogether.

4. Don't Leave Flowers in Water Too Long

Leaving flowers submerged in water for days often spawns bacteria growth, which eventually causes soggy stems and damage to delicate petals. Prolonged soaking isn't ideal, but a few hours of submersion is pretty okay under most circumstances.

5. Don't Expect DIY Results to Match Professionals

Taking the DIY route sounds fantastic if you revel in making stuff but stay grounded with your somewhat lofty initial aspirations. Professional preservation typically involves super-advanced tools and pretty controlled environments, so don't feel super discouraged if home-dried flowers look kind of wonky.

6. Don't Forget About the Filler Flowers and Greenery

Baby's breath and eucalyptus totally make or thoroughly break the aesthetics of preserved bouquets with other greenery included. Handle those tender buds with care, similar to the main blooms, very gently and meticulously during preservation efforts.

7. Don't Store in Humid Environments

Preserved flowers have humidity as a sworn nemesis, generally ruining their delicate petals rather quickly. For longevity, keep dried or professionally preserved specimens in a pretty dark space that is fairly cool and dry.

Bonus Ideas: What to Do With Your Preserved Bouquet

Once you've successfully preserved your bouquet, the creative possibilities are endless:

• Frame your bouquet alongside a treasured wedding invitation or faded photo in a beautiful shadow box display.

• Nowadays, blooms are turned into jewelry or quirky keychains with floral resin art techniques.

• Flower enthusiasts often treasure a pressed flower bookmark as a quirky romantic keepsake inside their favorite novels.

• Craft a quirky Christmas bauble with fragile dried petals and tattered ribbons carefully torn from your wilting bouquet.

• Preserved flowers make a thoughtful handmade gift for a first anniversary, traditionally known as a paper anniversary.

Conclusion

The wedding flower or lei preservation wonderfully keeps the memory of that special day blooming vibrantly long after delicate petals naturally wilt and fade. Understanding key dos and don'ts significantly affects how your floral keepsake turns out successfully.

Treat flowers gently and get pretty darn creative right now with utmost care. Your bouquet deserves to be cherished fondly alongside your peculiar love story, much like a keepsake treasured quietly forever.