Preserving Your Wedding Flowers: Bespoke Dried Floral Artwork Commissions
Preserving Your Wedding Flowers: Bespoke Dried Floral Artwork Commissions
Preserving your wedding flowers
Your wedding flowers are one of the most fleetingly beautiful elements of your day, despite all our technical tricks and techniques to help them last as long as possible. Their transient nature is part of their charm, but your flowers can also be one of the most sentimental features of your wedding - so it’s not unusual for couples to want to immortalise all that floral beauty long beyond the wedding day. Preserving your wedding flowers has been possible for many (and I mean thousands of) years, with traditional methods reigning supreme - but what if we could take wedding bouquet preservation to the next level?
In 2025, wedding flower preservation takes on a new life with my bespoke dried floral artwork commissions. Allow me to introduce you to a totally custom way of immortalising your wedding flowers, drawing on my love of art and sculpture and texture to craft a piece of art you’ll be proud to hang on your wall. Traditional preservation methods combine with my intimate knowledge of different flowers’ personalities, and the result is a mixed media medley that is uniquely designed for you and only you.
What’s the difference between traditional wedding bouquet preservation and these bespoke commissions?
There are several classical methods of preserving wedding flowers including pressing individual petals, 3D freeze drying or silicon gel casting, and imprinting with plaster. The end result of most of these is a recreation of your bouquet within a frame, either flattened or true to size within a deep frame.
For me, this way of working is too prescriptive and I have adopted a more fluid approach to bouquet preservation. Your bespoke dried flower artwork combines one or several of these methods, and can also include acrylic and oil painting, fabrics, words and different textures. The aim is to create a one of a kind piece of wall art that hangs beautifully in your house, in perfect harmony with your interior design - a luxuriously personal memory of an exquisitely sentimental element of your wedding day.
Rather than describing this as a wedding flower preservation service, I can more accurately explain it as floristry, art and sculpture combined - the very same way I work to create your immersive wedding floral designs in their living form. My time at art school forms the basis for the designs, but you and your story are where the personality comes in.
How does the process work? Do I need to have been your wedding florist to preserve your flowers?
Firstly, let me start by saying that whether you worked with me on your wedding floral design or not, I can still create a bespoke commission to preserve your bouquet or flowers. If we meet for the first time at the start of this custom artwork journey, we’ll start by having a chat about your wedding - I want to know about your style and vibe, what you loved about your wedding, why you chose your flowers and other parts of your day and so much more, so I can make the composition completely unique to you.
We’ll also talk about where you’d like to hang your preserved wedding flowers in your home, what colour your walls are, what interiors styles you like and so on. All this helps me understand how the piece fits into your life as a whole, rather than appearing as a mismatched bouquet jarringly hung on your wall!
Defining your style is a huge part of this initial process. Some couples love the more traditional style of wedding flower preservation in which the bouquet appears as a dried version of itself, while others lean more towards a meadow style or even something completely abstract. Once I know all of this, you can choose your frame size and shape and I’ll get started on your commission.
I work with premium frames that come with protective glass, ensuring your preserved wedding flowers are shielded from fading by sunlight. I always strive for your flowers to look like the most beautiful version of themselves even once dried, so will never include sad or shrivelled blooms and will retain as much of their original vibrancy as possible.
Different flowers and how they preserve:
Not all flowers preserve well or even at all, and this is something I consider carefully when putting together your commission. Certain methods are better for certain types of blooms, so the composition of your wedding florals will, in part, dictate how the artwork turns out.
For example, using the pressing technique is great for preserving individual wedding flower petals but often not the whole flower. Garden roses in particular (and other flowers with lots of petals close together) are hard to preserve, whereas cosmos or other delicate varieties turn out really well. Where a particular flower type is difficult to preserve at its best, my mixed media skills come into effect - it’s possible to recreate elements with paints or fabrics, seamlessly nestled alongside the real preserved flowers. If some of your flowers don’t turn out perfectly when preserved, there’s always a way to allow them their moment to shine in a different way.
Whether we use some or all of your actual flowers, your commission will be entirely different to everyone else’s - preserved wedding flowers in the most unique way.
Can we use a bit of creative licence…?
Sometimes I am asked for a commission that includes representations of flowers that weren’t actually in the original floral design, and we can absolutely include them to make your artwork personal. For example, you may be a peony lover but got married in October and so couldn’t have them - just let me know, and I can add peonies with paints or textures!
I was also recently asked to create a bespoke funeral flower preservation commission, and I was so honoured to be creating such a heartfelt piece. Although the flowers at the funeral didn’t use any lilies or daisies, I was told these were favourite flowers so I included them by hand painting them into the art.
The only standardised thing about your preserved wedding flower art is the choice of frame sizes - everything else is completely bespoke.
How soon after the wedding should I get my flowers preserved?
Ideally you should send your wedding flowers to me the day after your wedding, or as soon as possible. The longer we wait, the harder they’ll be to preserve. It’s also important to store your flowers in water, so consider popping your bouquet into water when not using it and ensure they are properly kept overnight.
I can send instructions on how to best post your wedding flowers to me, or you can order a pack from me in which to return them to make the process as simple as possible for you. We can start to talk about your design even if you haven't had your wedding yet, and secure your date in my diary - good preparation equals good preservation!
Immortalising your wedding flowers by preserving them is a beautifully creative way to hold onto the life and sentiment they brought to your big day. Every bespoke commission is a joy to make, and I adore seeing them hung pride of place in your homes.
If you liked this, you might also be interested in:
The influence of your wedding venue’s architecture and aesthetic on your wedding flowers.
The power of scented wedding flowers.
My autumn, winter and spring seasonal style guides for your wedding flowers.
“It is really beautiful, thank you so much for doing that for us and it looks amazing with the paint detail and the frame. We’re going to hang it in our hallway for everyone to see.”
