How to Make Affordable Summer Wedding Flowers

My sisters and I made the centerpieces for my niece’s wedding. I can’t wait to show you these affordable summer wedding flowers.

There are a lot of ways to make summer wedding flowers. And with a little bit of planning, you can make a lot. We made 30 centerpieces that were affordable and turned out beautifully. Most importantly, we had fun along the way!

A Backyard Wedding

My brother and my sister-in-law hosted the most beautiful wedding at their home and everything was spectacular. My two sisters and I made all of the centerpieces in colors that complimented the bridal party and I just love these purple and white flowers!

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Tips for Making Affordable Summer Wedding Flowers

Today I am going to take you through the steps we used to make these summer wedding flowers for my niece. You can use some or all of these steps anytime you are creating flowers for a dinner, a large dinner party, or even a big celebration such as a wedding reception.

#1 – Use Inspiration Photos

My sisters and I asked the bride to send us some photos of what she wanted the centerpieces to look like. This helped us so much because immediately we saw the style and type of flowers we should use for our summer wedding flowers.

Four of the photos she sent are above. They are all so beautiful and were a great inspiration!

#2 – Get Creative with Vases

One of the first things you need to do is decide what kind of vases you are going to use.

And even though I used the word “vases”, you don’t need to only use traditional vases. Mason jars, galvanized buckets, and crocks are some of my favorite vases and they can be very inexpensive. I highly suggest you look around your home and see what you already have and what you can borrow.

For this reception, we did not care if the vases matched exactly but we know we wanted to use glass (some were round and different sizes). Between my sisters and I, we already owned enough similar vases for 30 arrangements.

#3 – Determine How Many Flowers You Need

I have to admit that I panicked when I started thinking about how many flowers we needed to buy for thirty centerpieces! But then I realized it wasn’t hard at all.

I took one of the vases and made a practice arrangement. I used some fresh and faux flowers because all I wanted to determine is about how many flowers I needed for each arrangement.

The magic number was 16 which meant we needed approximately 480 flowers or 40 dozen flowers. Yikes!

#4 – Select Flowers by Color and Size Not Type

There are a few things you need to accept about this process. There are two words that do not apply to making this many centerpieces, and those two words are perfect and matching. If I had expected every single centerpiece to look exactly the same and perfect then this would have been a miserable experience.

At the flower mart, we shopped for flowers that were the right size, color, and style and bought as close to 40 dozen as we could. One thing I did not realize is that the vendors at the Los Angeles Flower Mart sell flowers in bunches of ten and twelve. This means that we did not buy exactly 30 of every type of flower. We got close, and that worked great. Also, for some flowers, we bought enough to put three in each arrangement because we liked them and they were well-priced.

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#5 – Research the Best Prices for Buying

Speaking of prices, you should do a little price shopping. If you are fortunate to have a local Flower Mart in your area then you are likely best to do your shopping there. Just be sure to check the times that the public is allowed to shop and confirm they allow non-wholesale vendors to shop. In LA, our flower mart charges $2 to enter the wholesale mart. That’s a bargain!

Otherwise, you can find great prices on flowers at grocery stores such as Trader Joe’s and Costco. You can also order them in advance. You can also try vendors at your local Farmer’s Market who can likely help you out.

#6 – Assembling the Flowers

We went to the flower mart on Thursday morning and then went to my brother’s house to assemble the flowers. Normally we would have done this on Friday (the day before the wedding) but since my brother has a large wine cellar (at a very cool temperature) we made the arrangements on Thursday and stored them in the wine cellar for two days.

We placed six tables in the garage and set out all of the vases on half of the tables. We filled them up with water, opened up all the flowers, and cut them to the desired length. (Of course, later on, we cut some of them again to get it right.)

We were so busy filling the vases, that I forgot to take any pictures. But we started with the greens and put some in each vase. Then we started with the first flower on the table and added one to each vase. We did this about sixteen times until all the vases were full.

As we added more flowers, we cut the lengths of the flowers so that they worked in the vases.

Once we were done we placed all of the flowers in the wine cellar. I took this photo standing above the centerpieces. This is so cool!

The wedding was amazing.

We had so much fun at the wedding. Even though Michael couldn’t make it (due to a business conflict) we had a lot of fun. I have four siblings and a very large family so we had a blast seeing everyone!

I am sure you want to know how much we spent on the flowers. We spent an average of $20 on each arrangement!

Gorgeous Faux Florals for All of Your Arranging Needs!

More Weddings Inspiration

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