DIY Project: Flowers

When we put together our wedding budget last year, we estimated a certain amount that we could spend on floral arrangements, bouquets, and anything flower related. Flowers wasn't even something that I thought I needed to address until much later on the planning process so I started focusing on other things that needed more immediate attention. However, while sifting through wedding forums like theknot, I quickly realized that we REALLY under-budgeted for a florist. Alot of the forum posts commented that a $3k florist quotes were "reasonable"and "cheap" to which I responded with (to myself of course), F-THAT! I mean really? $3k on flowers that will wilt within a few days??

So I started researching other options...took some trips to Michaels and went online to see how much "fake" flower arrangements would cost me. Surprisingly, those weren't that affordable either costing up to $6 PER fake rose....to which I responded, F-THAT too!

I considered forgoing florals (at least for centerpieces) all together and looked into options like crystal candelabras and manzanita tree centerpieces.

So pretty right??

And even though I've finally settled on having a non-floral centerpiece (which will be another post), the table-scape just didn't seem complete without any.

Then came Martha Stewart...or rather, her website which provided me with a tutorial for DIY roses made out of coffee filters. I figured it wouldn't hurt to at least give it a try and see how fast I could make one because I estimated that I would need about 500 roses total.

Progression of the project...

First, Martha tells you to cut up 8 different types of petals. At first try, I followed the directions to a tee and did just that. But I eventually figured out that I could use just three types of petals to yield the same looking rose.

Picture of my first few flowers before and after I painted it.

Martha also tells you to paint each petal after you've already assembled one rose. This was pretty annoying so I decided to paint all my petals beforehand.

I finally put my old acrylic set to use which I had to dig out at the very back of our storage. Sad...

All the little petals drying after painting...

And here's a bunch more of the final product...

I'm not 100% sure that I should really invest the time and effort into making 500 of these. To be perfectly honest, it was a bit tedious to cut so many petals, paint them and then assemble them into a rose....but at the cost of close to nothing and the fact that my wedding is still a year and a half away, it's hard to not give this idea a serious thought.

Total cost approx breakdown for 500 roses:

Coffee Filters: $50

Floral Wire: $17

Floral Tape: $5

Painting tools: Free

Labor: $10000000000000000000000000000000000 =)