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I Made This Bridal Bouquet for a Real Wedding (Start to Finish)

Ellen Frost

10,459 views

Hello Flower Friends! I'm Ellen. Sign up for my FREE weekly newsletter, FlowerNerd (https://ellenfrostflowers.substack.com/) for more flower fun! I write flower profiles, chronicle my flower adventures and share flower stories.

Ever wonder what really goes into designing wedding flowers?

In this behind-the-scenes floral design video, I'm taking you through my complete process for creating a real wedding using fresh local flowers—from cleaning and selecting every stem to designing a bridal bouquet, toss bouquet, boutonniere flowers, and ceremony arrangements.

You'll see how I:

Choose flowers for a bridal bouquet
Prioritize premium blooms for the bride
Prepare flowers before designing
Build hand-tied spiral bouquets
Select focal, secondary focal, filler, foliage, line flowers, and bits
Design with locally grown flowers
Decide which flowers hold up best for weddings
Finish bouquets with ribbon for delivery

This colorful spring wedding featured locally grown peonies, ranunculus, snapdragons, delphinium, roses, yarrow, poppies, Solomon's seal, Bells of Ireland, bachelor's buttons, Nigella, and more.

Whether you're a florist, flower farmer, farmer-florist, or simply love beautiful wedding flowers, you'll get an inside look at the decisions that happen before a bouquet ever reaches the bride.

// Chatpers
00:00 A Real Wedding in One Morning
00:45 Planning the Bridal Flowers
02:25 Choosing Line Flowers
03:48 Preparing Ranunculus
05:20 Cleaning Filler Flowers
06:25 Nigella & Campanula
09:10 Native Honeysuckle
11:35 Choosing Poppies
13:05 Selecting Peonies
14:25 Preparing Local Roses
19:30 Adding Bachelor's Buttons
21:20 My Favorite Spring Foliage
22:58 Preparing Wedding Peonies
25:35 Final Flower Selection
28:20 Cleaning Bells of Ireland
31:08 Organizing Every Stem
32:04 The Six Elements of Floral Design
34:25 Building the Bridal Bouquet
45:35 Taping the Bouquet
47:07 Designing the Toss Bouquet
52:07 Wrapping the Bridal Bouquet
57:44 Learn Wedding Flowers in FlowerMore

I love working as a florist and running my business, Local Color Flowers, founded in 2008. I make videos about flowers (obvi). I also write a free weekly flower newsletter and host an online community of flower friends.

// FlowerNerd - Free Weekly Flower Newsletter
Join over 7,000 other flower people. Subscribe to my FREE weekly newsletter FlowerNerd (https://ellenfrostflowers.substack.com/) for more flower fun! I write weekly plant profiles, pro design tips, behind-the-scenes adventures and more!

// FlowerMore - online community of flower friends
FlowerMore is a supportive online community of flower growers who want to become better designers. We help each other level up our design skills through challenges, book club meetings, color exploration and sharing our work for constructive critique. Discount for YouTube viewers: https://tinyurl.com/FlowerMore

//When available, we use affiliate links and may earn a commission)
My Favorite Clippers
Saboten 1210 Thinning Shear
https://amzn.to/4qfj0uB (Amazon)

// Learn with me at The Gardeners Workshop
Preparing To Sell To Florists: https://thegardenersworkshop.com/prod...

Growing Your Business With Local Flower Sourcing: https://thegardenersworkshop.com/prod...

20 Comments

@ellenfrostflowers Creator 2 months ago Pinned

If you liked this video, you’ll love my free, flower newsletter FlowerNerd 🌷Subscribe today! https://ellenfrostflowers.substack.com/

@OMGitsaClaire 2 months ago

I’m so glad I’m not on TikTok anymore. Our wedding is going to be “untrendy” for sure, but I’ve been being inspired by my parents’ wedding and older weddings in general. Including even older weddings like 1950’s-60’s weddings. (I’m heavily considering wearing my mom’s dress.) We’re also inspired by our favorite flowers and colors. Don’t get me wrong, I do like some Pinterest trends, but I’m not looking for my guests to come to my wedding and think “ooh, this wedding is really trendy”.

@lisathiedeman4487 1 month ago

Thanks for this video Ellen! You're the first from all the videos I've watched that explained so well what this spiral technique looks like from the PoV of the person making the bouquet. It finally makes sense to me! Thank you!

@suepercy8390 2 months ago

The bright colours look beautiful relaxed and happy thanks

@jeannet9592 2 months ago

Thanks so much for walking us through this process. I love the bright colors, and the bouquets were beautiful.

@samono3 2 months ago

Beautiful Ellen and so helpful! Thanks for sharing!

@cindywhite6356 2 months ago

Such lovely brilliant flowers

@melissar9254 2 months ago

Beautiful!! 💕

@NancySimonds 2 months ago

Just gorgeous bouquets! I would have been ecstatic if I'd had that bridal bouquet. Gorgeous choice of flowers. Thank you!

@colleenward6903 2 months ago

Fabulous!!

@DovieWylie 2 months ago

Excellent demonstration of how to do a hand-tied. Thank you. This gives me the courage to try it again., For me, the key point that I have been missing is probably "no death grip"!

@FernandoSoares_pt 2 months ago

Beautiful.

@WesternMONo-TillGardening 2 months ago

It was interesting to see how much time is spent cleaning versus arranging! Beautiful bouquets as usual. Thanks for taking us along.

@lisamclain2549 2 months ago

You are wildly talented at florals and teaching! I found watching this video mesmerizing. Thank you!

@brittany.s_flower_journal 2 months ago (edited)

What a treat to watch! I love to feel like I’m hanging out with you in this longer video. I always learn so much from your videos, Ellen! By the way, the microphone cracks often. I’m sorry to be annoying about it❤

@KorinneUmbaugh 2 months ago

Hello Ellen, Great spring season wedding bouquet using all those available cut flowers that grow in the DMV region. I was very impressed not only with the use of color but use of shapes and textures of the different stems. This definitely was a one of a kind bouquet and the same could be said for the beautiful toss bouquet. The winner of the toss bouquet and the bride both had outstanding arrangements to go home with that day of the wedding. I am really impressed with the grower of the local roses. Does the rose grower have the ability to provide roses year round or is it truly tied to regional season. Once again great job and thanks for sharing your work.

@gardeninggrandma5247 5 days ago

Hi Ellen. I’ve learned so much from you! I saw a method of securing a bouquet created in your hand in a circular fashion, and they used a one inch elastic to secure the stems before placing it in water. The idea is that it keeps the bouquet intact when it goes in the water. I wondered if you ever used this method and if so, do you have a source for the elastic bands? There are so many online, it’s overwhelming. Thanks for any insight that you have

@szvetlana1000 2 months ago

Wonderful tips Ellen, thank you! The algorithm recently served one of your videos to me, and I’m going to start a new hobby as soon as I get home from vacation! I will start experimenting with grocery store flowers first and stuff I can harvest from my own yard. You mentioned about opening up peonies. Do you have tips for grocery store roses? They always dry up before opening up in the arrangements I’ve been gifted in the past.
Thank you for all the detailed information, it is so so helpful!
Greetings from Texas,
Lana

@TheScentofaGarden 2 months ago

Hi 👋🏾
The colors of this bouquet and the choice of flowers, foliage and bits and pieces are pure magic! Question: when designing a handheld spiral bouquet, do you follow the order of the six elements?