Your bouquet is the star of the show - but it's not always the whole story.
By the time a bouquet reaches me, it's often been stripped back, trimmed down, or simplified for the wedding day. Totally normal. But when it comes to pressing, it's the little extras that take a piece from pretty to full. They add depth, dimension, and that lush garden feel that makes you stop and look twice.
So before you drop your flowers off, take a moment to look through what's left over from the day. Here are the four things I'd love you to bring along if you can find them.
Here's what to bring:
1. Foliage
3. Anything that adds height
4. The "won't press well" flowers (bring them anyway)
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Rose foliage & eucalyptus
1. Foliage
Most bouquets have their foliage stripped before they're handed over on the wedding day. It creates a cleaner look, but it means I'm often working with just flowers and no green. If you have a rose bouquet and there are loose leaves left in the box, the wrapping, or wherever your florist delivered them - bring them with you. Rose foliage in particular has a beautiful glossy shape that fills out an artwork and makes the whole piece feel grounded. The same goes for any other greenery you have on hand - eucalyptus offcuts, leaves from your table arrangements, anything green at all. The more the merrier.
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Baby's breath & wax flower
2. Filler flowers
Filler flowers are the tiny, delicate blooms that do so much of the heavy lifting in a finished piece. They soften the spaces between your statement flowers and add a gentleness that's hard to recreate any other way. Common ones include baby's breath, statice, and wax flower - but anything small and dainty does the job. Without them, an artwork can end up feeling a little sparse. Even a small handful makes a real difference. If they were in your bouquet, your buttonholes, or sprinkled through your table arrangements, bring them along.
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Star of Bethlehem & lavender
3. Anything that adds height
If your bouquet is mostly round blooms sitting at the same level - a tight rose bouquet, for example - the finished piece can end up feeling a little flat. This is where tall stems come in. Star of Bethlehem is one I love working with: the blooms sit all around the stem, so I take them off and reassemble the stem at the artwork stage to keep that beautiful tall shape intact. Even something like lavender works wonderfully if you happen to have it. Anything with a bit of length adds dimension and keeps the artwork from feeling like a wall of petals.
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Spider chrysanthemum
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4. The flowers you don't think will press well - bring them anyway
This is the one most people second-guess. They'll look at something like a spider chrysanthemum and assume it has no chance, then leave it behind. Please don't.
A whole spider chrysanthemum won't press well as it is - but I take the petals off individually and they become some of the prettiest accents in the finished piece. The same goes for so many "bulky" flowers. There's almost always a part of them I can use, even if the whole bloom doesn't survive. If it was in your bouquet and meant something to you, bring it along. The worst that happens is I let you know it didn't work. The best is it becomes one of your favourite details.
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One last thing
If you're not sure whether something's worth bringing, just bring it. I'd rather have too much to choose from than wish I had more to work with. Your artwork only gets one shot at looking complete, and the bits you almost left behind are usually the ones that make it sing.
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