Some of our favorite weddings never leave home! This one was held in a backyard in Cambridge, under an oak tree big enough to shade the entire wedding party at once, and it had the ease that only comes from getting married somewhere that already means something to you.
It was also almost entirely DIY. The couple came to us for buckets of blooms in soft blue, pale purple, butter yellow, blush, and white, and then they and the people closest to them did the arranging themselves, the tables, the bud vases, the reception details, all of it. That's a real thing you can do, and more couples do it than you'd guess.
You don't have to do all of it yourself
You don't have to choose between doing all of your flowers and none of them. We design bridal bouquets on their own, and it's one of the more popular ways brides work with us, because the bouquet is the piece that ends up in every portrait and the piece with the least room for a redo. It's the hardest thing in the whole order to build well, and the most nerve-wracking to attempt the night before your own wedding.
So this bride did what we'd suggest to anyone in her position. She kept the parts that are fun to do with your favorite people, and she handed off the one that isn't. Her bouquet came to her finished, wrapped, and ready, and everything else in the backyard came out of buckets and her bridal party's hands.
Soft colors, sneaky amount of work
When you pull the saturation out of a palette, you take away the easiest tool for making an arrangement read from across a yard. Bold color does a lot of that work on its own. Pastels have to earn it through shape, scale, and texture instead, which means the mix has to be built carefully well before anyone starts arranging, with enough variation in bloom size and leaf form to keep everything from going soft and blending together.
That's a lot of what we're doing when we put together flowers for a DIY wedding. You see buckets, but what's in them was chosen so that whoever is arranging can't really go wrong.
Hand the bud vases to your people
If you're doing your own flowers, bud vases are where to start. They're forgiving, they're fast, they look wonderful in multiples even when no two are alike, and they turn into the best kind of afternoon with everyone sitting around a table together the day before. Give those away happily.
What we'd keep on our side of the line is anything you only get one shot at. The bridal bouquet, first and foremost. Anything installed at height. Anything that has to hold up outside in July. Everything else is fair game, and it's more fun than you think!
These are just the first frames from Tiffany Caldwell Photography, sent over while the full gallery is still being finished. We'll be adding to this post as soon as we have the rest, so check back in a few weeks!
Thinking about arranging your own wedding flowers? Take a look at how DIY wedding flowers work with us, including bulk buckets by the color palette and bridal bouquet design on its own. Or take our quiz and we'll point you toward the service that actually fits how you want to spend that week.
Vendors
Florals: Winters Farm Florals
Photography: Tiffany Caldwell Photography
