The Easiest Way to Preserve Flowers (Including Your Wedding Bouquet)

Flowers are expensive, especially ones you get for special occasions like Mother’s Day, birthdays, and most of all, your wedding! Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could preserve your flowers, including meaningful arrangements such as your wedding bouquet? Well, you can!

We’ve received a lot of questions from brides about HOW to make this amazing framed and freeze-dried wedding bouquet (pictured above) that we posted on Facebook, so we wanted to give you a breakdown of what you can do to achieve this look. While this is a great way to preserve a bouquet in a sentimental way that will also look amazing hanging in your home, it IS expensive. However, it’s not your only option! You can decide how to preserve flowers and how much you want to spend using the info below. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Decide HOW you want to preserve the flowers

There are several options when it comes to preserving an arrangement or wedding bouquet. You can choose to air dry, press, silica-gel dry, or freeze dry your flowers.

Air drying your flowers is a fairly simply DIY (you can find instructions here), but it won’t maintain the vibrant colors of your arrangement or bouquet. You can also opt to get them professionally pressed, which will definitely maintain more of the color and shape. Silica gel is another flower preservation method that you can DIY which will do a better job of maintaining the integrity of your flowers. I like this DIY method the best:

Once you dry the flowers using the silica method, you’ll want to then frame them, or you can get really crafty and put them in resin! Just make sure before you start any preservation process to get the right safety gear, such as gloves and goggles.

Now, the mother of all wedding bouquet preservation techniques is freeze-drying your flowers and placing them in a glass container or frame, which is how the bouquet pictured above is preserved. But, unless you have the crazy professional flower freeze-dryer equipment at home, this will have to be professionally done. If that’s what you want to do, the next step is to locate a vendor, locally or online.

2. Find a local or online vendor

If you’re looking to preserve a professionally-done bouquet, start by asking your florist if they are able to preserve your flowers, or if they know of a local vendor who can. If nobody is available locally, each of the links below have been recommended for various types of flower preservation techniques. Keep in mind you’ll want to decide which vendor you’ll want to go with and start the order forms as soon as possible. If you know you want to preserve your wedding bouquet, you’ll want to start this process at least two weeks prior to your wedding day. Otherwise if want to preserve non-wedding flowers, the sooner the better!

Vendors We Like:

• Freeze Frame It
• Queen & I
• Everlasting Flowers

There are also several vendors on Etsy who preserve flowers, including InderArts who did the pictured bouquet.

3. Price Each Option

Freeze Frame It offers something similar to the photo we posted for around $480, though keep in mind depending on the frame you choose some freeze-driers will charge to $1200 and up. For comparison, Everlasting Flowers offers pressed bouquet frames from $145-$600. 

4. Preserving Your Wedding Bouquet? Remember to Skip the Bouquet toss!

Once you decide which method of wedding bouquet preservation works for you and your budget, you’ll want to be extra careful with it once your wedding day rolls around. If you plan on preserving your wedding bouquet, you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t get damaged. So, in lieu of using it for the bouquet toss, use a less expensive bouquet of flowers to symbolically throw instead.

5. Don’t Wait Too Long

For wedding flowers you can start the process months in advance and set a timeline for yourself. For instance if you’re going on your honeymoon immediately after the wedding, you’ll want to enlist the help of a parent or bridesmaid/groomsmen to start the preservation DIY process. If you’re going the professional route, you’ll want to get your bouquet shipped out (or dropped off if using a local vendor) within 48 to 72 hours of your wedding for the best results. To make sure you have the freshest flowers for a DIY wedding bouquet preservation or a professional service, you can cut a half inch off the stems and put the bouquet in the fridge until you are able to take the next steps. You can follow this same advice for any bouquet or flower arrangement you want to preserve, just remember that ideally you would start the process when the flowers are fresh and not wilting!

If having your flowers professionally preserved, don’t expect to get the bouquet back right away! It can take anywhere from 6-16 weeks and even up to 9 months to receive your preserved flowers. So be patient!

How Long Do Preserved Flowers Last?

Dried florals can last for years and years, though the colors can fade. Lighter colors tend to become more yellow, and red a dark wine color. Purples and pinks tend to look the best in our opinion. No matter which way you choose to preserve your flowers, make sure to keep them out of direct sunlight, and avoid getting any cleaning sprays on the frame they’re in.

In the meantime, get inspired by browsing through our favorite wedding bouquets here.

Are you interested in preserving your wedding bouquet? Let us know in the comments section below!

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