Grow your own wedding flowers?

[Shoutingintothewind]

Is this an insane idea?? Has anyone done this?
Have quite a lot of room. Would need to be ready early August. Not fussy on what but very happy to have suggestions and/or be told I'm mad!!

Monty Don did this for his child's wedding a few yers back. If I rmember rightly some things worked well and some do as well as hoped but that he'd planted plenty so it was all fine. I thought it was such a lovely idea. If this is for your own wedding then you'd need to think about the planing side of it as it would be such a significant last minute cut and arrange and store in a cool place kind of deal. But if you were up for it I would think it would be a lovely way to spend the day before one's wedding!

Oooh thanks dudsville - I'll see if I can find out a bit more about what Monty did.
Large cool space to store we do have.
Everything else being so organised that I'd be able to spend a relaxing day flower arranging...hmmm....TBD haha!
Thank you, that's a few things to consider there.

I did this! By pure chance, our neighbours gave us some of their peonies the day before we were getting married, so my bouquet was huge.

Given the time of year, you couldn't have those, but definitely roses if you bought an established plant now.

Gladioli perhaps? I had some heuchera (sp?) stems in with the peonies and roses.
What sort of flowers were you thinking of for your bouquet?

This was mine

I did this. It works fine, but would recommend planting three times as many as you need, spaced apart. So plant them to bloom two weeks before your wedding, on the day itself, and two weeks later. Then you should have enough whatever weather you get.
For what to grow, do you have a colour theme? Google what flowers in that colour bloom in early August in your location and then choose some that are not tricky to grow! Then also grow some white ones and some foliage etc.

Oooh NorthernChinchilla those are beautiful!!
I've had minimal thoughts tbh other than wanting something seasonal. We have an allotment which does have established roses so that's a great shout.
Is early August too late for sweet peas? I guess I could think about dahlias as well...
It's heavy pressure on my gardening skills!!

Also check that the flowers you choose are good in bouquets! You need to be able to cut them a couple of days before and put them in buckets and make the bouquets and table decs in advance.
And consider that you can hack away at existing bushes etc for foliage - keep an open mind for what unusual things might work.

Grinnypiggy that is excellent advice, thank you!
We're SE UK and urban (hence the allotment)
I quite like the idea of lavender, thinking about it...I'd need to beg/borrow from neighbouring plotholders for that oooh! oooh exciting (and also rather terrifying)!

Thank you!
I would have liked lavender but ours weren't established enough.. and of course you can have a wide range of colours.
Reckon sweet peas may get a bit overwhelmed with things like roses and dahlias (and they're a good idea, showy but classy and a huge range to choose from).

Great idea, I did this for my wedding but it was May so I used alliums which were lovely. I would recommend bulbs like gladioli and dahlias because they're pretty reliable especially if you triple the amount you need like a pp suggested. And they're good cut flowers, they last well and have long stems. I'd use roses as an nice extra because if they're anything like my roses they come in waves so you can't rely on them being in flower, they don't always last well in a bouquet either or have good stems for cutting so choose your variety carefully. But I'd also add in whatever you favourite flowers are even if they're not ideal cut flowers, I added a few wildflowers in despite being told by a florist they wouldn't last and they lasted fine for the day and I was really pleased they were there. Lavender and rosemary and other herbs would be nice as foliage, bronze fennel too, it would be in flower then, nigella would be pretty too and easy to grow as an annual.

What a lovely idea. My florist used Honeysuckle from my Mum's garden for bridesmaids head dresses. Also Plant plenty of Ivy if you want it to trail from bouquet. Dalia's are bright and showy and so easy to grow. Gypsophylia is easy to grow too an DC a good filler flower. Roses are harder to grow enough from as bush that will only be a few years old.

I made all of the flower displays for castle and guildhall where we had reception. I had my bouquet made professionally though and bridesmaids ones too..I bought Lillie's, roses and spray carnations and Gypsophylia. I bought Lillie's and roses 4 days before wedding so all in open bud/bloom on wedding day and Gypsophylia day before. I made displays with my sister afternoon before. She is a florist but lives in Channel Islands but came to UK to help me. I also did my own order of service on computer and printed with photo of castle we got married at on front cover. I also bought my own cake stand and bought large iced fruitcakes from M&S for rich wedding cake with flower topper. I really enjoyed doing my own things it made it more personal. I did my own favours too. I bought little net bags off of eBay and filled with little heart chocolates and wedding bubbles and children got colour pencils and a picture to colour and the bubbles.

We grew our own wedding favours, panicked too much about them being ready too early and let them stay in the cold then had to do a garden centre dash for fresh plants the week before. So it didn't work for us!

I grew my daughter’s wedding flowers for the church and reception marquee and barn. I started about now planting seeds for a July wedding.

My mum did my wedding flowers. Apart from choosing her own outfit and dressing herself it was her only job. Offers of help and to accept less like skipping buttonholes fell on deaf ears because she is a perfectionist. It was stunning but a huge amount of work for her and she close to pulled an all nighter the day before.

The pics are not the wedding day, we picked flowers all summer and those were early pickings.

Thanks so much everyone! Nice to know it's not such a crazy idea!

@PinkTonic those are beautiful. Which are the ones with the coloured border on the petals? Looks like you've got foxgloves in there, how lovely.

@bringonsummer2022 this is slightly what I'm afraid of too. I had a good friend bake his own cake for a DIY wedding - I remember he was up doing an all-nighter 2 nights before the big day - not relaxing at all.
@QuiltedHippo thanks a lot for sharing the other side too! What were you growing? How easy was it to buy replacements?

@caringcarer @QuietKingdom these are great ideas thank you.

Question to all who've done it - if you were going to do it again, what would you do differently?

The ones with the pink border are cosmos. There were nicotiana, larkspur, sweet peas, antirrhinum, marigolds, zinnias and some tiny yellow lupins I can’t remember the name of, orlaya, cornflowers, nigellas and some foliage. I also did various dahlias which were mostly too big and too late, and ranunculus which were too early.

I would buy large stapler with long arm to do A4 staples down centre of Order of Service. These can be done well in advance. I ordered in cake from M&S to make sure I could get it. I bought these large rings about 18 inches at widest point for tables and they had green foamy stuff in that absorbed water. They looked so good on tables I wish I had done more of those. I did smass posies for castle but I wished I had gone on a larger scale to better suit castle venue. You cannot have toouch trailing Ivy in large displays. My sister had to go out and get us more as I thought it would be enough but she said we needed double and she was right.
For favours we had the little net/mesh drawstring bags in colour of bridesmaids headdresses. These can be ordered a long time in advance as with wedding bubbles and colouring if having children. I also learned how to calligraphy and did place names. I got a rose stamper and did a rose on corner of each card then wrote persons name. I have done them for friends weddings too as easy once you have done it before. Get those done and seating plan early. I also went to a wedding where bride not keen on flowers and she put goldfish in bowls on every table and gave them to children to take home at end of day. I absolutely loved doing my own bits and it made it very special and personal. Because I was busy on my projects I did not have time to get nervous. I saved a lot of money too. Good luck OP. Remember to have fun doing it.

I think there is a HUGE difference between being an experienced gardener who has a garden full of flowers thinking "Could I use some of these for my wedding bouquet?" and Starting gardening by planning to grow something specific for a wedding.

I think the latter is very optimistic and putting a lot of pressure on if you don't have a back up.
The former, is very possible. I have two friends who do a lot of flower arranging (including wedding flowers) both of whom grow things in their garden which they sometimes use.

There’s a great Facebook group that I’ve joined this year as am planning the same thing for dds wedding in august.

www.facebook.com/groups/768190817371225

If you’re very quick there’s a seed to vase challenge where the lady has been doing free masterclasses this weekend on planning and what plants etc. it’s such a friendly group I definitely recommend it.

I’m also planning on making confetti so even if we do end up going out and buying flowers the weekend of the wedding to supplement what’s in the garden it will still be much more personal than an overpriced bouquet from a florist and we do have amateur florists in the family so that helps.

There's a wonderful book called "Grow your own wedding flowers" by a flower farmer called Georgie Newberry. She's on YouTube and is amazing. Go for it, August will be a great time for British flowers. They will be beautiful, sustainable and save you a fortune. Look for a local flower grower or flower farmer close by as a bit of a back up too. They often do flowers by the bucket which would supplement any short fall.

A friends mother did this for her daughters wedding day and saved the couple a fortune. A few of us also grew sweet peas for the big day but they didn't bloom quite in time, when they got back from honeymoon there were vases and jam jars all over their house stuffed full of sweet peas that had come out whilst they were away!

My mum grew mine. I wanted sweet peas and they just were not available commercially. She grew about three times as many as we needed and stated them off at different times so they peaked at the right time. It worked well but we were swimming in them for the whole summer.

Such a lovely idea. A long time ago my wedding flowers were from some ladies with big gardens who sold masses of garden flowers for charity.
Do you have friends and neighbours who could join in and provide extras?
Hydrangeas are a good shout, loads of bang for your buck.

I did DD's wedding flowers. As in, I did the table decorations. No way was I going to do the bouquet - that was a responsibility too far!
Georgie Newberry's book, mentioned above, was very helpful. Start by working out numbers. For example, if you are going to do a simple jam-jar posy then that's 20 flowers. For 10 tables that's 200 flowers. Build in a succession of seed-sowings (because you don't know what the weather will be doing over the next six months) and you soon get to an insane number of flowers!
You can always cheat and do a mix & match of home-grown and shop-bought. Have your statement flowers (roses, hydrangea, gerbera, etc) as shop-bought and the background/infill as home-grown. Wildflowers (being native) are reliable. You can sometimes get a second chance at flowers: once for the flower itself but, if it goes over, then again for the seed-head. Timings can be tricky: there is a flush of flowers in Spring and again in late Summer (especially all the daisy type flowers) but there can be a bit of a hiatus in high Summer.
Don't forget foliage, it should be about a third of the display.

I had fun doing it, learned loads about flower growing and arranging. We had a lovely 'team bonding' with bride and bridesmaids roped in to help make the decorations on the Thursday night.
Good luck!