Flowers

How-To: Drying Your Wedding Bouquet

If you’re absolutely in love with your bouquet and want to preserve it as a keepsake of your special day, there are a few options to consider, including drying and pressing. Many of these are relatively easy to do at home whether you’re crafty or not, but the simplest by far is hanging it to dry.

Hanging your bouquet is the simplest and cheapest method of preserving your bouquet. All you need to do is find a dark and cool place in which you can hang it upside down, completely unhindered (this will avoid it becoming flattened on one side). While you can choose to hang the bouquet in its entirety, it is recommended that you dry the flowers individually or in smaller bunches, and then reassemble it later. If hung together, flowers tend to pack together and trap moisture, sometimes causing it to mould.

I was fortunate enough to be gifted a bouquet following a bridal fashion shoot for Bliss magazine, and decided to try this method for drying it out. I tied the flowers in individual bunces along a string using twine, and allowed nature to take its course for a few weeks. The final result was gorgeous – the colours of the flowers deepened, and the blooms shrunk in size, adopting a tissue-paper textrure.

If you choose to preserve    your bouquet in this way,  some décor ideas include  putting it into a vase or  photo frame, adding dried  petals into a clear Christmas  ornament to celebrate your  first Christmas together, or  making it into potpourri by  adding a few drops of  scented oil to the dried  flowers or petals.

Top Tip

Once the flowers are dry, spray them with hairspray to hold them together and revive some of the colour!