How to Preserve Wedding Flowers After Your Wedding: Your Options Explained
Your wedding flowers are one of those details that can feel far too special to simply throw away once the day is over.
Your bouquet may contain flowers you spent months choosing, colours that formed part of your wedding theme, or blooms with a particular meaning to you and your partner. The good news is that your flowers don’t necessarily have to disappear after the wedding.
There are several ways to preserve wedding flowers, from simply drying them at home to having them professionally preserved and turned into a lasting keepsake.
Here are some of the options, what you need to consider, and what you can do with your bouquet once the wedding is over.
How Soon Should You Preserve Wedding Flowers?
The sooner you start the preservation process, the better.
Fresh flowers naturally begin to deteriorate after they’re removed from water, and bruising, moisture and heat can speed this up.
If you’re planning to have your bouquet professionally preserved, it’s a good idea to arrange this before your wedding where possible. That way, you already know what you’re doing with the flowers afterwards.
Don’t worry if your wedding has already happened, though.
Flowers don’t necessarily need to be absolutely perfect to be preserved, and in some cases we can also work with flowers that have already been dried for months — or even years.
If you’re sending fresh wedding flowers to a preservation specialist, follow their packaging instructions carefully. Avoid sealing damp flowers inside plastic, as trapped moisture can encourage mould.
What Are the Different Ways to Preserve Wedding Flowers?
There isn’t one single “best” way to preserve a wedding bouquet. The right method depends on how you’d like your flowers to look afterwards and what you’d ultimately like to do with them.
1. Air Drying
Air drying is probably the method most people are familiar with.
Flowers are usually tied together and hung upside down somewhere dry and well ventilated while the moisture gradually leaves them.
It’s simple and inexpensive, but flowers can shrink considerably and their colours may change during the drying process.
Air-dried flowers can still make lovely keepsakes and, depending on their condition, may sometimes be suitable for incorporating into another preservation piece later.
2. Pressing Wedding Flowers
Pressing removes moisture while flattening the flowers.
Pressed wedding flowers work particularly well for framed displays, cards and other pieces where you want the flowers presented flat.
The trade-off is that you lose the original three-dimensional shape of the flower.
3. Silica Gel Flower Drying
Silica gel is one of the methods used when preserving flowers while trying to retain more of their original shape.
Rather than simply hanging the flowers and allowing them to dry naturally, the flowers are carefully surrounded by a drying material that draws out moisture.
This can make it particularly useful when flowers will eventually be incorporated into a three-dimensional keepsake.
4. Professional Wedding Flower Preservation
If your bouquet has significant sentimental value, professional preservation gives you considerably more choice over what happens to it afterwards.
Instead of simply keeping a dried bouquet in a box, individual flowers can be selected and arranged to create something designed to be displayed and enjoyed.
And that’s where resin opens up some particularly interesting possibilities.
Can Wedding Flowers Be Preserved in Resin?
Yes — wedding flowers can be preserved in resin, but they must be properly dried first.
Putting fresh flowers directly into resin can trap moisture inside them, potentially causing discolouration, cloudiness and deterioration.
At Really Resin, flowers are dried before the final piece is created. Once ready, they can be carefully arranged and encapsulated in clear resin.
One of the things we love about resin preservation is the amount of freedom it gives you.
Instead of every bouquet becoming the same type of keepsake, the flowers can become something that suits the person they’re being made for.
Wedding flowers can be incorporated into pieces including:
Resin hearts and display blocks
Photo frames
Coasters
Trinket trays
Jewellery and smaller keepsakes
Decorative trays
Tables and statement furniture
Bespoke resin commissions
That also means you don’t necessarily have to fit your entire bouquet into one piece.
Flowers can be divided between a larger centrepiece and several smaller keepsakes, allowing you to share parts of the bouquet with parents, bridesmaids or other family members.
Which Wedding Flowers Preserve Best?
Many popular wedding flowers can be successfully preserved, but it’s important to understand that preserved flowers won’t always look identical to the fresh bouquet.
Drying is a natural process and some change should be expected.
Roses, carnations and many smaller filler flowers can work particularly well, while larger or more delicate flowers may require additional care.
White and very pale flowers can also change colour during drying and resin preservation.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw. Your finished piece contains the actual flowers from your wedding day, and the small natural variations are part of what makes each preservation unique.
If you’re unsure whether the flowers you’ve chosen for your wedding can be preserved, it’s worth asking before the wedding.
What Can I Make With My Wedding Bouquet?
This is where flower preservation gets fun.
You don’t necessarily need to preserve the bouquet in its original arrangement.
A few carefully selected flowers can create a smaller keepsake, while a larger selection can become a statement piece.
For example, you might choose a large resin heart containing some of the main flowers from your bouquet and use smaller petals for matching coasters, jewellery or keyrings.
Alternatively, the bouquet can become part of a completely bespoke piece.
We’ve worked on commissions ranging from traditional flower keepsakes to resin furniture and other one-off designs, so if you have an idea that isn’t part of a standard product range, it’s always worth asking.
Can Already-Dried Wedding Flowers Be Preserved?
Absolutely.
We regularly hear from people who have kept flowers from a wedding or another important occasion because they couldn’t bring themselves to throw them away.
Sometimes they’ve been sitting safely in a box for several months. Sometimes they’ve been kept for years.
Depending on their condition, already-dried flowers may still be suitable for incorporating into resin.
In fact, if you’ve already dried your wedding bouquet, don’t assume you’ve missed your opportunity to have something made from it.
Send us a photograph and we can take a look at the flowers and discuss what might work.
Can I Post My Wedding Flowers for Preservation?
Yes.
Really Resin is based in Liverpool, but we accept flowers from customers throughout the UK.
If you’re posting fresh flowers, packaging them correctly is particularly important because they need airflow during their journey.
We’ve put together a separate guide explaining how to prepare and package flowers before sending them to us.
If you’re local to Liverpool, you can also arrange to drop your flowers off directly.
Should I Book Flower Preservation Before My Wedding?
If you already know you’d like your bouquet preserved, booking beforehand is the safest option.
It means you don’t have to start searching for someone while you’re recovering from the wedding, preparing for your honeymoon or wondering what on earth to do with a bouquet sitting on the kitchen counter.
You’ll also know in advance how the flowers need to be stored and transported after the wedding.
That said, last-minute enquiries are incredibly common.
If you’ve already had your wedding and are currently looking at your bouquet thinking, “I really don’t want to throw this away,” get in touch as soon as you can.
We may still be able to help.
Turn Your Wedding Flowers Into Something You Can Keep
Your bouquet doesn’t have to last for just one day.
At Really Resin, we preserve wedding flowers and sentimental blooms in handmade resin keepsakes from our Liverpool workshop, with flowers accepted from customers throughout the UK.
Whether you’d like a small keepsake containing a few petals, a traditional resin heart or block, or something completely bespoke, we can help you explore the options available for your flowers.