Getting engaged is such an exciting time. However, the exhilaration of saying “I will” can quickly be replaced by the overwhelming concerns surrounding planning a wedding.
Couples today are more and more environmentally conscious, so using fresh floral may conflict with their personal beliefs on being eco-friendly. Using fresh floral doesn’t have to equate to being wasteful, though. There are a number of things you can do with your floral after the wedding to make it a worthwhile investment. Here are my suggestions:
- Share it with another couple.
Sometimes a good cost-effective solution for floral is reusing it at another event. If you get married somewhere that offers more than one event a day, see if you’re allowed to contact another couple also getting married there on your wedding date. That couple might be open to splitting the cost of the floral if it can stay in place for both events. You’ll just have to be open to discussing colors and designs with someone else so it works for both of you.
- Donate it.
Places like nursing homes, churches, and hospitals accept floral donations. It’s a lovely gesture to pass along something that made you and your guests so happy to people who can also enjoy them.
- Honor someone with it.
I’ve had couples take their floral to the gravesites of their deceased loved ones and leave it there as a way to honor their memories. I think this is a very sweet and sentimental idea.
- Gift it to guests.
Allow guests to bring your flowers home with them. You can make a game out of, placing a sticker on the bottom of one of the guest chairs at each table and allowing the person who’s sitting in that chair to take the centerpiece home with them. You can then gift other floral (such as the bouquets or cake floral) at your discretion, maybe as a way to honor the couple who has been married the longest or the person who evoked the most emotion with their toast.
- Create something new with it.
You can turn your wedding floral into keepsakes, such as drying it out and making potpourri, pressing the flowers and turning them into greeting cards, extricating the oils and making scented water, crafting them into beautifully scented soap, or incorporating them into wax candles.
Article originally appeared on Head Over Heels
