Posts Tagged ‘wedding flowers’

Your wedding day is one of the most memorable days in your life. Of course you want to preserve every aspect of the big day. You hire a videographer, a photographer and probably place cameras on the tables so guests can take pictures as well. Your wedding gown can be preserved in a sealed box, so you should preserve your flowers too.

There are two ways you can go about preserving your wedding flowers. There is the old fashioned way of air drying your flowers and now there is a freeze dry method available. Air drying is free, but the results can be so-so on your part. Freeze drying is done by a specialist and costs lots of money, but the results are stunning.

To air dry your flowers, simply make sure they are banded together tightly and hang upside down to dry. When you hang upside down, the stems will dry straight instead of curving. Keep in an area that is free from excessive dust and hair.

Freeze drying involves a large machine and lots of time. You hand your bouquet over to a specialist, usually a florist, who will take pictures of your bouquet, then take it apart. The pieces are placed in a freezer and left for several days until they are frozen solid. Freezing will hold the color and the shape of the flower.

The flowers are then placed on a tray and in to the freeze dry machine. Some machines are large and can hold several trays or thousands of flowers. These flowers will sit in the machine that gradually sucks the moisture out of each cell, leaving it in the same shape as it was when it entered. Depending on the size of the machine, it may take one to six weeks for the process to complete.