Tips for floral arranging

Florals: Pro Flowers (c/o) / Geometric hurricane: World Market

I don’t want the parties to stop! Good thing we have New Years coming up – right? Last week was my annual girl’s pajama party which I go completely all out for – it’s the once a year party I always look forward to hosting for the past 11 years.

Last year I displayed a few florals but they just weren’t the right mixture, and this year ProFlowers stepped in and sent me some beautiful bouquet mixtures – and I wanted to share how I arrange them and give a few tips I’ve discovered when handling florals right out of the box! This could be useful if you’re buying them from the grocery, or someone comes and hands you wrapped flowers and you’re not sure what to do.

I don’t have any floral arranging experience and have never taken a workshop – so this could either be helpful to you because you’ll be inspired, or you can give me additional tips!

Make layers

I gravitated towards this Peace and Prayers bouquet because of all the layers – thats what I look for in bouquets. What seems to be the trend lately are florals that drape, swoop down, and so I look for those flimsy florals in the bouquet.

What you don’t want to do is just chop the bottom and then put it in a vase. It’ll look so boring and you aren’t showcasing your flowers! 

I put in the longer stems, dramatic, the fillers and I leave them very long. Then I place the hefty main flowers a little shorter, some at different heights, then add the smaller flowers, in this case, the bud roses.

Pick the right vase

Sometimes florals come with the option of being in a vase, other times you just have a bouquet and that’s it. I don’t mind getting bouquets without a vase since I have so many – and I really am selective over the vases!

I was told by a florist friend, Malori of Hoot & Holler that for angled vases or ones that look spikey, she’ll add tulips, or a soft flower to make it interesting. She also said you could cut eucalyptus leaves off trees and use them as fillers – they are so popular. I tried to do that one night at a neighborhood post office but I chickened out when it was 11 pm and a car sat in the parking lot with the lights off!

^^ These happen to be glass hurricanes for candles! I decided to turn them into vases and split the Silvery Snowflakes bouquet into two for my table top.

I liked the green blue look in this so I decided to keep it in the color family using a green tinted vase – always use flower food too!

Buy them before you need them

Proflowers had sent me these florals 2 day before the party which was suggested by their social media. I wasn’t sure, but they insisted it would give them plenty of time to bloom and look their best and fullest by the time the party rolled around – they are the floral experts so I trusted them. Looking at this Christmas Tulips with Douglas fir bouquet , I’m so glad! They came super closed up which is great – they are super fresh! Just a few days, you’ll see below the way they bloomed so beautifully!

So if you’re preparing the florals for a party, or you’re sending them, do it a few days early! I love having fresh flowers around, happy floral arranging and entertaining! It also can cut down on the costs for Christmas decor and storage – florals are festive and temporary (and require no need for storage space!). Cheers to entertaining!