I had a very minimal approach to my wedding, we had a fancy Scottish venue but otherwise it was very low key. It was perfect, low stress and we loved it.
However, one bit of planning I do wish I’d done was to arrange to have my bouquet pressed! I just didn’t realise how much I’d love it!
By the time I was really sure I wanted to try to preserve my bouquet it was past the point of freshness it should be sent off to a professional.
We spent a week on holiday in Scotland after the wedding, so the flowers were just starting to be past their best by the time we got home. Still, I thought I may as well try pressing them myself and see how it turned out.
I slept almost a whole day pressing as much as I could of what we had left from all the wedding flower.
I’d never done flower pressing before and I really didn’t know how to do peonies and roses which are too dense to simply squish down. I watched a few YouTube tutorials and tried different methods. Some said remove enough petals that you can make it lay flat, and others recommended completely deconstructing it and gluing it back together once dried. The latter method seems to be the way to go
I put them all in a couple of cardboard boxes between layers of watercolor paper I had laying about, printer paper and heavy comic book omnibuses!
I checked on them periodically to remove any moulding bits of paper and brown petals. After a few months I had about a quarter of what I’d tried to press that was decent enough to do something with!
The only peony bits that survived are from the ones I pulled the petals off. One yellow rose was okish… Honestly it’s mostly brown but I still wanted to keep it!
I got some acid free florists glue, and set about an arrangement I could frame. I actually think I like the effect of a reconstructed peony made from petals more than the whole ‘top down’ view of the flower I’ve seen online.
I am quite happy with the result. It definitely looks amateur and homemade, but that is what it is!
My friend said it looks better than the professionally pressed one she has of her bouquet, but she might have just been being polite!
Yes some of the flowers are basically brown (and they might get worse) but I really wanted to try to keep one of everything.
I had enough leftover to make 4 more smaller arrangement I’m going to give as Christmas gifts to my sister, mother, grandmother and mother in law.
They’re not perfect but hopefully the sentimental angle will make them an appreciated gift! I just need to get a few more frames.
Also have a few bits leftover I will stick into the wedding album scrapbook that I still need to put together… I have at least now (as of last week) got around to ordering the prints for it!
I actually quite enjoyed doing this. Perhaps I’ll add flower pressing to my list of old-timey Lady hobbies. It might be fun to press some of my favourite garden flowers next year.
I still think I’ll do an embroidery piece of my bouquet at some point… Though I have quite a long list of ideas for embroidery projects at the moment!
They’re lovely!