What advice can you give decorating the night before at a wedding reception using fresh flowers?

I am wanting to decorate the night before using fresh red roses in vases. If we do this, how will the flowers look the next day at 530 pm? They wont be too wilted already would they already? The reason why we want to do this, is if we buy our roses fresh from a wholesaler we save sooo much money then buying arrangements at a local floral shop.





Also, can anyone recomend any wholesaler websites for flowers?





Thank you very much on all your help!!!

What advice can you give decorating the night before at a wedding reception using fresh flowers?
Hi and congratulations!





We did the same thing for my son's wedding!





One question....when and where is the reception? If it is in the summer...you will want to make sure that the hall is air conditioned WHEN you set up....not the next day. They will be fine if they are in an air-conditioned room all night. OR, on the flip side....is it a winter wedding? Again, you don't want the hall TOO HOT for the whole night. Make sure the heat is turned way down. So...if the temperature in the room is OK for the whole night, you should be fine. Ours were lovely!





Here is the wholesaler we used. They were excellent and there are many choices of EACH color! The flowers arrived right on time and there were no problems!


http://www.rosesource.com/





Another one is this wholesaler:


http://www.growersbox.com/





Good luck!





PS--I forgot the mention. Follow their instructions to the letter!!


We had a Saturday wedding, so the roses arrived on Thursday. On Friday, my sister and I did them up. One warning.....it takes a lot of work to unwrap, cut the stems, put them in water filled with rose preservative, etc., so allow lots of time to do this. Again, I have an air conditioned house...so it worked out good...they were in the basement (very cool) overnight. You CAN'T use standard refrigerators. (They will tell you that). Florist refrigerators are different. But, in the end, IT'S WORTH IT because you will have saved TONS of money.
Reply:Don't do it. You can't determine the temp of the room over night and through the day. If you do it, you might walk into dead flowers.





If you are having your reception at a banquet hall/reception hall, then they should do all the decorating the day of as part of your package/contract.
Reply:those flowers should arrive 5 minutes before the guests arrive at the wedding reception. Choose someone in your area and get a discount because you're ordering in quantity. Choose someone (some company you can trust...get references) so that they can be trusted to bring the flowers timely.
Reply:We did the same thing. We made sure the roses were still closed on Friday so they would be open by Saturday. Looked great!!
Reply:Set up everything but the flowers. I would be too afraid they'd wilt. Keep them refrigerated until a few hours before.
Reply:We do not have flower wholesalers here but we do have WalMart and a Copps store which have fresh roses daily for cheap. You can buy them a day ahead, keep them in a cool place so they stay crispy.
Reply:For a 5:30pm wedding, you want to decorate the MORNING of the wedding, not the night before. The flowers will look horrible. I know this because I talked to our florist about it. We had our wedding at 5:30 and she was there bright and early the morning of our wedding to decorate. It was great. Everything looked wonderful. She did a GREAT job and so, I feel like if she....a professional florist.....chose to do them the morning of, then she's probably right.
Reply:EDIT: make sure with management you can decorate the night before, most places have rules and other parties happening





I did my flowers for my engagement party and my shower. I used orchids, calla lillies (engagement) and red roses (shower). I didn't do my wedding because of wedding nerves and stress. With wedding nervousness and last minute preperations...flowers were not my focus. But it's possible and may save you a ton of money.





I'm not a florist, but from my experience these flowers last forever. The key is to get REALLY fresh flowers, I'm not sure where your getting your flowers but I told my florist to make sure their fresh. Can the wholesale people help with that? Or try a supermarket, that's where i bought the roses and the girl helped me with coordinating.





I did the arrangement the day before both parties, and both were refrigerated the night before. I do think they'll be okay because my flowers lasted weeks after the event!!!! We gave them to guests and the said they were really strong and healthy. Out of the 2 arrangements (mini calla lillies and cymbidium orchids lasted longer) 3 weeks after the wedding


Roses (one week) Can you do a test on 1 arrangement?





I'm trying to remember what helped me





I didn't fill the vases very high with water overnight for transporting, they need enough so the stems are touching the water. Fill them up when you get there...





The first arrangement took longer because I wasn't sure what to do??? So be prepared for some flowers to be more managed and may break. Ugggh. Once the first is done the rest are easier.





I looked at lots of pics of arrangements online for inspiration, when i did the roses i referred to


http://www.jamaligarden.com/index.asp


Jamali has beautiful vases in natural fibers, ceramic, glass


I used low long reactangular vases. This place is known for florists in the industry in nyc.





I also knew ahead of time what I wanted


http://ovandony.com





Ovando has great architectural arrangements with long Bear Grass leaves (which is cheaper than flowers and you can buy online) and minimal flowers, they charge soooo much for so little. But they don't look too hard, look under shop online and weddings for inspiration.





I love the arrangement called perfect balance


look under ovando-shop online link


1st row, 4th column





They have grass, orchids, cut succulent very minimal but beautiful. I wish I did these for my party...





Good Luck