Elopement Wedding Bouquet

Video Transcription  

Welcome to the flowerschool.com video library. I'm Leanne Kesler, Director of the Floral Design Institute. And today, I'm here to share with you an on-trend wedding bouquet, perfect for that pop-up wedding, micro wedding, or elopement. 

The inspiration for this bouquet, the old saying, "Something borrowed, something blue". You know you've heard that. And a sixpence in the shoe. The flowers, I started at GardenRosesDirect.com. I found these beautiful, tiny garden roses in pristine white, they're called white cloud. Lovely for a smaller bouquet. For the blue, hydrangea, tweedia, and eryngium. As a final touch, some galax that I'll use to collar the bouquet. 

To begin the design, I'm using the hydrangea as my base mechanic. It works as an armature. And then, as I add flowers in, I can just feed them directly into the head. And it helps keep them separated, and supported, and protected. 

Additionally, rather than put them all through, I can take them and just angle them into my hand and then turn it, the classic spiral, bringing in the tweedia. Maybe a few of them at the same time, bringing that blue outward. A touch of the eryngium, and more of the roses, guiding them into place, keeping it nice and compact. When you think about a micro wedding, or a pop-up wedding, many times the flowers are picked up the day before, and the couple just takes them with them. The florist may not be involved the day of, so you want things to be very tight, very compact, very protected, so that they don't get damaged during that transit time. 

To finish, I want to go back and collar the back with the galax. Notice I'm placing them looking outward, just to give a polished look. And again, it protects the bouquet, protects the stems, making sure that everything will survive the day, looking beautiful. Once you have that collar in place, using a wasteless bind wire, clipping it down, and just tying very snugly right at the top to ensure that everything stays place and doesn't shift throughout the time. 

A final pro technique that's perfect when doing these pop-up or elopement bouquets is to provide a secret water source. To do that, I just take a paper towel and I wrap it around, bring it up and around and tuck it again. Now you have a spot that can be wet, dip it into a vase of water, and then set it down into a plastic bag. This extra little bit of water can easily hold the flowers for 24 to 48 hours, maybe even a little longer. Then, to hold the bag in place, clear waterproof tape, snugly wrapped around. And I go around a couple extra times at the top, just to be safe. Then, you're ready to ribbon-wrap the end, send it out with the happy couple, and be done. 

Once ribbon-wrapped, it's a perfect presentation. Easily transportable, protected, all those things that you want in an elopement bouquet. The flowers, we started with the white cloud garden roses. Those were from gardenrosesdirect.com, use 10 of them. One hydrangea, three stems of eryngium, and 10 stems of tweedia. For the galax, I used an entire bunch because I wanted to make sure I protect the backside. Then the plastic bag, the paper towel, the ribbon for the secret water source, and you've got an elopement bouquet. 

It's fun to create when I have gorgeous flowers. So again, a shout out and thank you to Garden Roses Direct and Florabundance. Couldn't do it without you. The elopement bouquet: Something borrowed, something blue, and something perfect for you. You can write your own rhyme. For more creative inspiration, check out our website, flowerschool.com. If you have questions, you can reach us there, or pick up the telephone and give us a call at 503-223-8089. Now it's your turn. Create the perfect bouquet, take a picture, post it on social media, and hashtag Floral Design Institute. You might even want to write a little poem so we all can see your creativity as you do something you love.