How to DIY Your Wedding Flowers in Bellingham

This is our 10th year offering DIY flower buckets for people getting married Bellingham, Whatcom County, Seattle and beyond!

Here’s how it looks when you work with us and a recommended timeline:

3-6 months out: You buy your buckets! In our shop (frflowers.com/shop), you can add the number of flower buckets, greenery buckets, and any additional à la carte items like boutonnières and corsages to your cart and enter your color palette and ideal pickup date (1-2 days before event) at checkout.

1 month out: Invite your team to help out and gather supplies. Bud vases and mason jars can be arranged rather quickly, but budget an hour each for bouquets and centerpieces if you’re new to flower arranging. Once you have a time requirement, you can use this total to figure out how many people you’ll need to help: you want a team big enough so that it’s a fun 3-5 hour gathering. We find there’s a lot of desire to help, but folks need a little direction! Assign someone to pick up the flowers, someone to set up the arranging space (fill vases, etc.), someone to provide snacks and drinks, and a couple people for cleanup. You’ll want to make sure you have: snips, vases/jars, and floral tape if you’re doing personal flowers. It’s nice to have a bottle or small watering can to top off vases and something to elevate vases to a nice working height (Crates/yoga bricks/hard boxes). Add floral design, setup, and cleanup to your wedding/event timeline.

1 week out: We’ll email you with additional pickup details. This is a great time to add anything on to your order you forgot, adjust the pickup time, and ask any last-minute questions.

1-2 days out: Pick up your flowers (or send someone to do it) at the farm: a closed vehicle with 2-3’ of headroom is ideal for fitting buckets. We make it pickup easy: when you arrive, we pull your order from the cooler, box it up, and help you load. Store flowers in a cool place out of direct sunlight until you’re ready to arrange. A walk-in cooler if you have access is great, but a cool garage, shady porch, air conditioned room, or darker corner can all work very well. Sun/heat will make flowers open faster - be careful because you don’t want to cook them or age them too quickly. Please don’t leave flowers in a hot car - treat them like you would a living creature.

1 day out: Arrange your flowers! Remove any sleeves or rubber bands from flowers and set them back in their buckets and to the side for easy access. Set up a table for arranging with fill vases up with lots of water. Add any greenery to your vase first if using and then follow with flowers. 3-5 stems makes a really nice bud vase, but 1-2 stems is perfect for substantial flowers like large dahlias, peonies, or tulips. Pack your finished arrangements in boxes. You can pack paper or towels between vases so they don’t fall over.

Day of: Transport flowers to the venue, top off vases with water using a bottle or watering can, and set vases on tables. Keep bouquets in water until needed, boutonnieres and other small wearables in a refrigerator. Have vases ready for bouquets post-ceremony - we like to leave them on the head table.

End of event: Cleanup is often overlooked - rally people ahead of time to help gather flowers. They make great end-of-night favors - either send people home with vases or have someone bundle flowers up and help guests grab them.

Hope this helps you feel more confident DIYing your wedding flowers! We’ll be working on providing more content to show you easy DIY arranging so stay tuned.

And if you need any additional help, just email us at hello@frflowers.com - but check your spam for our reply :)