Now, I’m going to show you how to make a bridal bouquet. We’re going to make a bridal bouquet in the hand-tied style, which means that it’s a bouquet that’s simply flowers gathered together in your hand and cut with the stems exposed. As with any floral arrangement, you want to be thinking about color, about texture, about structure.
Especially, because we’re going to be making this in your hand, you want to make sure you have enough flowers to fill out the bouquet but that it’s also not too cumbersome. I like to get the heavier, thicker stems all laid out so that I can use those to begin a structure. There’s really no right way to make a bridal bouquet.
You can do this however you want to do it, but, for me I find it easier just to manage everything by taking the heavier blooms and putting them in my hands first, then kind of getting a cluster of those together first. Then, wrapping with some of the lighter blooms, like, maybe a rose or something softer.
We want to incorporate some interesting elements here, we want to use some greens, we want to use some filler. I like to get everything kind of laid out for myself before I start the project. We are going to take a little bit of this blushing bride, which I think is really appropriate for making a bridal bouquet. I’m going to pair it with this Pittosporum green, and then maybe a piece of this Queen Anne’s Lace, and another heavier bloom like this Tuberose. It’s really fragrant and gorgeous. I like this palette for the bridal bouquet, just a soft kind of blushy color. Ultimately, though, I’m going to add a pop of this rich purple, which I think really lends a nice texture.
As you can see, I’m just holding the flowers together, grouping them. This is going to help me guide my design. Now, I have this little grouping. Essentially, creating a bouquet is just creating a series of groupings all together, that you then pull into one large arrangement. Every time you want to add a grouping, a good idea is to twist as you go so that you don’t end up with one flat plane of flowers but that you end up with a more round kind of a look.
As I twist I might add a bloom. Maybe I’ll add another, heavier bloom. You can start to add things as you see fit. If you want to have a bouquet with a lot of texture and a lot of drape, you might add some elements that are taller and are hanging longer out of the bouquet. As you twist and turn your hand, you can see where they’re falling. Now, I might put some of the softer elements like a rose in, and just nestle everything up together.
My style is to have a lot of flowers in one space. A very pavé, tight, flower-on-flower look. Your style might be a little bit looser or airier. Twist and add…twist and add. Here’s a fun element, this Queen Anne’s Lace, where you can get kind of crazy with it if you wanted something to cascade off the bouquet. Or, you could put it lower so that it sits here and so that the bloom is right, seated up next to that Tuberose. Twist and add. Let’s add a darker, rich element in here, as well. I’ll just keep twisting and adding blooms as I go.