Flowers. Real or artificial?

[stopthenoise]

I can't decide. Of all the wedding planning, flowers is what excites me the least, and to be honest we don't have a huge budget so if we can have flowers for cheaper it's a bonus For me, flowers aren't a big important part of the day. Is it worth paying so much to have real flowers? We go away the day after the wedding so having artificial appeals to me more at the moment, it's not like I will get to take my flowers home with me and enjoy them for a few days. And I thought it would be nice if my bridesmaids could keep their bouquets as keepsakes. I know real ones look so much better and smell beautiful but is it really worth it?

[PoloMintCity]

Friend of mine recently got hitched and used a selection of vintage brooches to make her bouquet - looked lovely! Ikea sell milk bottle style vases for 60p-ish I think?

[Dukketeater]

I have had flower and brooch bouquets made up & love them!

For my bouquet, two BMs, 6 wedding party buttonholes and 40+ buttonholes inc postage it cost me £230 and I love it!

Look up Bouquet Couture / Essex Bridal

[icanmakeyouicecream]

Artificial, 100%

[jessplussomeonenew]

Have you considered live? We bought live orchid plants (£6 in the market for plants with two lovely flower spikes each) for table/room decorations and put them in pretty pots. (We had florist done orchids for buttonholes and bouquets.) Afterwards we gave the plants to various family members - the two we kept for ourselves are flowering again more than 2 years later which is lovely.

[BasicallyFcuked]

I had artificial.

I found a lady on gumtree who was advertising silk flower table decorations. I messaged her and asked if she did bouquets too, and she did.

I had 3 Bridesmaid and 1 flowergirl bouquet, 9 buttonholes and 20 hanging pew decorations for the church for £50. I also bought my bouquet second hand off gumtree for £20, which had cost £80 new and was pristine :)

The quotes for the same amount of flowers in real were a few hundred.

[crazykat]

I'd go for artificial. I had real and they were gorgeous but last year an artificial flower shop opened near us and the wedding bouquets they do are amazing. It depends on the type of flower and the colour but their artificial red roses look almost exactly the same as my bouquet did unless you are looking really closely and they're 1/3 of the cost of real flowers.

If you don't want to spend loads on flowers then you could do the bridesmaids flowers yourself as they're young. I bought a couple of small baskets with long handles for £2 or £3 each, some florists foam for about £2 and a couple of bunches of roses. The night before our wedding I wet the florists foam and put it in the baskets, cut the rose stems to about 4" and stuck them in the foam so the basket was covered in flowers. I wrapped a bit of ribbon round the handles to finish it off. It took about 20 minutes and looked lovely and saved a fair bit of money.