In her book Grow & Gather, Grace Alexander discusses how to grow your own flowers. Below she describes how to use the home grown blooms to create seasonal bouquets – perfect for your big day blooms, or as a gift to those who have helped you throughout your wedding planning…

Creating your own bouquet for your wedding day is a perfect way to add a personal touch to your nuptials. It is a great conversation starter and guests will be able to see the effort that you put into making your arrangement.

The bouquet that you choose can be personalised to suit your taste and colour scheme, plus, it's a budget-friendly way to still get the beautiful bouquet of your dreams. You can choose local flowers or wildflowers found on a woodland walk in the area you live in, or buy from a floral wholesaler to get a variety of stems. 

You Will Need...

7 stems of flowers

7 stems of foliage

7 seedheads or fruits

String or garden twine

1. Lay out all your flowers and bits of greenery on a table in front of you, and take up the first one in your non-dominant hand. Use your other hand to pick up and add the different stems, alternating foliage, filler and flowers so everything doesn’t clump together and come out lopsided. Remember to takes the leaves off the stem to make it easier to handle.

2. Keep your hand holding the flowers quite relaxed and form a circle with your fingers and thumb to act like the neck of a vase. Drop the flowers through the circle, letting the stems cross and support each other. If this feels a bit difficult, then use a jug or vase with a narrow neck and just keep adding your foliage, fillers and flowers to it until you are happy with it.

3. You will need to trim the stems so that all the flowers sit at roughly the same level. Once everything is in, tie a piece of string around the neck of the vase or jug and tighten it all up. You can then take the flowers out of the vase, and you will have a hand-tied bouquet.

4. For transportation or safe keeping, wrap the bouquet using brown paper to make it look really professional. If you are travelling any distance with it, take the vase with you and make sure the bouquet is in water until you hand it over, if you possibly can.

Top Tips

We recommend making the bouquet the day before to keep your blooms perfectly in tact and as fresh as possible! If you don't have time to make a fresh bouquet the night before, why not consider arranging a dried flower bouquet, as that way you don't have to make it the night before and they will stay preserved.

Dried flowers are a longer lasting and sustainable alternative to freshly cut flowers. This will mean that you will not only have a keepsake of your big day but also a gorgeous floral arangement to keep forever.

For more floral inspiration, check out our wedding flowers page that's blooming with ideas and Q&As!