If you’re getting married in 2023 and are trying to make plans for your wedding flowers, don’t miss out on some of the biggest upcoming trends in floral design. The past few wedding seasons have been full of oversized, romantic wedding bouquets in neutral and pastel colors. However, this season is projected to be more unique and bold. Vibrant wedding colors, unique color pairings, and abnormal flower arrangement sizes are going to be making huge statements at weddings in 2023. If you’re a bride getting married this year, you should consider having a small bouquet of flowers as your bridal bouquet. This article will give you some inspiration for this specific bouquet style, and some helpful instructions if you’re interested in DIYing your own small wedding bouquet!
How to Make a Mini Flower Bouquet
There are a lot of benefits that come along with DIYing your own wedding flowers. When you DIY your wedding flowers, you’ll cut down on floral costs significantly. You won’t have to pay for the labor, brand, or expertise of a wedding florist. You can also often get your flowers at a wholesale or more affordable price. Arranging your own wedding flowers will help to guarantee that your bridal bouquet matches your desired aesthetic. Don’t worry, you don’t need to have any floral design experience. You just need to have a vision in mind for the flowers you’d like to arrange and some creativity! Here are a few helpful tips to teach you how to make a mini flower bouquet.
1. Gather Supplies
First off, you’ll want to gather any supplies that you’ll need to make your bridal bouquet. This will include your flowers, floral filler, and greenery, as well as some floral tape, rubber bands, ribbons, floral scissors, and more. If you’re trying to research the supplies that you’ll need for your arrangement, this particular shape and size of a bridal bouquet is also often called a nosegay bouquet or posy bouquet.
2. Prep Your Flowers
Once you’ve gathered your supplies, prep your flowers for your arrangements. If you’re using fresh flowers, you’ll want to cut the ends of your flower stems at a diagonal angle. This will help them to better absorb water as you’re storing them and keeping them fresh before your big day. You can also cut off any stray stems, leaves, or thorns to ensure that your flowers are ready to be gathered together. This step is a lot easier when you’re using wood flowers since you won’t have to worry about your flowers absorbing water or wilting. When you’re using wood flowers, you’ll prep your flowers by attaching your floral wire stems to the wood flower heads with some hot glue. Check out this tutorial on how to stem wood flowers for more helpful details.
3. Start with Focal Flowers
After your flowers are prepped for arranging, you’ll start making your small bridal bouquet by gathering your focal flowers. These flowers are meant to be the focal point of your arrangement, hence their nickname of being “focal” flowers. These flowers are usually medium-sized to large-sized and will likely showcase some of your favorite colors for your bridal bouquet. In such a small bouquet, you’ll only have a few focal flowers to work with, such as 3-7 flowers depending on the size and type of flowers you’re using.
4. Add Floral Filler
Once your larger flowers are in place, start adding in smaller, more delicate filler flowers. Examples of floral filler could be wax flowers, baby’s breath, lavender, cala lily, caspia, thistle, bunny tail, pampas grass, snapdragons, and more. Smaller sprigs of floral filler can be nestled between your bigger flowers to add more variety to your colors and textures. You can also add larger pieces of floral filler around the border of your bouquet.
5. Add Greenery
Greenery will be your last addition to your mini small bridal bouquet. There are many different types of greenery that could work beautifully in your arrangement. When you’re trying to make a mini flower bouquet, you won’t want to choose greenery with overly large leaves, as they would overpower your arrangement. Instead, choose more delicate types of greenery, such as baby blue eucalyptus or dusty miller spray. You can also trim your greenery down to size and remove excess leaves to make it fit your bouquet size more successfully. Make sure your greenery frames your bouquet nicely to give your arrangement a finished, professional look.
6. Tie Off and Finishing Touches
To finish your bouquet, wrap a rubber band (or two) securely around the stems of your flowers and greenery. You can shake your bouquet around to make sure that every sprig and stem is secured in place. Feel free to add floral wire or tape if you need some extra help keeping certain flowers in place. Then, to make your small bridal bouquet look more beautiful, cover up the rubber bands with some beautiful ribbon. For more of a traditional look, you can wrap ribbon up the entire length of the stems and pin it with a pearl pin near the base of the flower heads. For more of a boho, romantic look, simply cover the rubber bands, tie a knot or a bow, and then leave long streamers of your ribbon draping down from the bouquet. Just make sure that your ribbons don’t overtake the delicate, simple nature of your small bouquet.
Small Bridal Bouquet Ideas
Now that you know how to DIY your own small bouquet of flowers, you’ll need some ideas of the type of flowers and styles you’d like to include in your arrangement. Small bouquets are a lot more affordable than larger bouquets, particularly if you use wood flowers. So, you can afford to get creative when it comes to your bouquet styles. You might be inspired by these few gorgeous small bridal bouquet ideas and decide to adopt one of them for your own bridal bouquet. For many more ideas and additional inspiration, check out this blog article from Martha Stewart!
Eucalyptus Bouquet
Eucalyptus is a gorgeous type of greenery as it has the perfect, muted blue/green color. If you want a simple and stylish small bouquet, choose simpler floral colors and let the gorgeous Eucalyptus colors and textures dominate your design. Plus, you can create matching bridesmaid bouquets that are made entirely out of Eucalyptus for a unique and aesthetically pleasing look.
Tropical Flowers
If you’re having a destination wedding in a warm, tropical location, you should definitely use the tropical flowers and greenery of that location to create your small bridal bouquet. Often, these flowers and greenery might be a little bit larger, so you’ll be able to simplify your bouquet creation even more. You might just need a single monstera leaf with an anthurium flower or with a few hibiscus flowers. This style will be stunning for your lush wedding.
Single-Flower Bouquet
If you have a certain type of flower that embodies the wedding aesthetic you’re going for, don’t be afraid to go for a single-flower bouquet style. If your flower is large, like a peony, you could have your small bridal bouquet consist of one large, luscious peony and a few tiny sprigs of greenery. If you prefer smaller, more delicate flowers, such as orchids, ranunculus, or Phalaenopsis, then use a few sprigs of those flowers to make up your bouquet. You don’t even need to add greenery or filler if you love the look these flowers have on their own.
