I love doing flower arrangement. Wedding is one of my favorite theme to do. As I always say to people that wedding can be expensive, but you can still have a fabulous floral display with just a few hundreds dollars. If you enjoy making arts & crafts and flower arrangement, do it yourself will cost you a lot less then buying pre-made arrangement from floral shops. I'm not a professional floral designer or anything, just someone who loves doing crafts as a hobby. I've done floral arrangement as wedding gift for few weddings over the past few years for my friends and family. First wedding cost me around $200, second one cost me just over $400 (but that's a big wedding), and third wedding cost me just over $200. And I'll show you what I've made with that mount of money, and I have plenty of left over materials for future uses.

A good friend of mine always dreamt about having a fairy tale theme for her wedding, and she got her wish! It was a fairy small wedding (around 50 guests) on a beautiful spring wedding in May. The key items for the fairy tale theme were the glass slippers, horse & carriage, and scroll invitation. Since the wedding was back in 2005, I only have a few pictures to show.

 This wedding is for another close friend of mine. It was a Scottish wedding in October, therefore they wanted a fall colour theme for their wedding. The bride really loves ivys and wheat, and has asked me to incorporate them into the flower designs for their wedding. Theirs was a big wedding, around 120 people. I was still able to make bridal and bride's maids bouquets, 3 long candle arrangement, flower girl basket, and 15 table center piece arrangements for just over $400.

The last wedding I did was back in August 2008 for my cousin. Because I offered too late, they had already put down payment with floral shop for bridal bouquets and 2 large flower display. Since I kept on insisting on helping, they asked me to make a few things that did not supply by the floral shop. I spend just over $200 to make 2 tall flower arrangements for dessert tables, wave candle arrangement for cake table, floating candles set display for guest signing book, 2 flower baskets for the wedding program, and a nicely decorated box for the wedding cards. The wedding colours were deep purple, plum, red and gold.

This wedding just happened recently at the beginning of November 2009. This is another wedding that I've made the wedding flower arrangements for. I didn't actually spend much for this wedding at all because the bride has provided me with silk flowers that she bought solely from Dollar Store. I'm pretty sure she spend around $50 or less to buy these silk flowers from the Dollar Store. I personally spend less then $30 from the Dollar Store because I ran out of materials. I made these arrangements as a gift to the bride and groom because she is my boss's daughter, and I wanted to help because they did not set a lot of budget for the wedding flowers arrangements.

With less then $100, I made 3 bride's maid bouquets, the bridal bouquet. 4 Boutonnieres and 2 corsages, plus a candle display for the head table, and a throwing bouquet. I reuse the wave candles holder for many different occasions, this wedding is another one of them. All the arrangements you see here are 90% made from Dollar Store silk flowers. Believe it or not, but it's true. You really don't have to spend a lot of money to have a fabulous flower arrangements for your wedding as you can see here.

There're going to be few photos of the wedding cake you see from below. I'm putting them in because the cake decoration is home-made, and it's done by a friend of the family as the gift to bride and groom. The wedding cake is truly a master piece especially from being home-made. I just wanted to share Mary's talent for cake decoration with everyone.

So there you have it, they didn't cost me a lot to make and I have a lot of left over materials that I can re-use. I also recieved a lot of good complements from people too. For a flower design to really worth your while to make, the key is to know where to shop for materials and when.

My primary shopping place is actually from Dollar Store. They have great selections on artificial flowers and all kinds of beautiful candle stands that can easily be turn into a fabulous arrangements. Walmart is another good place for supplies. I'm not sure about down in the States, but up where I am in Canada, our grocery stores carry some pretty neat seasonal items. Those wave candle stands and set of 3 floating candle glass bowl were from grocery store. Down side of seasonal items is that once they're sold out, that's it.

I visit crafts store such as Micheal pretty frequent. I only get my crafts supply there if no where else has them. Knowing when to shop for flowers from craft store is the key, and always plan ahead. Craft store always have their seasonal flowers out months before the season is in place. So the best time to shop for seasonal flowers is during mid-season to the end of the season. Christmas season for example. All the Christmas stuff will be out even before Halloween is over. If you want Christmas sales items, shop in December, because by then they will have sales going since they need to make room for the Spring flowers.

So always plan ahead and shop wisely for your crafts supplies. Enjoy making your crafts for all occasions. Cheers!