How To Dry Flowers To Preserve Your Bouquet? 5 Ways You Can Do At Home

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Get a beautiful bouquet from your loved one for a special day or anniversary? However, fresh flowers last only a few days. In this blog, we covered how to dry flowers, so that you can preserve the bouquet for memory. It can also use for wedding bouquet preservation.

Table of Contents

2 Easy Ways to Dry Flowers

how to dry flowers?

There are several ways to preserve a wedding bouquet and we are going to outline the most popular ones below. You get to pick how your wedding bouquet is going to end up after the big day.

Method 1 – Air-dry Flowers

This is the most straightforward method of preserving flowers and is also considered the most traditional.

For this method, you will need a line made of wire or twine a few feet of the ground (preferably the height of a door). It is recommended that you do this indoors where there is good air circulation and not outdoors as strong wind and insects can get to your bouquet first.

Air-drying flowers can preserve the colors of the flowers and some of the scent, but one of the downsides of this method is the muting of some of the colors.

They become either too light or too dark, depending on how the petals interact with the air as the plants dry. But then again, this is the easiest way to dry your flowers.

And it’s something you can do immediately after the big day and you can proceed with your honeymoon without worrying about the flowers.

Method 2 – Hang The Bouquet Upside Down (Modern Drying Technique)

The first technique that we outlined in today’s blog was hanging your bouquet upside down so that the moisture will naturally dissipate.

With no moisture, the petals and other parts of the flowers will be preserved and you won’t have to worry about your flowers getting spoiled after a few days. There is a slightly slower method of preservation that might interest some people because this method does not require that you hang your flowers.

This method is drying flowers with the use of silica gel. Silica gel is the stuff that you see in food packets and even shoe boxes. It’s the material inside those packets of desiccants. Their only purpose is to draw away moisture once in contact with any kind of material.

Flower Preservation with silica gel is recommended for deeper-colored flowers. This method of preservation may not good for light-colored flowers.

You will not get the same color preservation, but if you are feeling experimental and do not like squishing your flowers, then this is a good choice.

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Place the flowers in shoe boxes in rows of two, and then cover the flowers completely with silica gel. Pour enough silica gel so that even in the in-folds of the petals have a sufficient amount of gel in them. Continue pouring until all of your boxes of flowers are filled. The drying process will take about seven days. If you live in a very humid environment, it may take longer.

3 Ways to Preserve Flowers Easily

how to preserve your bouquet?

Method 1 – Pressing

You are probably familiar with pressing as a means of drying flowers, but you may not have thought it was possible to do with an entire bouquet. What you will need for pressing an entire bouquet are several large books for the flowers and several more books with lots of heft so you can put adequate pressure on the plants so they will be pressed properly.

Just make sure that you add two layers of parchment between the pages so your bouquet will not absorb any of the ink of the books, and none of the pigmentations of the flowers will end up on the pages of the book.

This method requires at least seven days in order for the preservation to work as intended. If you want to be 100% sure, then leave the pressed flowers to their own devices for 10-12 days instead.

Method 2 – Flower Paperweights

This is a high-tech method of preserving flowers. The process begins with freeze-drying the flowers so 100% of the moisture is removed. The stems are removed, as well as any foliage. Only the flowers are retained.

Freeze-drying removes the moisture without affecting the color and beauty of the flowers. The freeze-dried flowers are then turned into paperweights through 3D printing technology. The resulting outcome is usually breathtaking: flowers, seemingly freshly cut from the ground, are in suspended animation for eternity.

Though this may sound excessive, a lot of people have their wedding bouquets and other important flower arrangements preserved this way so you may want to look into it if you are feeling really attached to your wedding bouquet. There is definitely no harm in trying non-traditional methods of flower preservation.

Method 3 – Wax them up

Paraffin wax isn’t the most popular agent for preserving flowers, but it does work, and it’s also just as easy to do as the other methods. So what you will need for this method is some paraffin wax that has been melted down in a pan, and all the flowers from a bouquet that you want to preserve separated down to their stems. Hold the flower by the stem and gently dip the petals into the hot wax.

You need to hang the flowers upside down as they are drying. We recommend that you first try this method with some inexpensive flowers before moving on to your wedding bouquet. Experience is the best teacher.