How to Preserve your Wedding Flowers
Your wedding bouquet, your wedding flowers in fact are as important to you on the day as they are in the years to come, and once your day is over this is usually in the form of memories or photographs. Yet, there are ways you can preserve your wedding flowers, whether you choose fresh or dried flowers.
After spending a lot of time choosing your theme, colours and flowers, it seems such a shame to waste a beautiful bridal bouquet, back drop or table centre. Flower preservation can be the perfect way to remind yourself of the day, and there are so many wonderful ways to do this.
As I mentioned, flower preservation can be achieved with dried or fresh flowers. As you know, dried flowers are already preserved, so the simplest option with these is to display them at home after your wedding day. So long as these are out of direct sunlight, away from humidity and water, and kept cool, dried flowers can last for months, if not years to come.
There are also further options of preservation for your dried flowers from your wedding, one of these is with resin. With resin, you can use your dried flowers to create 3D letter or number blocks, and jewellery, there are so many molds that can be used to create displays of your preserved flowers. The key with using resin, and with all flower preservation is to ensure the flowers are completely dried out, as any moisture can result in the flowers and foliage becoming brown and not lasting as long as you’d have hoped.
Furthermore, dried flowers can also be displayed beautifully in a shadow box frame, creating a 3D display of selected flowers from your wedding. These shadow boxes come in all sizes, so you could go as small as including one flower such as a rose head, or creating a mini version of your bouquet to place in your frame. Sown and Wild offer this to all their brides, as a keepsake of your bridal bouquet.
If you choose fresh flowers for your wedding day, all of these preservation options are available to you, you just simply need to dry the flowers out first. See our previous blog – ‘Do It Yourself’ for a simple guide on how to dry your flowers ready for creating your forever pieces. With fresh flowers, there is also the option of pressing your wedding flowers. This is not usually something that can be done with dried flowers as they are usually crushed in this process, due to their brittle petals and leaves.
Pressed flower art involves drying flowers by flattening, or pressing the petals and leaves. This option results in flowers preserved for years, with their colour and shape maintained. For beginners, you can buy a flower pressing kit or use the method below -
- Start by laying your flowers and leaves out on some absorbent baking or parchment paper.
- If the flowers can be pressed as one, then ensure the individual petals and leaves are pressed with their shape maintained, this can be fiddly but is worth it for the final result.
- If you had larger flowers, you may need to press each part of the flower separately, for example, the petals, and flower centre. With this, you would deconstruct the flower carefully and press each section.
- Once you are happy with the flower and foliage placement, lay another layer of absorbent baking or parchment paper on top.
- Repeat this process until all your flowers are pressed.
- Then the key is to flatten them as firmly or tightly as possible – either in your flower press or between pages of a heavy book.
- Leave these for 2-3 weeks, then check and see the progress.
Once you are happy with your pressed flowers, these could be further preserved in resin, as previously mentioned or you can frame them ready for display in your home.
These options are available to everyone, for any ideas please email hello@sownandwild.co.uk, and I can guide you in this process or create these preserved pieces for you. Preserving your wedding flowers is more than creating a piece of art, it is a way of giving you a daily reminder of your wedding day and those special memories you made.