Your wedding day is typically the most wonderful day of your life. If you are like most brides, the day’s events create magical memories you won’t ever want to forget. However, time does take its toll on both our memories and the objects that helped create them. Don’t let your bridal bouquet, the beautiful flowers you held in your hands as you walked down the aisle to marry the man of your dreams, become just another thing to throw away; forgotten, except in photographs. Here are easy ways to save either all or part of your bridal bouquet in order to create something for your home that will forever remind you of your wedding day.
Pressing Flowers
One way brides keep their bouquets alive is to dry selected pieces of flowers or foliage between the pages of a book or magazine before mounting them into a glass frame. Here’s how.
- Lay the flower petals and pieces of foliage you want to preserve on a couple pieces of paper towelling with some separation space between them.
- Gently press with your fingers until flat. If some flower or stem parts are too bulky, you may want to eliminate them.
- Cover with a few more layers of paper towels and facial tissues.
- Carefully transfer the entire thing between the pages of an old magazine.
- Place the closed magazine on a flat, hard surface.
- Cover the magazine with books or other heavy objects.
- Leave your makeshift flower press untouched for about two weeks.
- Remove dried flowers carefully.
How to assemble memories in a frame
Buy a nice picture frame with a glass cover, and enough black (or any other colour velvet) to cover the cardboard piece inside the frame. Clean the glass thoroughly and make sure it is dry before beginning.
- Glue the velvet to the cardboard
- Plan the layout. It may be helpful to draw a layout before you begin working with the petals since they are relatively fragile. You do not want them to break after having waiting two weeks while they were drying!
- Carefully arrange the dried flowers and other bouquet items like ribbons and embellishments onto the velvet. Think about including a wedding picture or two, and perhaps the invitation. Do not glue the petals to the velvet since doing so will discolour them.
- Press the glass down over the petals and other items.
- Carefully turn the whole thing over and slide it into the frame, securing the back.
Now you have a beautiful keepsake of your wedding that is a warm and welcome addition to your new home.
Alternate way of drying flowers
Another way to dry the flowers you have chosen to keep is to use a desiccant, which is a drying agent. The most common are sand, silica gel and borax. But, since borax can be breathed in, it is probably safer to use one of the other two products. Silica gel really helps retain the colour of the petals and is readily available on-line.
How to use
Find a small cardboard box and cover the bottom with either sand or silica gel. Place the flowers on top and sprinkle more of your desiccant over them, but be very careful not to crush the petals. Approximately two weeks later, shake the desiccant off and begin assembling your picture frame memory.