For all our sentimental fairies, we know that your wedding bouquet is not something you’d enjoy seeing in the bin anytime soon. While most floral arrangements usually end up in a vase for a week before slowly rotting away, we don’t want to see the same happen to your lovely bunch. So here are all the different ways you can preserve your bouquet and keep them with you for a lifetime.

1. Frame It

A popular way to keep your bouquet is to frame it as it is. You’ll first need to dry it out, and then you can use a shadow box, which is essentially a 3D frame, to add in your whole bouquet as well as some other sentiments, like a photo or your wedding invitation. If you love your DIY, you can give it a go at home, and maybe even have a practice run before your wedding with a random bunch of flowers. Otherwise, there are some professionals who can get it done for you.

2. Press It Down

If you’re not too keen on the 3D framing, pressing your flowers is a great option. You can still include a photo or your invitation, but it’ll just be in a normal frame. You can play around with your bouquet, either using the whole bunch or just a few of your favourites. It might be a bit easier to do this at home, and there are heaps of flower pressing guides available for you to follow. The basics? You’ll be needing some heavy books or weights to actually press the flowers down flat.

3. Turn It Into Jewellery

For those of you who are having serious attachment issues with your bouquet, turning it into jewellery lets you take it with you everywhere you go. Obviously, you won’t be able to keep your whole bouquet, but if you pick a couple of flowers, you can have it turned into little beads on a necklace or bracelet. Flowers Forever Bellabeads take your bouquet and turn the petals into a malleable paste before creating a beautiful piece of jewellery. It doesn’t get quite as sentimental than that!

4. Floral Globes

This is a stunning way to preserve your bouquet. While this isn’t something you’ll be able to do at home, you can send your flowers to someone to do it for you. Everafter uses advanced techniques, like freeze drying, to create your customised globe. The process takes 8 to 12 weeks but the results are really worth it.

5. Deconstruct Your Bouquet

Similar to the shadow box framing, this method will see you taking apart your bouquet, drying it, and then placing the individual flowers side by side inside the box. It might not work for all types of bouquets, but it looks great, and has a less obvious wedding vibe, making it perfectly timeless.

Feature image by Mark Jay Photography