Planning Dried Wedding Flowers: A Step by Step Timeline

By Lauren Baynes, Website Content at Bouquet Cards

You have decided on dried flowers. That is the hard part settled, and everything after it is organising. This is a planning guide for that stage, written for couples who now need to work out who does what, in what order, and by when.

It runs backwards from your date, through the consultation, the split of flowers across the day, the logistics that catch people out, and what happens once the room is being cleared. Treat the order as a shape rather than a rule.

Working backwards from the date

Most of the stress in wedding flowers comes from decisions arriving in the wrong order. If you fix the things that other things depend on first, the rest falls in behind them.

Months out

• Confirm the venue and the access time. What time can anyone get into the room, and is that the same room used for the meal?
• Work out roughly who is carrying or wearing something. Numbers you can adjust, not names.
• Pin down whatever fixes your colours. Usually the bridesmaid fabric, the suits, or the shade of your dress.
• Decide whether you want anything fresh alongside the dried, because fresh runs on its own schedule and is booked separately.
• Rank the pieces, so that if the budget tightens later you already know what you would drop first.

Weeks out

• Final counts for buttonholes, posies and corsages. This is the number that moves most, so agree when it stops moving.
• Sizes and finish. Ribbon colour, whether stems are wrapped or left showing, how wide the bridal piece should be against your dress.
• Whether anything is being carried from the ceremony space into the reception space, and who physically does that.
• Delivery or collection, with a place and a time written down, not a vague morning.

The week of

• Confirm nothing has changed at the venue end. Room swaps happen more often than people expect.
• Sort out where everything sits between arriving and being needed.
• Share phone numbers. Your florist should have the number of whoever is on the ground, not just yours.

Getting the most out of the consultation

A consultation goes better when you arrive with things in your hands rather than opinions in your head.

What to bring

• A physical scrap of the bridesmaid fabric, or a ribbon in the same dye lot. Screens shift colour and cloth does not.
• Photos of the actual ceremony space and the actual reception room, empty, taken on your own phone. Wide shots, not close-ups of nice details.
• A photo of the dress if you have one, or at least a note of the neckline and how full the skirt is.
• Two or three images you like, and at least one you actively dislike. The dislike is often more useful.
• Anything the venue has told you in writing about restrictions. Nothing pinned to walls, no naked flames, no confetti indoors, that sort of thing.

What you will be asked

Expect questions that sound administrative rather than creative. How high are the ceilings. Is there a fireplace or a window behind you during the vows. How many round tables and how many long ones. Who is in the room before you are, and what time does it turn around. The answers change what is worth making, which is why they come first.

Describing a palette without knowing flower names

Nobody expects you to name stems. It helps far more if you describe colour the way you would describe paint.

• Use everyday reference points. Oat, terracotta pot, milky coffee, plum skin, unbleached linen. These land better than "neutral" or "muted".
• Say whether you want warm or cool. Cream and grey-green pull in opposite directions even though both read as soft.
• Talk in proportions. "Mostly the pale one, a bit of rust, a very small amount of the dark" tells a florist more than a list of three colours.
• Describe texture in plain words. Papery, wispy, spiky, round, feathery.
• Name your one non-negotiable colour and say the rest can flex.
• Flag anything very bright early. Strong pinks, blues and greens are not all naturally available, so raise it at the start rather than the end.

Splitting the flowers across the day

Sit down with the running order and go through it hour by hour. Flowers get counted in three groups, and the third group is where the money quietly goes.

Carried and worn. The bridal piece, bridesmaid posies, anything for flower girls, buttonholes for the groom, groomsmen, ushers and fathers, and small pinned pieces for mothers and grandmothers. Add anyone with a formal role, such as readers, if you want them easy to spot.

The ceremony. Aisle ends, something at the entrance so guests know where to go, and whatever sits near the signing table. Look at your photos again here, because a large arrangement directly behind you is in every single shot.

The reception. Table centres, the top table, the cake, the bar, and any signage. This group is the one that multiplies. Ten tables is ten of everything.

What can move between the two

If the ceremony and the meal are in different rooms, some pieces can do both jobs. Aisle arrangements often work along a top table. A piece from behind the vows can go behind the cake. Bridesmaid posies can be dropped into jugs and used as table centres, which saves buying eight arrangements that then sit in a corridor all evening.

Three things make that work. A real gap in the schedule, usually the drinks reception. Permission from the venue. And a named person who knows it is their job, with a note of what goes where. Without all three it does not happen, and you have paid for flowers that spent the day in an empty room.

The logistics couples forget

• Who receives them. Not the couple. Pick one person, tell them, and tell your florist their name and number.
• Where they live the night before. Somewhere cool, dry and out of the way. Not a bathroom, not a conservatory, not next to a radiator, and not left in a car overnight.
• Transport. Boxes travel flat and unstacked, on a back seat rather than crushed into a boot with suitcases. Count them on arrival and again before you drive off.
• The split between two addresses. Buttonholes and bridal pieces usually go to wherever people are getting ready. Venue pieces go to the venue. Decide which is which in advance, in writing.
• Who is responsible on the day. One person with a printed list, a phone that is charged and no other job at that moment. A coordinator or a level-headed relative, not someone who is also in the photographs.

What to agree in writing before you sign anything off

• The full item list with quantities, including the small pieces.
• The palette written out in words as well as reference images.
• Sizes, and the finish on the handles.
• Delivery or collection, with address, date and time.
• The date after which the list is fixed, and what can still change after it.
• What happens if your numbers go up or down.
• Whether anything is being moved during the day, and by whom.
• Contact names and numbers on both sides.
• What is payable and when.

Once the wedding is over

Decide this beforehand, because nobody makes good decisions at midnight.

Name the person taking your own bouquet home, and tell them to put it on a back seat rather than in the boot with everything else. Most venues want the room cleared the same night or first thing the next morning, so someone needs a car and a set of instructions for the larger pieces. Bridesmaids will usually take their own posies, which saves you carrying eight of them.

Plenty of couples take the bridal piece apart afterwards and hand small bunches to mothers and grandmothers. It works better if you say so before the wedding, so it can be built in a way that comes apart cleanly. Buttonholes rarely survive the evening, so do not build a plan around them.

Bouquet Cards is a Hampshire brand under DJSJ Floral Limited, working out of the workshop at The Petal Boutique, 6 The Fairground, Weyhill, near Andover SP11 0QN. Astrid, Helen and Gemma are the florists. Dried orders are fulfilled by driedblooms.co.uk, and fresh flowers are made by The Petal Boutique for Winchester, Andover, Salisbury and Basingstoke. If you want to talk a date and a running order through, get in touch.