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Just wondering, I'm going back and forth between the two.
It almost seems that I could get bulk fresh flowers cheaper than some silk!
How popular are silk with all you out there in bride land?
What I have heard is that quality silk flowers are about as much as fresh ones. Thus, the major advantagte to them is that you can keep them after the wedding, not that you save at the wedding.
We had fresh ones.
We are using silk/natural touch flowers. I am deathly allergic to real ones, so it makes more sense for us. We also get to keep them after the wedding, so I can set them up around the house for decoration.
My friend used silk ones for her wedding - no one could tell as we wer walking down the isle and in all the pics they look real! I don't know how much she spent though....
I am oing w/ real flowers.....for around $550 we are getting the following:
My Bouquet = about $75
7 BMs/Moms/Grandmas Bouquets = $50 each
Smaller bouquet for my 9 year old BM = $40-45
The rest of the $$ is going towards bunches of fresh flowers and berries to fill 3in round vases as part of the centerpieces.
I'm not going to lie.....we are actually getting our flowers through our local grocery store. WAY cheaper and she does a fabulous job and came highly recmmended in our area!
My sister's wedding was this past weekend...The girl's bouquets and the guy's bouts were all fresh flowers, the rest were silk
sorry, no pics of the silk
sarah_s_wedding_weekend_003.jpg (188.8 KB, 50 downloads) 1 year old
We're going with fresh. They turned out to be cheaper and you can't replicate the scent or texture with silks. While you can find silks at the dollar store or Walmart, fresh are cheaper in general unless you want exotic or out of season flowers. They say that you can get "high quality" silks at Michael's etc that supposedly look real but they are more expensive than fresh and even from a distance they still look artificial to many people.
It's a personal choice that only you can decide on. No one is right or wrong either way.
As far as allergies are concerned, a professional florist works with flowers that have had the pollen, etc removed whereas fresh cut from the garden flowers do not. There is no risk of allergies with a professional florist, and folks who have allergies to pollen do not notice anything with those flowers. But it should be mentioned anyway when interviewing them. Silks are not the only option if you have allergies, contrary to popular belief.
We used natural touch silks. Everyone loved the flowers and a few people didn't believe that they weren't real. It really depends on the quality you go for in silks. We personally liked it because we like the idea of keeping the bouquet looking the way it did on our wedding day forever. And DH and I get pretty bad hayfever and we didn't want to risk it with real flowers.
Fresh!! I think the florist appointment was one I was most excited for! I can't wait to see all the beatuiful floral creations on my wedding day :)
fresh flowers were very important to me, b/c i originally wanted our wedding in a garden and couldn't have that. real flowers were the next best thing. i did diy for the centerpieces so it wasn't that expensive. i didn't feel like they were a waste for only one day, b/c all of my guests loved them and started asking to take them home, so they all got to enjoy them for a while.
I'm allergic so we went with silk for everything. We got ours from Michaels and the only way people could tell they weren't real was because of the colors
we are using fresh flowers, because our venue doesn't allow silk flowers.
Fresh. I love them and can't imagine using silks...they just creep me out. I know that's weird. lol.
I think I'll be doing silk flowers. I like the idea of making the bouquets myself and being able to do so months before the actual day of the wedding.
@blondeeebuckeye: lol that's so odd! Why is that?
We're also using fresh flowers. I was originally thinking about DIYing my flowers, but then I got a really good quote from a florist, so now that's one thing I don't have to worry about.
I'm going with fresh flowers. We ended up getting a lot for a decent price in my area. I budgeted $3000 for flowers and I came out with everything I wanted at $2520. Furst FLorist in Dayton, OH is AMAZING! It also helped that my mom had an account with them
Flowers will be white roses, white and brown cymbidium orchids, and white hydrangeas.
My bouquet
4 bridemaids bouquets
MOB and MOG nosegays
2 corsages for each grandmother
Groom and 3 groomsmen boutineers
Both fathers boutineers
Ringbearer Boutineer
Flower girl basket
Centerpieces for tables (half low sitting on table and half high on top of 2 foot glass vases) There will be brown gerber daisies included in centerpieces. All votives and candles included.
2 candlabras and 2 flower arrangements on pedestals to be moved to the reception immediately following.
Bows to line the aisle at every row with one flower in each and an aisle runner.
Rose pedals for the cake table.
@DeathByDesign: the venue is an all-organic facility, so we aren't able to use any synthetic items :) we can't use regular candles either--they have to be soy candles.
we're using fresh for the bouquets and bouts and for the 2 big arrangements at the chapel and then silk for the centerpieces. Our centerpieces are submerged so no one can tell the difference... here's a pic:
We used the real touch silks for everything (except for a few smaller arrangements that were just regular silk flowers). Even my bridesmaid who hates fake flowers thought they looked good :)
(sorry for the bad cell phone pics)
my bouquet:
bridesmaids:
We're using silk flowers as well. I bought most of mine from Joann's. They're always having sales and huge discounts on their florals and fabrics. If you sign up for their mailing list online you'll recieve additional coupons to use for your purchases. For my centerpieces I only ended up paying five dollars a piece. If you're looking for vases and really want to save money. We took a trip to the dollar store and bought vase-shaped tea canisters, took the lids off and glued some fabric around it. They ended up looking fantastic.
I'm using fresh flowers EXCEPT for the flower girls. I'm giving them bouquets instead of having them throw petals and I wanted them to have something durable that they could also take home!
Fresh for us - Flowers are among my more important "must haves" for the wedding, so I am willing to cut the budget elsewhere to allow for as many flowers as possible.
Silk. We aren't getting married where we live. So I just don't want to risk driving over 12 hours with fresh flowers. I could get them when we get to Wisconsin but I don't want to use his parents fridge as a flower storage.
So to save the headach and added stress, I'll be using silk.
silk. I got mine from Fiori Belli. I get them Monday, so I'll post pics after that. Mrs. Lab made her first bouquet from the same flowers I'm getting..
http://www.weddingbee.com/2009/06/12/diy-bridal-bouquet-part-1-the-mock-trial/
We're keeping it fresh. It would be hard to beat the price my florist gave me; for nine bouquets, ten corsages, and sixteen bouts, which include expensive flowers such as lilacs and lily of the valley, it's going to cost us approximately $750. We're going to DIY the floral centerpieces for a few more hundred, coming in to roughly $1300 for all flowers. Not too shabby!
I may keep part of my bouquet as a keepsake anyway. I've held on to some dried flowers for years and would like to put them in a shadow box. :)
I'm using silks. To the poster that says you can get silk @ Walmart... The Walmart I go to, their silk flowers are $$$$. I have bought some BEAUTIFUL silk flowers at dollar stores. But, that's because it's Houston. Houston being the site of the 2nd largest port - we get stuff in our stores without the added cost of trucking it in. So, the dollar store silks here are more elsewhere.
But, that's not why I did silk. Flowers can wilt and start to look ugly sometimes durig a long, hot day.
And, also, by DIY silk flowers it is ONE LESS VENDOR to worry about on my wedding day. During my quinceanera 2 paid-in-full vendors (the mariachis and the photo/vid guy) didn't show so I won't trust vendors to do anything on my wedding day that I can do myself.
I did silk, I don't care for flowers to begin with though.
My flower order included:
My bouquet (3 dozen flowers)
MOH bouquet (2 dozen flowers)
3 bouquets of 14 flowers
2 corsages
6 bouts
2 bags of rose petals
rose oil
With tax, shipping and customs it came to $220, no way I would have been able to do that price with real flowers.
People might be able to tell they aren't real, but as I mentioned ... I don't like flowers to begin with.
I used thebridesbouquet.com
IMG_0116.JPG (517.3 KB, 51 downloads) 1 year old 
@awakemysoul your boquet looks amazing!! I love it!! (on a side i did do all my flowers,,, fresh, for 250 :)
flowers.jpg (58.1 KB, 38 downloads) 1 year old 
Im using silk flowers...for no reason other than the fact that i am allergic to pollen. Qualitywise, they are the same and silk may even be more expensive. the silk flowers wwill last longer though...
@Baileyh: Thank you, I am quite pleased with them. Did you DIY, or have a florist do them? In Toronto for a florist to do them, I would have been looking at about $500.
Plus with real, you have the added stress of how to get them to the ceremony, keeping them from wilting etc etc.
The only fresh flower I am doing is my ring bearers bout, mostly because I forgot about him when I made my flower order :s But, I think the bouts would have been too large for his lapel anyways ... so I'm just going to have a florist shop do that one and have the ring bearer's parents pick it up.
Mine were clay and dried French lavendar. Here's a picture of the bridesmaids' ones weeks before our wedding.
Use real flowers!!!!! Fake ones are honestly just too cheesy. I can see it if you're allergic, but otherwise there's just no reason to try to replicate nature.
@awakemysoul
Im in Vancouver and found a woman on craigslist who works from her home. She was great! She did my bouquet, 4 BM, a 14 bouts (for husband, gm, parents, grand parents) all for 250.00 (and that was with a tip!!) Transporting wasnt a concern either and they lasted all day. We got ready at 10, did first look and all our pics before our 5 ceremony and then 6-1 reception. I had left the flowers at the lounge all night saturday, sunday day and monday morning and they still looked great when i picked them up. A great florist will make sure the flowers dont wilt in a few hours. :)
@mrs.rader: I disagree. And I think its a little rude to judge other brides as having cheesy bouquets. There are plenty of fake flowers that look as good as real ones.
I am using fake ones for no other reason than I am against using real ones. Replicating nature to preserve it is a fine reason in my opinion. I love nature in all of it's living beauty, and I don't want to kill a bunch of lovely plants just to make me feel pretty. Fake ones will do just fine, and I will be able to keep them long after the wedding. Preserved bouquets look gross in 30 years, but my bouquet will always look new (unless I leave it in the sun!)
@arenyth: "I love nature in all of it's living beauty, and I don't want to kill a bunch of lovely plants just to make me feel pretty."
Um, I'm going to assume you know that picking flowers is not going to kill the plant, and you're referring to the blooms dying. :P Think about how it works in nature; the flowers bloom for a few days or weeks at most, attract pollinators, and die. That's it. End of story. Using them for bouquets isn't going to change much. If you get a good price for them, it changes very little. Besides, florists aren't wandering around plundering nature for blooms; they get them from farms and greenhouses. So I can understand wanting to keep your bouquets or whatever after the fact, but otherwise, there's no harm done.
Also, I dont' like keeping fake flowers because they get so dusty! Do you plan on keeping your flowers out all the time? It's something to consider.
@Minutiae: I understand that, and I know its not going to kill the entire plant. But I just don't think its necessary to butcher an already beautiful plant just so I can have flowers that will die in hours or days, when fake ones will do just fine. It may sound silly, but I just don't value myself over any other living thing. Any fresh flowers I have at my wedding will be in their planters.
Besides, I'm planning from across the country and it's a lot easier for me to do arrangements ahead of time. My fiance's father owns a Hobby Lobby and their florist is going to make my arrangements. I'm grateful for their contribution and I will always have a physical object to remember this by.
I work in a flower shop so I'm doing real flowers for sure. Not only can I do it all myself, but I get them at a huge discount! One of the most exciting parts of planning for me is figuring out our flowers. To me, nothing replaces the texture and smell of real flowers (however, I am a bit biased! Haha). :)
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