DIY Wedding Flowers FAQs

A bucket of beautiful blooms ready for a DIY wedding. Photo courtesy of Photography By Paloma

Choosing to DIY your wedding flowers can be a fun and cost-effective way to decorate your wedding! If you’re creative, have friends and/or family willing to help for a few hours, and are flexible about what your wedding flowers will look like, DIY’ing might be the right option for you! 

At Big Field Flowers, you can order ready-to-wear flowers, which we’ve arranged for you, or DIY buckets — you can mix and match, have us arrange everything, or go full DIY. Here are some common questions we have about our DIY wedding flowers.

Are DIY wedding flowers right for me?

Yes, if you embrace seasonality, are creative, have a relaxed approach, and/or want to keep an eye on your flower budget, then DIY wedding flowers would be right for you.  

Do you have a minimum spend?

No, we’re happy to accommodate all weddings no matter the scale. 

How close to our wedding should we order our flowers?

We advise you to book as far in advance as possible to guarantee availability, this also allows us to tailor our crop plans in terms of quantities and colours! While we are often able to accommodate bookings made more last-minute, these might have to be in a ‘Growers Choice’ colour scheme, depending on availability. 

We’re getting married in January, can you supply our flowers?

We grow our flowers seasonally, so only have flowers available for weddings from April until mid-October (weather-dependent) - we’re currently unable to supply flowers outside of this time, sorry. We work with lots of other lovely local florists though, so we can point you in the direction of someone with a similar garden-gathered style to us. 

Can I ask for specific flowers in my bucket, like peonies?

As we’re growing with the British weather, we’re unable to guarantee any specific flowers - but we can pick your wedding flowers to a loose colour scheme. We will always try to understand the look & feel you’re trying to achieve with your wedding flowers and choose flowers that will suit this. We can provide a rough guide on what flowers we expect to have blooming each month, but this can vary due to weather and a multitude of other reasons. Please see the photos below for examples of DIY buckets throughout the growing season.

What comes in a DIY bucket?

At Big Field Flowers, our DIY buckets contain around 60 stems, which are a mix of focal flowers, secondary/filler flowers, and foliage. When you collect your flowers, you’ll take the buckets with you - you’re welcome to keep these, but if they are of no use to you we ask that you kindly return them to the farm after your wedding for us to reuse, as we’d rather they didn’t end up in landfill! 

How many DIY buckets will I need?

Generally, bouquets will need 20-50 stems, buttonholes 3-5 stems, bud vases 3-5 stems, and vases 20-60 stems depending on size. It’s always best to have a practice of your arrangements first to work out how many stems you might need. Once you’ve worked out how many arrangements you want and how many stems each one takes, you can work out the total number of stems you need - then divide this by 60 to work out how many buckets of flowers you need, it’s always best to round up rather than down as nothing worse than not having enough flowers! 

How long will the flowers last?

We pick your flowers 12-24 hours before collection - either in the early morning or late evening, when the day is at its coolest, and then keep them in a cool, dark place to rest & hydrate. We aim for our event flowers to last a minimum of 5 days (except for a couple more fleeting flowers like roses) in normal conditions as we pick them at a certain stage so they’ll be open & at their best for your big day. Flowers should be kept in water and somewhere cool & shady!

Can you make the bouquets and buttonholes? 

Yes, as well as our DIY buckets, we also have a range of ready-to-wear arrangements at fixed prices. This includes bridal bouquets, bridesmaid bouquets, flower girl posies, buttonholes, wrist corsages, flower crowns, vases, and table arrangements. Please use the form below to receive our full wedding brochure by email. We are also open to creating additional floral arrangements, such as floral urns, arches, hanging installations, and so on, please enquire further about these for a quote. 

When should we collect our wedding flowers?

For DIY buckets, we recommend collecting in the morning 1-2 days before your big day, this gives you plenty of time to arrange your flowers. For ready-to-wear arrangements, we recommend no earlier than 1 day before your wedding, but we can discuss this further with you at the time of booking. When collecting your flowers we advise you to have a fairly empty car - flowers need plenty of room so they’re not squished & crushing each other. It’s handy to also bring cardboard boxes and towels to pack around buckets & vases to keep things from sliding about!

Where are you based?

We grow our flowers on a family farm in Woodmancote, West Sussex (about 20 minutes from Brighton & Hove). If you’re getting married in West Sussex or East Sussex we can supply flowers for your big day.

Can we visit the flower field beforehand?

Unfortunately not. We grow on private land and we’re currently unable to give field tours. 

This all sounds perfect for us, what do we do next?

Just complete the form here receive our DIY Wedding Brochure, which has all of our DIY & ready-to-wear options, have a read-through of this and it’ll guide you on what the next steps are to get your wedding flowers booked with us! 

We can’t wait to hear from you, Charlie & Tom x