This blog post was contributed by Mackenzie Joyce, the in-house floral designer for Harmony Harvest Farm. She focuses on sustainable, foam-free, organic designs inspired by the natural beauty of the flowers growing right here on the farm. 

Hi there! Mackenzie, the HHF floral designer here! Planning a wedding, whether it’s a small elopement or a big to-do, can be both super exciting and super stressful - and don’t forget expensive! Whether it’s to stick to a budget or just to have complete creative control over your wedding visions, you might be considering DIYing some aspects of your wedding…such as your flowers! As much as I love doing wedding floral design myself, I absolutely love to see couples choosing to order our bulk flowers to DIY anything from centerpieces to bouquets to even arbor arrangements. However, it might be intimidating to take on some or all of your floral design for your wedding yourself, so here are some things to consider when deciding whether you want to do it yourself, or leave it to the professionals.

Calculating how many flowers you’ll need:

This is probably the most important factor when planning to DIY your floral arrangements, as well as one of the more complicated questions for me to answer for you. We created a blog post to help answer that question, but because there are so many factors to consider when determining how many flowers you’ll need to execute your vision, that it’s not always a question we can answer for you super accurately. The size of your vase, your design techniques, and your specific vision all make a huge difference in how many flowers you’ll need. My best advice is to calculate how many flowers you’ll need based on our blog post (we also have a little cheat sheet here!) and order more than you think you’ll need - there’s always a way to use any leftover flowers, and running out halfway through making your centerpieces will add extra stress that nobody wants to deal with.

Design time:

The days leading up to a wedding can sometimes be hectic, and adding floral design to your prep schedule can be a little daunting. Since flowers only last so long, and you want to make sure your flowers are picture perfect for your big day, you’ll want to arrange your flowers no more than a day or two (at most!) before your event (although some things can be designed farther in advance than others). It can help to refrigerate your arrangements to keep them fresher, but only if you don’t have any produce (fresh fruits or vegetables) in the same refrigerator - fresh produce releases ethylene gas that will wilt your flowers! It will definitely help to have some extra hands to design as well - this might even be a task you can assign to a creative friend or family member. The last thing you want is extra stress right before your wedding, so it’s important to consider how busy you’ll be leading up to the big day.

Design Ability:

I get the same question from almost every DIY couple: “But really…do you think I could actually do this myself?” And the answer I give every single one is YES! While there’s a lot of training and experience that comes with being a professional floral designer, we’re also working with (in my humble opinion) nature’s most beautiful medium. Flowers are beautiful by themselves, we’re just trying to show them off as well as we can! Designing your own floral arrangements for your wedding can make them feel more personal and special, and will also be a truly lovely memory that you create with loved ones (or by yourself!), and for some people that can be more important than having professionally designed floral arrangements. However, if having your wedding flowers picture-perfect is important to you, it might be less stressful to leave it to the florist - they’ll do all the fussing and nitpicking for you.

How much should I DIY?

While I mentioned earlier that floral designers have training and experience for floral design, some items are easier to DIY than others. Arranging some flowers in a mason jar or bud vase is definitely more approachable than something like an arbor arrangement or even a corsage - and while I firmly believe that anyone can DIY almost anything, there are certain elements that might take some more time and research to execute. A popular strategy that a lot of our couples use is to order bulk flowers for table arrangements and even bouquets, but have me as the florist take care of arbor arrangements, flower crowns, or anything else you might need special tools, techniques, and materials for. 

Whether or not you want to DIY your flowers is entirely up to you, and totally valid either way. However, it is a decision that you should make after considering all of the factors above - while I fully support anyone who wants to tackle their wedding flowers themselves, I also think it’s important to consider the time and stress it could potentially add to your wedding preparations. One thing I will highly, HIGHLY recommend, though: buy your flowers locally!