It is natural to want to keep your bridal bouquet forever and DIY makes it seem like such a great project after the wedding. Sadly, DIY preservation often comes with heartbreaking results. As a traditional Japanese flower presser and the nation’s leader in color correction, I have seen every kind of “oops” moment when brides try to preserve their flowers at home. I have heard “how hard can it be?” The most painful to hear is “it is too expensive”, right up until the moment someone realizes the true cost of losing their bouquet forever. There are always lots of tears and much regret, which can be avoided by using professional floral preservation artists. Pressing flowers and designing them into a piece of art takes technical skill, artistic savvy, and consistent practice through trial and error. Instead of trying to build Rome in a day with your flowers, reach out to an experienced flower presser to bring your vision to life.
There are five extremely critical factors that create the perfect storm of your DIY preservation implosion, which can leave your bouquet looking like garden compost instead of an heirloom.
01. Waiting Too Long
This is the number one reason flowers just do not make to the other side. Your flowers should be pressed within 24-48 hours of your wedding. You need to account for unseen time that your florist used when creating your bouquet. By the time your flowers make it to us, it is possible your flowers have been cut and sitting in a cold fridge for a week or more. Once exposed to warm air, it intensifies the decaying process. Flowers are like food; they begin to wilt and brown within hours. Many brides think they can “decide later,” but delay leads to irreparable damage.
02. Improper Pressing Methods
Books, irons, microwaves, oh my! These quick fixes flatten blooms unevenly, cause mold, or scorch delicate petals. All these techniques can work, but typically they do not. Professional artists have specialized presses, paper, and other pressing methods they might use. Sometimes one flower can require many different pressing techniques to achieve the result you are looking for.
The subject of pressing whole versus full scale deconstruction (that means taking the flower apart petal by petal, until the only part of the flower that remains is the stem) is another consideration. I am sure you have all seen the reels on social media where an artist just puts down the head of a flower and then pulls it out of the press looking perfect. Guess what? That is not what happens. The best way to get your flowers to press perfectly is to deconstruct and then reconstruct during final design. Reconstruction deserves its own blog post.
The takeaway from this is you cannot really press flowers whole, or at least not the novice nor the hobbyist.
03. Skipping Color Correction
Every flower will fade to brown, tan, yellow, or gray. Without expert color correction and blending, the bouquet will not reflect what you carried down the aisle. Your bouquet goes from blushing bride to gloomy wallflower. A better way to visualize this is to think of Cinderella after midnight, without color correction, your bouquet loses all its magic.
04. Overlooking Design Composition
DIY often stops at “getting flowers flat.” Professional preservation transforms those petals into art balancing textures, colors, and creating rhythm and structure. You have been successful with the pressing aspect of your preservation but placing those flowers with filler and greenery into a defined space, trying to balance texture and colors, and providing movement throughout the piece is overly complicated. Even professional preservation artists struggle with this. I have. Design is extraordinarily complex and capturing the subtle nuances of shades, lines and symmetry take skill.
05. Not Using Archival Materials
Using cheap frames, acidic mats, or craft glue can lead to discoloration and causes crumbling within a few years. Proper preservation uses museum-grade materials.
There are inherent limitations when attempting to preserve your bouquet. This craft is ancient and requires disciplined hours of practice. Before I started preserving bouquets professionally, I spent an entire year immersing myself in flower pressing. I’m so glad I did because the quality in my pieces is consistent with my dedication to this craft.
Because the concept of DIY is near and dear to my heart, I will always honor the desire to roll up your sleeves and try. But when it comes to preserving your bridal bouquet, what I offer is not just pressing flowers, it is safeguarding the memory, the emotion, and the story behind them. My role is to transform fragile petals into something timeless, so that long after the cake is gone and the dress is stored away, your flowers remain as vibrant as the you carried them.
If the pressing bug strikes, we always have available workshops to satiate the DIY flower presser in you! Vancouver, Washington is your new hub for state-of-the-art floral preservation. Drop us a message or a comment. I always love to hear from you!
Daphne