The memories you make on your wedding day are the ones you’ll cherish forever. When you’re looking through your wedding photo album years later, you’ll remember all the details as though they’re still fresh in your memory.
If you’ve attended your fair share of weddings, then you probably know that the bouquet is an integral part of your wedding ensemble. If you make your way down the aisle without a fresh bouquet of carefully selected flowers, your bridal look just won’t feel complete.
When your wedding day is over, the last thing you’ll want to do is watch all the flowers in your bouquet die slowly on your dresser. If you wish to preserve your wedding bouquet for many years, then luckily for you, there are several methods you can use to preserve them.
In this blog, we’ll look at a detailed step-by-step guide on how to preserve a wedding bouquet with silica gel. But first, let’s discuss why we need to use silica gel.
What You'll Learn...
What is Silica Gel?
You may have seen tiny packets of silica gel in different products. That’s because silica gel is a desiccant that holds excess moisture. It’s used to preserve leather and added to food products as well (like pepperoni).
Since silica gel is used to reduce moisture, it prevents mold from occurring inside the products and reduces spoilage. It isn’t harmful or poisonous, contrary to popular belief, or it wouldn’t be used widely to preserve different kinds of foods.
Preserving Your Wedding Bouquet with Silica Gel
If you wish to preserve your wedding bouquet, you’ll need to take great care of it. Instead of using it in the bouquet toss, it’s ideal to buy a less expensive bouquet to throw into the crowd.
If you want your preserved wedding bouquet to look just as vibrant and full of color, you must place them in fresh water as soon as possible. Remove any flowers from the bouquet that have dried out. Put the stems of all the flowers in a vase full of water.
Don’t forget to change the water almost every day to make sure the flowers stay fresh and fragrant before you can get started with the preservation process.
Materials Required
- An air-tight box with a lid
- Silica gel crystals
- Garden shears
- Wedding bouquet
- Ribbon
- Pins
- Floral wire
- Floral tape
- Floral stakes
Instructions
- The first thing you need to do is disassemble your wedding bouquet. Don’t forget to take a picture of it beforehand because you’ll need to put it back together after you’re done preserving it.
- Get an air-tight container made of plastic and fill the bottom with silica gel crystals. Cut the stems off of each flower and leave just an inch or two.
- To make sure you’re drying out all the petals, you need to insert the flowers inside the crystals, so they’re standing upright. Make sure there’s a little room between each flower.
- After all the flowers have been carefully inserted, gently pour in more silica crystals to completely cover the petals. Try not to leave any space between the petals and make sure the flowers stay in their original shape.
- After that, you need to cover the container with the lid and wait three to five days to allow the flowers to fully dry out.
- After the flowers have had enough time to dry, you need to gently remove them from the silica crystals. Don’t forget to shake them to get rid of any leftover silica.
- Use floral wire to make a hole in the stem and slowly wrap it around the stem and attach it to a green-colored floral stake.
- Once the floral stake is held safely in place, use green floral tape to cover the wire and the floral stake.
- Repeat this method for all the flowers.
- Once all the flowers have been tied to a floral stake, you can finally reassemble them to replicate the look of your wedding bouquet. Use the picture you had taken before to make sure it looks almost identical.
- When you’re satisfied with the recreated bouquet, you can use some more floral tape to hold all the stems together and form a bouquet. Use garden shears to make sure the ends of floral stakes are completely even.
- Wrap the stems with a beautiful ribbon and make sure the stems aren’t visible in any way. After you’ve reached the bottom, you can use pins to keep the ribbon securely in place.
Note: You can also use silica beads, but you should note that it’s a lot easier to fit the petals in silica gel crystals.
How to Display Your Preserved Bouquet
Once you’ve reassembled the preserved flowers into a bouquet, you can display it in a number of ways in your house. You can place it under a Beauty and the Beast-inspired glass cloche. This will prevent it from getting dusty and protect it for many years.
You can also place it inside a shadow box and hang it on a wall. Regardless of how you wish to display it, it’s important to keep it in a spot that’s visible to you so that every time you look at it, you’ll be reminded of your wedding day.
Final Thoughts
If you want the flowers to look as beautiful as they did on your wedding day, you need to preserve them before they’ve dried out or become spoiled. You don’t even have to use silica gel because there are loads of other methods you can use to protect the flowers in your wedding bouquet.
You can preserve them with epoxy resin, air-dry them, dip them into wax, and even have them painted if they’ve lost their original color. You can also look for florists in your area that will preserve the flowers for you if you’re afraid to take any risks.
But if you wish to do it on your own, then all you need to do is follow the detailed instructions in this blog post to recreate your wedding bouquet, so it looks as good as new.
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