Flowers or no flowers at a wedding?

If you are getting married, gotten married or just dreaming of getting married, what are your opinions on flowers at weddings? do you think they are a waste?





the fragrence of all the flowers at the weddings i have been to gives me a headache!! so i think when i get hitched i will have to find an alternative to flowers!





what does everyone else think?

Flowers or no flowers at a wedding?
Flowers are traditional, but it's your wedding and therefore your decision. If you enjoy them, it's not a waste; if you find them distracting or distasteful, then yes, for you they would be a waste.





If you like the look but not the smell, many florists can come up with ingenious bouquets that provide color without aggravating your allergies or delicate sense of smell.





Or you could consider a very limited use of flowers - maybe just the bouquets. The centerpieces could be anything that complements your theme - my friend used tall fluted vases filled with orange slices for a visually striking but allergy-free alternative. You could easily skip flowers at the church, or replace them with ribbons and bows.
Reply:We used all silk flowers at our wedding, it saved on costs %26amp; there was no overwhelming smell. We also only used a minimal amount of flowers, I was the only one w/ a bouquet. Flowers are beautiful, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend all of that money on something that would just get thrown away!
Reply:They give me a headache too, plus they are so expensive! I had a small (25 people) country wedding, so my compromise was in keeping with the event.





The church was decorated only with bows on the front pews.


I made bouquet of garden flowers that basically have no scent (zinnias, daisies, ivy). We didn't bother with corsages or the like. I used mums from a garden center to decorate the church hall - we repotted the individual plants in decorative containers and had people take them home for their own gardens. I did take hayfever medicine that day, not so much to protect against the flowers, but to protect against the evil perfume that I knew a few guests would wear.
Reply:I think they're better as an accent rather than something to overindulge in. I personally have only been to one wedding where they used real flowers and I wasn't too impressed. I just bought some fake flower petals online for part of my centerpieces and I think I'm just going to get one bouquet of flowers from the grocery store or something and use that for myself and my bridesmaids to carry. I think fake flowers are just as pretty, dont wilt, are better for highly sensitive guests, and are more cost effective.
Reply:These days, flowers that have a fragrance are so rare! - sigh!


You must really be sensitive.


There's nothing wrong with having silk flowers, at all.


However, for our wedding, we wanted the specialness of fresh flowers - and had lots of different types, different colours for our July wedding.
Reply:My groom absolutely hates fake flowers, so we're getting real ones. However, we're not getting many. We'll have two tall, thin arrangements to frame the area where the officiant and we will stand, and we're making small, simple centerpieces for each table. The centerpieces will consist of red roses in small, round bowl-shaped vases. We can buy all the roses for under $150, and each arrangement will be abot $100. I'm making my bouquet myself, so all I have to buy are a few flowers and some ribbon.





If you don't want flowers, green plants such as ferns and ivy are a good alternative. You can also decorate with lamps and candles.
Reply:If flowers gives you a headache, then the question of having flowers is not a question of waste, but of comfort for you. I don't know where you're getting married, so I can't make a lot of suggestions. You might be able to get away with just candles - depends on your location. Just don't do fake flowers. I know a lot of people on this board loves them, but they're not that nice looking and the ones that are nice looking are about the same cost as real flowers. Besides, what do you do with them after the wedding? They're hard to resell.





I personally love real flowers, but then again the smell doesn't give me a headache. We are getting married in a location that doesn't require lots of flowers, so we're just using them to decorate the chuppah and the centerpieces will be a few tulips submerged in water. I get them wholesale so the prices are low.
Reply:I didn't have lots of flowers, just my bridesmaid and I carried pomanders of rose buds (no scent at all) and the family had button holes/corsages also of roses, I didn't waste money on anything else.
Reply:Go with real looking silk...thats what I'm doing %26amp; they're GORGEOUS! I think everyone needs a little break up of color %26amp; bouquets usually offer that.
Reply:There are some flowers that I think are necessary such as bride's bouquet, bridesmaids bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres. As far as decorations, I do not think they need to be used in every inch of the space. Instead of flowers for a lot of our decorations, we used candles. It gave it a very romantic theme and saved us A LOT of money that we were able to use in places we felt were more important.
Reply:well if the flowers make you sick don't wast the money ..but i personally love fresh flowers i buy them all the time and want to learn to make arrangments my self for weddings since i am a novice planner ... but definatley don't buy them if they give you headaches ... but then again most flowers today have no fragrence (which is so depressing )
Reply:Hi, well you can do what you want!!





Personally, I LOVE REAL FLOWERS! They are very elegant. If you don't like the real ones, you can use silks, but I can spot a silk flower from a mile away. Then, what do you do with all those silk arrangements? They sit and collect dust most of the time. I would rather have 1 or 2 roses in a bud vase....not a huge arrangement of 67 different kinds of silks!





Now...you can certainly opt NOT to have flowers....But what will you carry going down the aisle? You will want to carry something!





I also love candles at weddings, and you can do so many nice centerpieces with candles.





There is no saying you HAVE to have flowers, but personally, I love them! That's my two-cents.
Reply:i don't think flowers are a waste, they add beauty to the entire day. you can have just a single flower, or carry a bible, and no flowers, or if catholic carry your rosary, so many options available to today's brides!


i do think a number of today's brides go overboard on having very expensive bouquets. there is nothing wrong with a simple nosegay of seasonal flowers, however, if allergies are an issue for you, and it sounds like that is the case, then i would suggest silk flowers! good quality silks are amazingly life-like and you will beat the fragrance issue!


and again you can have a very simple nosegay of silks, just as you would with real flowers! whatever you choose it will reflect your taste and your beauty! good luck!
Reply:forget the flowers how about no wedding!! yup sounds good
Reply:I didn't use flowers for decorating but I carried long stem calla lilies and my bridesmaids carried daisies.





Try using fake greenery to decorate with instead. It had no odor, is relatively cheap, is easy to work with and find and looks really good.
Reply:I think if flowers give you a headache you definitely shouldn't have them at your wedding.





We are not going crazy with flowers at our wedding, basically just small bouquets for myself and the girls and boutonnieres for my fiance and his groomsmen. We aren't doing any decorating because the place we are getting married at already has flowers planted there, any more would be too much.





Personally the only kind of flowers I don't like are ones in huge centerpieces that are so wide and high you can't see half the people at the table.
Reply:Rather then doing a bunch of flowers we opted to buy our wedding party fresh leis from Hawaii. I will be the only one with a bouquet. I feel flowers are a big expense that really isn't worth it.
Reply:My flowers were silk. so they didn't put off scent and lasted longer than the marriage.
Reply:I love the look of flowers, but I'm not crazy about the smells messing with my allergies or the expense and fear of non-delivery or wilted flowers showing up.


I'm currently looking at wooden roses, not sprayed with a scent, as an alternative to "fresh" flowers which could wilt or the smell could put me into a sneezing frenzy (I have allergies).


http://www.thewoodenrosecompany.com/Colo...





Also, I could make them into bouquets and centerpieces far in advance and don't have to worry about no-show florists either!!
Reply:Honestly, I think getting real flowers is a complete waste of money. I'll be getting silk/fake flowers for my wedding because I know people who can work all kinds of wonders with them!
Reply:I used a mixture of dried and silk flowers for some. Other's I am just using fruit (it ties back to our theme)





People have allergies to flowers, we are getting married during the cold months so they aren't really that available, and as you said....I've been to too many where it just reeks!





Plus, they'll be dead before the honeymoon is over. With dried/silks I saved at least a grand because I shopped seasonal sales and used coupons. I'll also be getting half my money back re'selling them if not more. Live florals would have cost us about 5k. These ran about $1,000.





My boquets are real though. I wanted to be a snob about that one thing and didn't want to attempt with live flowers the day before and end up in tradgedy.
Reply:I actually just posted a link about this on my blog. I kind of shunned the flower idea at first, but ended up going with a mixture of silk and real (but not overkill of either). I wanted real flowers for the bouquets and corsages, etc. We used mostly orchids which didn't have a strong smell at all. All the silk flowers were used for the decoration of the ceremony and centerpieces. One neat alternative to flowers is to use paper lanterns or bubbles if it is an outdoor ceremony. We had a bubble machine set up and everyone loved it! It gave a fairy tale feel that flowers couldn't quite match.
Reply:I was thinking I wanted flowers too but since they are very expensive I read this other idea for hershey kiss roses and opted for that instead. Check out this page. It comes with instructions on how to create a bouquet of candy flowers. Very beautiful. Great party favor too!





There is nothing wrong with having no flowers. I have read questions where brides to be want a substitute for wedding cake. People suggest cheese cake instead of traditional. There's nothing wrong that picking something out of the ordinary.
Reply:It's traditional to have flowers, but if you don't want them you don't have to have them. Some folks mentioned Silk flowers, another option would be just having a few bunches of flowers in key areas for decoration.
Reply:We used silk flowers as well. All bouquets were silk too, mine and the bridesmaids. It made it much easier to coordinate the flowers and it saved us a ton of money.
Reply:Real flowers are gorgeous however, unless you've got the money to preserve them, then they are a waste. I'll be using fake flowers!
Reply:Well me personally I think the real flowers are a waste of money. We have already brought our silk flowers (LOL) and our wedding is in May 2008. We purchased them already because I saw exactly what I want and the bouquets were only $1, yes $1 a piece, of course I purchased 10, 2 for each girl so they can look full and at the place where I went they had all the accessories and the exact color I needed to make the boutonnieres for the guys, parents and put a few things around the table. All together I spent $35 compared to what the florist was charging me. ($200 for silk flowers and $300 for real flowers)
Reply:I bought my flowers at a price club... I got 30 dozen roses....yes 30 DOZEN... for about $300. I used them for centerpieces...and made my and my Matron of honor's bouquet with them. I bought the little bud vases, put 3 flowers in each and put 4 or 5 vases on each table in a little group. The vases became my wedding favors (I also gt personalized ribbon to tie around the vases)...and people got to take them home with them....and they all loved having the little vases they could reuse. It was so much cheaper than having a florist do them. In fact, Costco has a service where they will make the bouquetrs and centerpeices for you....it is more expensive than just buying them loose and making your own, but it is so much cheaper than a florist. I am not sure if you have one of those stores in your area, but it is definitely worth looking into.