While preserving flowers is a fun craft, when it comes to your bridal bouquet (or other special occasion flowers) it's best to hire a professional to ensure that you have beautifully preserved flowers to display and enjoy for years to come.
Oftentimes bridal bouquets and floral arrangements contain many chemicals to keep them looking great throughout your wedding day. Because of this, wedding flowers do not preserve the same as flowers you find in your garden.
It may seem easy to preserve your own flowers and create your own arrangement, but preserving is not as simple.
Here are a few common assumptions people have about floral preservation as well as an inside look as to how we at dbandrea help you create a keepsake you'll forever treasure.
Assuming all of your flowers will make it through the Preservation process
Even as professionals we can say that not all of our flowers make it through the preservation process. After all, we are dealing with nature.
Flowers can mold, break, bruise (transparent in resin), or completely lose their natural colors. You likely won't end up with a full set of beautifully preserved flowers. This isn't a lesson you want to learn with your bridal bouquet if you intend to keep it forever.
Assuming your flowers will preserve their color
Not all flowers retain their natural colors.
Many will naturally turn brown or lose their original colors as they dry and react to chemicals they were sprayed with. You can never really tell what colors you’re going to end up with when preserving flowers. In any case, they likely won’t reflect the same vibrant colors you remember from your wedding day.
Assuming your flowers will turn out perfect the first time
It takes time (and a lot of patience) to experiment with flowers and learn what works and what doesn’t. Preserving flowers involves a lot of trial & error and because every flower is different, it will take several attempts before you find what works for each individual flower. Therefore, using your wedding flowers to experiment is not ideal.
The dbandrea process
At dbandrea, we discuss your vision with you and answer all of your questions and concerns before you book. You’ll receive detailed shipping instructions to help you pack your bouquet in the best way possible so you are able to send us beautiful flowers to work with.
Once we receive your bouquet, we take the time to preserve your flowers carefully to make sure that every part of the bouquet is represented in the final product. (Depending on the size of your bouquet, pressing alone can take us up to 6 hours!) Because each flower is so unique, sometimes they require different preservation techniques. We use up to 7 different methods to preserve our customer's flowers and we are always experimenting to improve our methods.
After your flowers enter our office, we allow between 8-12 weeks for them to dry out completely before we take them out. Before we begin drafting your piece, we'll work with you closely to bring your vision to life based on your design selections.
One of the most exciting features we include in our service is our Beautification Process™ which allows your florals to appear as close to your fresh bouquet as possible! Flowers will fade naturally, but the pigments we add to every single petal and leaf will prevent your piece from turning brown over time.
After arranging your flowers in several different ways, our artists pick the best option and begin assembling your piece. Assembling your flowers alone takes a few hours to build each piece and our Beautification Process™ can take up to 4 hours per bouquet.
For Framed (Pressed) pieces, we carefully frame and seal them to prevent dust and moisture from entering and settling. Every single piece goes through extensive quality assurance as well before they are packaged and shipped to you!
Up to 30 hours of love and care go into every single piece we produce. And that’s because we try to make your pieces as beautiful as possible and we want you to love them as much as we do!
Being a part of our customer's special moments is something we are truly grateful for. It warms our hearts to know that our customers trust us enough to share their lives with us and allow us the opportunity to preserve their memories forever.
If you're thinking about preserving your flowers, fill out our inquiry form and we will contact you shortly! We can't wait to celebrate with you!
Keep Blooming!
