Guest bouquet: let your guests help you build your bouquet
Ceremony Advice, Floral Porn
By
on June 10, 2008
33
Here's the ultimate DIY wedding bouquet idea: as your guests enter your ceremony venue, give each of them a flower. Or you could even ask each guest to bring a flower as their gift!
Then, when you walk to the altar, you can stop to collect a flower from each guest … assembling your community bouquet as you go.
This gives you an awesome opportunity to acknowledge and involve each guest while building the ultimate diy bouquet — I like this way better than a receiving line.
Read more posts about: aisle, bouquet alternatives, ceremony, diy bouquet, steal-this-idea« Previous post
About Ariel Meadow Stallings
Author of Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides, Ariel acts as the publisher of all the Offbeat Empire websites. She lives, loves, and dorks out hard in Seattle, WA.
Shannan said
This is a great idea!!! My mother and father are renewing their vows next year and they are doing a "hippie wedding". I think this would be an awsome idea to do as my mother walks down the isle. Thanks!!
mordicai said
I like it too! & I was the groom for that wedding. Yay.
Yvette said
what a great idea! i would have never thought of it, love it!
Almost a Bride said
That is such a good idea! I love anything that involves the guests participation! Thank you for that nugget of gorgeousness!
Alyssa said
I am the sister-in-law of the shown wedding and we all enjoyed selecting a flower and being involved. The bouquet looked splendid, as did the bride!
rebecca said
Wow! This bride is like my wedding soulmate! We are both getting married on a boat and have the same peacock clutch. I think I may even copy the bouquet idea.
Meg said
Love, love, love.
shelly said
What a lovely idea. I'm trying to find more ways to incorporate our guests into our ceremony and this could be a nice fit….but how did you choose which guests would get flowers, the ones on the inside of the aisle would be hard to get to and it looks as though you don't have nearly as many stems as guests…thanks for your help
Jennifer said
Shelly- This worked for us because we only had 29 guests and there entire ceremony was done with everyone standing. On their own, they formed an aisle of people, one person deep. I told people ahead of time that if they wanted to be certain of handing me a flower, to bring their own, but that otherwise we would provide some (my friends who bought all of the flowers from wholesalers bought a mismatched selection for this purpose.) I have no idea how the doling out part went, and if there were any hurt feelings about being left out, no one's mentioned it. There was one person who had a flower in each hand, one for me and a small one for the groom.
Jennifer said
Rebecca- The boat idea was actually discarded and we got married at an old private club. But! I have to obnoxiously crow just a tiny bit about the clutch to say that mine was a custom order and the fabric was something she found on ebay at my request. I would love to see pictures of you with yours once they're available, if you see this and if you're on the ning tribe, I'm levinine there, too.
holly hatam said
What a great way to get your guests involved and in the end you have such a meaningful bouquet!
rebecca said
Oops, looks like the comment I left didn't go live. I'll definitely show you a pic with the peacock clutch. Mine was custom made by an Etsy seller
I love that fabric!
Anna K. Design said
What a great idea for guest and bride as well… I love that it will appeal to everyone.
Shirley said
I am Jennifer's mother. Before she and Mordicai (groom) entered together, a couple of her friends passed out a variety of long stemmed flowers to each guest. There were enough to go around and as Jennifer mentioned, some brought their own to hand her. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about how it was going to work. It turned out to be a very special part of the celebration and everyone was touched. As part of the wedding ceremony, Mordicai removed a green velvet ribbon from Jennifer's neck and tied it around the bouquet. Tell any skeptical mothers that it is a great idea and will all work itself out.
FrankensteinsBride said
What a wonderful idea!! I wish I would have thought of this!
Laura said
I think this idea is AWESOME!!
hayley said
Do you think this would work with my flowergirl collecting the flowers before I arrive? I wanted to collect the flowers a la Jennifer, but there will be 70 guests and my Mum freaked out about the idea.
Laney said
I've actually been giving a lot of thought to doing something like this. Asking family members to each bring a flower to the ceremony–their favorite bloom, what was used at their wedding, or just something pretty they found that day–and place it in a vase. Then we'll scoop them up and tie a ribbon around right before I walk down the aisle.
At my cousin's wedding, all the children in the bride's family walked up to her while she stood at the alter and each handed her a rose. After they were done, my cousin gave his spouse-to-be a huge tropical bloom and then tied up her bouquet himself. Like others have said, it was a really special part of the ceremony.
Gwinna said
Thank you so much for such a beautiful idea!
Gwinna said
Thank you so much for such a beautiful idea!
Gwinna said
Thank you so much for such a beautiful idea!
Loanne said
WE did this kind of thing at our wedding 34 years ago. We included a special note in the invitations of close friends and family asking them to bring a flower to be combined into my bouquet representing the bringing together of each of our friends to become our friends. We had a friend collect the flowers and make the bouquet before I walked down the aisle. It was a beautiful and a one-of-a-kind bouquet,
April said
What a brilliant idea.I think it would be fun to do it that way.It would truly involve the participation of everyone and that would be quite memorable too.
Elisabeth said
One of my best friends had her identical twin as her "flower girl". She passed out the flowers to those on the aisle, then the Bride collected them up again. So touching!
Megan said
We did this, but for a centrepiece. We asked guests to bring a flower from their garden/piece of driftwood/something special to assemble a decoration as we all gathered for morning tea pre-ceremony. One friend brought the chain of horseshoes her late mother had made for her wedding, inc a shoe from a horse I'd once ridden. It's a testament to waterproof mascara that neither of us ended up with under-eye streaks after she explained the significance…