Ombre Rose Bouquet

I think we can safely say that 2012 was the year of ombre. It was everywhere from fingernail polish to hair color to cake frosting — and we loved every bit of it! Since we’re not quite ready to let it go – and we know you love it as much as we do – so we’re kicking off 2013’s first floral project with something scrumptious: an ombre bridal bouquet. Our friends at Bella Wedding Flowers provided us with a great big box of beautiful garden roses to test out their bulk flower delivery service. The boxes arrived Thursday morning with flowers well-packaged, fresh, and oh-so-pretty. You can see the unboxing over at our Instagram account.

Supplies Needed

• 30 roses; 5 each of 6 different shades of roses. We used roses in colors from white to fuchsia.
• Buckets or vases with water
• Floral sheers
• Floral pins
• Floral tape
• 5 feet of 1.5″ satin ribbon

Instructions
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1. The first -and most important step – is to make sure your roses are properly hydrated before you begin. If you’ve ordered your flowers from Bella Wedding Flowers or another provider, they’ll likely be a little droopy and thirsty after their voyage. They’ll need to be placed in water as soon as you pluck them off of your doorstep. Hydration can take 4 hours or more so plan well ahead of assembly time!
2. Step #2 Once your flowers are perky and at the stage of bloom you desire, it’s time to get started on creating the bouquet. (Note: I wanted to showcase how delicate and lush garden roses are at full bloom so I waited a couple of days while the roses opened to get max effect. While they were gorgeous at this stage, they were also beginning to become very fragile when handled. There’s a trade-off and, if I were to do it again, I’d probably not wait as long to do the bouquets.) To get started, you’ll need to remove the thorns and leaves from the roses’ stems and trim the stems down to approximate size. This, for me, was the hardest part of the whole process and the step that took the longest. Stripping 30 roses took over an hour.
3. Step #3 After you remove the leaves and stems, cut about 1 inch of the stem off at a 45 degree angle. This cut maximizes the surface area that the rose can absorb water through and will help keep the rose hydrated while you continue to work. Hydrated flowers are happy flowers! Place the stripped roses in a bucket of clean lukewarm water (a clean kitchen sink will do in a pinch) so they stay hydrated and perky.

   

   Flowers taking a bath, getting all hydrated while they await their turn to be bundled.

4. Step #4 The next step is to assemble to roses into mini bouquets. Working by colors, arrange all 5 flowers from a single shade in your hand and bundle them together using floral tape. (For example: start with the white flowers then move on to the lightest pink then do the mid-pink flowers, etc.) Place the bundle back in water. Repeat for the remaining roses colors.  
5. Step #5 When all of your bundles are finished, it’s time to bind them together in order of lightest to darkest colors.I found that the bouquet was a little lopsided at this stage so I filled in gaps with extra flowers and taped them in when things started looking more balanced.

   

   Bundling the bundles together. Will need some more roses to fill in gaps.

6. Step #6 The last step is to wrap the bouquet stems with pretty ribbon. Cut approximate 5 feet of ribbon from the spool. Beginning about 1 inch from the bottom of the blooms, wrap the ribbon around the bouquet stems, covering the floral tape. Wrap the ribbon on a downward diagonal from the top and work your way down. When you reach your desired bouquet sleeve bottom, wrap upward once or twice and secure the ribbon with corsage/floral pins. Be sure to place the pins at a diagonal so that they don’t poke through the flowers. Ouch!
   

   The bouquet wrap. This is secured with corsage/floral pins to keep it in place.

Assembly Time: 2.5 hours

Approximate Cost: $150 for 30 garden roses, floral tape and 2 yards ribbon.

Tips & Hints:

• The folks at Bella Wedding Flowers have clear instructions on how to their blooms on their website for handy reference. Always check flower care instructions before you buy so that you can ensure you have enough time and supplies to help make your flower project a success.
• White and other light-colored roses are notoriously easy to bruise and brown. Pro tip: simply pluck off damaged petals.

Disclosure: DIY Bride has a financial relationship with Bella Wedding Flowers, meaning we may have received compensation for this content and/or related content . We firmly stand behind our review and recommendation, and are committed to promoting only those companies we feel offer our community excellent products, ethical business practices, and outstanding customer service.