Caring for Your Flowers for Your Centerpiece

Rebecca Henry: Hi, I am Rebecca, co-owner of Petal's Edge Floral Design in Alexandria, Virginia and today we are learning how to make a wedding centerpiece. In this clip, we will be talking about what to do with your flowers after you have brought them home from the grocery store or the wholesaler or where you choose to buy them. Most flowers will come whether they are in a mixed bunch or a single kind of flower, will come in a plastic sheet just like this. What you will first need to do is obviously get yourself a nice, clean bucket. You want to fill the bucket with water and you want to fill it up maybe one third of the way. Then you will need to make sure you put some flower food into the bucket.

Now the flower food can either come in packets which you can get along with the flowers at the grocery store or you can buy it at your local craft store in a bigger bucket. You want to empty it into the bucket and make sure that it's nice and dissolved in the water. Then we will take our flowers and we will cut off all of the rubber bands and any other ties that are binding the flowers together. Throw those away and pull off the plastic sheet really carefully so you don't damage to the flowers at all. Then we want to make sure we cut the ends of the flowers so they have a nice, fresh cut and then you just place them in the water, maybe loosen them up a little bit so they have some room to breathe from their friends and that's it.

As far as how long in advance to get your flowers before your wedding, you want to think about the different kinds of flowers you are using. Some flowers like this Delphinium are ready to use right away. Some flowers primarily like roses in this bunch here, need a few days to open up. They are cut very early and they might be very closed. You may want a day or two to let them open up and look really nice. So think about that in terms of when to get your flowers.

Also think about how long you will need time wise, to build your arrangements before your wedding and finally, where to keep them in your house. If you do need to keep them for a day or two, you want to pick a nice, cool space. If you have a basement, that's really a good spot. If you have an enclosed porch and it's not too hot out and not too cold, it has been a nice even 50 or 60 degrees, that's also a good place to put them. If you don't have anything like that, just find the best, coolest, darkest spot in your house. If you have an empty refrigerator that's also a good choice, but you want to avoid putting flowers in anything that have fruit in it. The fruit gives off a gas that can ripen your flowers quickly and make them age a lot more soon and sooner than you would like them to.

Next, we will be talking about what kind of vase to select for the different kind of arrangements for a wedding centerpiece you might want to do.