Bouqs over Bloominous for DIY Weddings

First off, your wedding shouldn’t be your test to determine you DIY abilities.  If you don’t take on DIY projects currently due to their lack of appeal then you may not enjoy having a DIY wedding.  DIY is not for the faint of heart!

I was/am the person described above.  I did not get the DIY gene from my parents.  I don’t seek opportunities for little projects as a hobby.  I chose to have a DIY wedding due to my budgetary restrains and my frugality. I wanted a Pinterest worthy wedding without having to sell a vital organ to get it.

I like flowers so I decided to do all of my own arrangements, bouquets, centerpieces and all.  I did a ton of research and I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I knew that I could get the flowers that make my heart melt for a fraction of the cost of paying a florist to provide these item.  What I didn’t take into account the hours of time it took finding vases and making the arrangements, not to mention the manpower! I am blessed to have a supportive group of friends, an amazing mother and a wonderful group of aunts who stayed up in the wee hours just to make sure my arrangements were beautiful. While I loved to get to spend that time with everyone, if I had the chance to do it all over (not the marriage, that parts great) I would seriously reconsider if the money saved is worth the time through preparation and frustration (there was a 24 hour delay in shipping and a few broken stems due to dying from the delay in shipping) endured on the entire ordeal.

I do recommend Bouqs for DIY wedding flowers and even Sam’s Club Bulk Floral too but only if you’re more experienced with arrangements and already know how much of every flower you need for the look you’re going for.

Why Bouqs

After googling “bulk wedding flowers” I went through tons of websites that offered bulk flowers.  Some were online florists with a vast selection, some were wedding floral companies and some were local florists that basically were asking you to call during business hours.  I started to note a few new businesses that dealt in online flowers in bulk for special occasions, some were even just for weddings.  The prices all varied from site to site depending on the amount of DIY you wanted.  After reading tons of reviews for different sites I narrowed my selections to Bloominous and Bouqs.  I will be honest.  Bloominous was my first choice.  I can be an emotional shopper and I loved their website. I loved that their arrangements came with vases, which meant one less thing for me to worry about.  Unfortunately as I shopped Bloominous, they had a surge in popularity and their prices went up significantly.  Over night they priced themselves slightly over my budget which made me take a closer look at what Bouqs had to offer.  To me the Bouqs bulk wedding packages seemed a little more complicated.  You could opt for flowers that were dethorned and stripped but you would pay significantly more and get fewer flowers.  On the other hand you could let flowers come with leaves and thorns and truly Do It Yourself which they warned on the difficulty level.  I also believe in comparison to Bloominous, Bouqs had fewer selections of prearranged flowers choices.  They only have the most popular arrangements looks but they do have all flowers listed where you could create your own arrangements.   After reaching out to the company wedding representatives I soon learned can and would work with you to suggest what you need for what you would like to create.  They also informed me of what size vases I would need for the arrangements that I liked and gave a list of recommended retailers.  I ordered some vases from a company called Afloral who I used in the past and I also re-purposed old clear vases I had in storage by  painting them with liquid gold leaf.

With the vases, paint and supplies for under $1200 I was able to make all the flower arrangements for 16 tables, one bridal bouquet, seven bridesmaid bouquets, 12 Boutineers and two corsages.  I even had left overs for random single roses in small vases as a last minute addition and Eucalyptus intertwined as vine and hung beautifully on our framed photos and guest book table.  The only arrangement exception was four large Eiffel tower vase arrangements (which I’d already planned to use Sams Club $60 Hydrangeas for) however I was able to place leftover roses within these as well.  The ladies who helped me also got to take home a few unused stems.

The downside of my DIY experience is I received my Bouqs flowers (not Sams Club – they were early) an entire day late, thanks to FedEX.  They were supposed to arrive the Thursday before my wedding and they did not show up until Friday.  I was able to follow their entire journey from South America but for some reason Miami US Customs didn’t want to part with the large boxes.  After numerous calls to FedEx with no help I reached out to Bouqs representatives.  I don’t know what was said but my boxes started to move very quickly after that!  It went from being told “they will get there when they get there” from FedEx to “they will be there Friday morning on a refrigerated truck.  They will drive them down overnight” from Bouqs.   While this was added stress I appreciated how it was handled and my only disadvantage was that my flower babies now had one less day to be able to drink water to fluff up in time for the wedding.  With the exception of a few broken stems the flowers perked up beautifully.  Bouqs management had been in contact with me through my entire ordeal and I was able to get a percentage refunded to account for those broken stems.

While I got tons of compliments on my flowers I don’t know if the added DIY stress was worth it, for me.  Like I said I’m not the DIY type of person.  If you like to decorate and have the time, energy and man/womanpower I say go for it.  It is a huge savings to be able to get what you want and in my case at a third of the cost!