Early on in my adventure in online creative sales, I used to make and sell faux floral wedding sets on Ebay. I no longer sell physical goods (my Etsy shop is full of digital downloads only 😎), but I have always wanted to share how I would put my floral packages together. I decided to put together this 4 part series of posts to show exactly how I made my wedding sets using Dollar Tree flowers.
Note: My wedding sets were intended to be priced as economically as possibly for my customers, which is why they were simple and made with fewer flowers. With your own budget in mind you can go as large as you wish, adding in more flowers, embellishments or whatever you wish. Whether you use a smaller amount of Dollar Tree florals as I did, buy twice as many or choose to invest in higher end florals, the techniques shared here will be the same 😉
Read on to see how I used to do it:
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Here you can see how the Dollar Tree rose floral bushes look upon purchase, with usually around 6 flower heads per bush.
When I was creating wedding sets I would make 1 bridal bouquet, 1 maid of honor bouquet, 4 bridesmaid bouquets, 1 toss bouquet, 1 groom boutonniere, 1 best man boutonniere. 4 groomsmen boutonnieres, 2 father boutonnieres and 2 mother boutonnieres. This was all done with 20-25 floral bushes, depending upon the size of the flowers in the bush. Bushes with larger flowers are going to give you more bang for your buck as each flower takes up more space. Bushes with smaller flowers take up less space, and require you to purchase more. It all depends upon the look you are going for and what kind of flowers you choose to use.
Tip: Try to purchase all of your flowers at once so that you can ensure that the colors of each bush match. For Example, sometimes Dollar Tree will have multiple types of red rose bushes. Each bush contains red artificial roses, but they might be of different fabric types, petal cut lengths or dye lots. If you buy multiple types that blend together and make sure to blend them within each bouquet, then it looks great. If you make a few bouquets that are composed of identical flowers and then one or two bouquets have some off colored/ styled blooms, then it doesn't look so good. You can always buy some extra stems to have on hand. I've had lots of brides who end up adding in extra attendants and wish to add bouquets later on.
Note: When purchasing from Dollar Tree online, you will be required to buy bulk amounts. Some flower bushes come in cases of just one kind, while others come in mixed cases. If you can't find what you want in the store and the online selection provides a mixed case only, then you may end up spending more than planned to get enough of your desired type.
(You can click
here to browse Dollar Tree's selection of online florals)
After removing the tags, the first thing that I like to do is push all of the foliage to the tops of the stems. Since I'm creating a rounded bouquet, having all of the flowers and leaves at the top will give a fuller look.
A lot of times with Dollar Tree floral bushes, there will be one stem longer than the rest. I trim this one off for a couple of reasons; one- it makes the resulting bush nice and even. And two- now I have plenty of cut stems to use for corsage and boutonniere work later...without having to purchase extra bushes 😉
Here is my pile of cut stems, they really do add up! Not only are there enough for single flower corsages and boutonnieres, but I would often put together my toss bouquets from these stems as well.
With all of my bushes prepped, I would then divide them into the bouquets that I intended to make. You can see in the photo that with this set I had four bushes for the bride and then three bushes for each bridesmaid. Once organized I would set those aside and knock out my corsage/ boutonniere work....which I will share with you next week!
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This series used all white fabric roses in the example photos, but here are some other ideas:
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I hope you enjoyed this how-to floral post, thanks for stopping by!
© Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams 2022
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