by April Wilson

Created on: November 10, 2009

Becoming your own wedding florist may seem a daunting task at first, but it can be a lot of fun. The added benefit of putting together your own flowers for your wedding is that you can save a lot of money.

The first order of business is to decide what you'll need. For my own wedding. I made corsages, boutonnieres, and bouquets. My reception venue was already fully decorated so I didn't need any additional flowers there, and I used a lot of greenery for the wedding ceremony, which came with the candelabra rentals.

It's easiest if you can break it down to just corsages, boutonnieres, and bouquets. The more flowers you have as decor at the reception and wedding the more work and expense. If you decide to be your own wedding florist you'll end up less stressed and coming out far cheaper if you use artificial flowers.

Another benefit of using artificial flowers is that you can make your floral arrangements a little bit at a time during the planning phase of your wedding. With real flowers there is only a narrow window during which you can put your flowers together and that narrow window is going to fall about the time you're stressed about everything else coming together. If you use artificial flowers you can do a bouquet here, a corsage there, spreading the project out over several months so it doesn't become overwhelming.

If you've got crafty bridesmaids, you could even have a floral design party and let everyone make their own bouquet to save even more time.

Most larger craft stores like Michaels and Hobby Lobby have books and booklets that teach you how to make floral arrangements including wedding-specific arrangements. These step-by-step instructions make it easy to put together flowers that are sure to impress.

If you live in an area with a Hobby Lobby, they often run 50% off sales on various sections of the store. Flowers are sometimes a part of this sale. Talk to a member of management to find out when their flowers will be on sale, and buy during that time. If they don't have that information or they don't get enough advance warning, visit periodically so you can buy during the sale. If you don't otherwise have access to wholesale flowers, this may be the closest you get to wholesale.

Another benefit of using artificial flowers when you decide to be your own wedding florist, is that if you mess up, you can take it apart and start over and you'll only be out a little floral tape, which is very inexpensive.

Once you get your bouquets wrapped, you'll want

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