Alternative wedding bouquet ideas

Flowers can make an amazing statement to your wedding and can compliment and reflect the theme, style, colours, tone and surroundings of your day. See more in this beginner’s guide to wedding flowers.

The tradition of wedding flowers is steeped in symbolism and there’s lots to think about in terms of colours, meaning and seasonality. Plus, you need to need to make plans in advance for what you want to happen to your flowers after the wedding day too.

Here are some suggestions for the enjoyment of your flowers to continue after the wedding:

• give the bouquet to a friend or relative
• let the bridesmaid who caught it take it home
• put it on the grave of a loved one
• donate the flowers to a retirement home
• leave it somewhere for someone to find it in the lovely lonely bouquet trend
• get it dried and framed
• get the flowers preserved in jewellery, christmas baubles or a paperweight
• turn it in to pot pourri
• use dried flowers to dye fabric or clothing

However a massive trend right now is to pick an alternative to real flowers altogether, with paper florals emerging as an ecological and lasting alternative. See some of my other key wedding trends to look out for in 2017.

Here are some of my favourite wedding bouquet alternatives:

1. make alternative flowers out of
   • fabric
   • felt
   • paper
   • sheet music
   • comic book pages
2. use flowers in different formats
   • corsage
   • floral rings
   • anklets
   • chockers
   • pomander
   • hoop / wreath
   • dried
3. hold an object instead of flowers
   • book
   • bible
   • giant balloon
   • lantern
   • fan
   • parasol
   • clutch bag
   • muff
4. carry something on a stick
   • ribbon wand
   • dream catcher
   • pinwheels
5. use sparkly things to make a bouquet
   • jewels
   • beads
   • brooches
   • buttons
6. use other natural alternatives to flowers
   • fruit
   • vegetables
   • feathers
   • wheat
   • pine cones

Foliage is also a great alternative to flowers (and a fraction of the price) and sits nicely alongside trends for ‘bringing the garden inside’. If you do go for flowers then make a statement – ‘go big or go home’!

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