How to Make a Bridal Bouquet Like a Professional Florist

Hello and welcome to this video where I will be showing you how I made this bridal bouquet. Okay so the first thing I do when I'm making any kind of bouquet is to lay out all of my ingredients. I've got my foliage on this side, I'm using this really fun type of pine, it's got this lovely soft texture. A mixture of different eucalyptus types, there's so many different types of eucalyptus with different shapes. I've also got some euryngium. These particular ones came with lots of different side shoots so I've broken some of them down so they're not too bulky in the bouquet. I've got some limonium here, some wax flower, some astrantia, some astilbe, some ranunculus that I've wired and some spray roses hiding under here. And to be honest I'm not too sure what these are called but they were in the inspiration picture that my bride sent me and I spotted them on my wholesaler website so I included those. I have also got with my focal flowers these lovely avalanche roses. I'm actually going to save these until the end so that I can place them. You can do that with stems that have a very solid stem like a rose. I wouldn't do that with something like a ranunculus where forcing the stem through the bouquet might snap it. So as with any kind of bouquet I do the same with gifting for example we are going to use the spiral structure. So what that means is you're inserting the stems as it sounds in a spiral to help them kind of push against each other and hold their shape. So I'm going to start mainly with foliage, greenery and begin to build in some of the flowers as I go. To start your spiral structure you're going to start with a cross and you're going to use your hand to hold your foliage and your flowers. So you're starting with the cross one on top of the other there and you're going to feed in always in the same direction. So for me I'm going to feed everything in front and in this angle. I am going to as I go turn my bouquet and keep feeding in in that same direction. Make sure you end up with a lovely even bouquet. So I'm going to do kind of one turn as it were with lots and lots of foliage. I think where I've gone wrong in the past or a common mistake is to think oh well bridal that's really luxury therefore I have to be absolutely chock-a-block full of flowers when actually if you look at a lot of bridal bouquets they're mainly foliage. Yes you have your focus on flowers but actually the base is very very greened up especially here in the winter a lot of greenery. I'm going to start with my greenery and notice I'm feeding everything in the same way. Okay so now that I've got a basic base of greenery I'm starting to build a structure that my stems can sit in. So now in this rotation I'm going to start adding some of my other elements in as well. Don't forget to continue adding greenery as well. Now at this point I've added about half of my ingredients not including my main focus flowers and I want to start thinking about the shape and also where the front might be. Unlike a a bridal bouquet is going to have a front. I think actually I think this is going to be the front. I've got a bit more height over here and a bit lower here so I'm going to start to more consciously think about that as I continue to add my elements. I'm not going to put a monkey friend back because everything will be then still be much more height. So yeah that's going to be my front I think. I'm slowing down a lot more now because I'm thinking much more deliberately. The first third of your stems that you're adding you're adding basically to build a base to build some bulk and then you can start to refine. Okay so I'm now at a point where I've added most of my ingredients. The only thing I've not added is my actual flowers which is lovely white roses. And the reason I've saved them to last is so that I can see the kind of shape of the bouquet before I start to add them in. Now with stems that are fairly strong and you're confident they're not going to snap you can just twiddle them in. So you pick where you want them to go and this just gives you a bit more precision with placing those larger flowers. Now I wouldn't do that with something like a ranunculus stem because it is likely to snap. Something with a woody stem like a rose would absolutely This is going to just take that balance of the white to the green and change it slightly to favor the white and be mindful of the other stems nearby. You wouldn't want to feed the rose in like this next to one of those fragile stems as well. Carnations can be quite fragile as well. And then picking the most gorgeous roses starting with rice bouquet means that you can prioritize the best stems from your pack. Now bridal bouquets definitely do have a front more and formal ones that are very very rounded not so much but I like to that is quite clearly the back and that is quite clearly the front and I will trim the stems really short because the bridal will hold the bouquet in front of her like that. Okay the next thing we're going to do is we're going to put what we call the handle onto our bouquets. So that is the bit that makes the look nice hides the twine and just gives it that finishing touch. So I'm going to leave the twine on that I've used to tie it off but I'm going to cut off the extra fangly bits here. And what you need to do is you need to use waterproof tape grocery tape or tape and you need to tightly wrap around and down the bouquet. I will trim these stems again probably so you need to cover from slightly above where your twine is just to make sure you're you are covering it and really wrap it tight. Don't want to get any leaves or anything in there. So this isn't the bit that that will be seen but this is just helping to secure stems you can still a bit of movement and I want to prevent that really. So each time I'm going around trying to tug it a little bit tighter I'm going down stems overlapping. Okay once you think that that's nice and secure just cut that off. So now I'm actually going to go back up the handle but with the tape the other way around. So I'm going to use hessian for this bouquet rustic kind of winter look but you could be whatever. Now some people will just attach the ribbon with pins they won't use the tape but I just think this gives you the extra security and the extra coverage stops you worrying about the ribbon moving around. I'm now going to use hessian and I'm literally going to wrap it around sticking it to the tape keeping the kind of tattier end I suppose the end that's been cut at the back only moving it down slightly so that you're always overlapping. With hessian in particular or any kind of thin fabric like chiffon you might still be able to see the tape through it so you want to have the overlap the layers to disguise that I think. Cut it off, hide the messy end by tucking it under and then use two pins. I use the pearl headed pins and put the pins through the hessian fabric. It's a bit tricky because it's also going through all those layers of tape and then into stems as well so persevere. There we go, one more. Make sure you're putting it at an angle up not straight through because I mean you wouldn't really have this issue with this bouquet because it's quite thick but if you had a smaller bouquet you don't want to risk your bride getting stabbed. Lovely and that's secured a handle. So I'm going to trim the stems once more to to make them a little bit shorter and a bit more neat and there's our bouquet. So that's how I made this bouquet now all that's left for me to do is to package it up in a nice presentation box and take it to the bride. Thank you for watching I hope you found this useful feel free to ask me any questions in the comments or make suggestions of any other videos that you might like me to make and of course subscribe and follow along on my journey. Bye!