How To Dry The Wedding Bouquet As A Souvenir
Wedding flowers can take a reasonable chunk of your budget, depending on what kind and how many flowers you want adorning your wedding venue. Thus, it is understandable that most brides nowadays prefer to preserve their wedding bouquet. A wedding bouquet is something more personal for each bride. Thus, keeping them forever can be a keepsake of your most beautiful and elegant day. If you also plan on keeping your blooms, you might be asking how to dry the wedding bouquet.
Drying the wedding flowers can depend on how you're planning to decorate it. You can keep its color intact, press it, and let it dry naturally before the preservation process. With various options on how to dry the wedding bouquet, here are a few methods you can try to keep your wedding bouquet forever.
Air Dry the Flowers
One way on how to dry the wedding bouquet is to do so naturally. Hand the flowers upside down to air dry them. Hanging the stems one by one is more effective rather than clamping a whole set. So you need to unwrap them and get rid of all trinkets. Hang them in a warm and dry area for about a week. You can now create your flower arrangement using a pretty vase or do a DIY flower wreath. Keep the ribbons and use them to give your arrangement a pop of color.
Pressing
Pressing the flowers can also be an effective way to preserve them. Choose the best stems you like to keep or even the entire bouquet! To prevent the petals from sticking directly to the book, take a piece of wax paper, and lay your flowers. Arrange them until satisfied. Once the flowers are all dried up, you might not have a chance to change the arrangement in case you change your mind.
The next thing to do is to place the flowers in the pages of a heavy book. Once closed, reinforce it using something heavy like a pile of books or a vase. This process may take up to 10 days for the flowers to dry completely. Once dry and flat, arrange them or keep them in any way you like.
If you don't want the hassle of doing it yourself, you can have a professional press and frame the flowers for you. Make sure to inform them how you want the flowers to look like before the process since you won't modify it once the flowers are dry.
Use Silica Gel
A Silica gel is porous sand that absorbs water, which can effectively dry flowers in 7 days. This method allows you to keep the colors still visible even after you dry them. It's also a cheap material and readily available in any of your local craft store.
To preserve your wedding bouquet, take an airtight container and form a silica base sand. Place your flowers and pour the silica gel around the petals. Be gentle, not to damage the shape of the flowers. Keep pouring until the container is full, then seal it using the lid. An airtight container is more effective in preventing any moisture and mold growth. After a week, take out the dried flowers and cover them with a fixative or hairspray.
Have them Painted
This may be an unconventional way to preserve your wedding flowers, but hiring a local artist to have them painted can also preserve their memory. Plus, you will have a wonderful painting you can set up anywhere in your home always to remind you of your wedding day. Here's how to learn more about wedding flowers.
Conclusion
Finding the perfect flowers to accompany you as you walk down the aisle may take time and a bit of your budget. Thus, knowing how to dry a wedding bouquet can help you preserve that investment. The methods above are all fool-proof ways to keep your flowers forever. It's up to you to decide how you want to see your flowers as days and years go by.
