If you’re anything like us, the thought of throwing flowers in the trash is horrific! Add to that the emotion and sentimentality of your wedding flowers – the bouquet you held during your last moments as a single lady and your first moment married to the love of your life – and the trash heap becomes unthinkable.

But alas, flowers are a lovely, fleeting piece of nature and can only look fresh and vibrant for a short period of time. So the big question is…

what do you do with your flowers after you walk back up the aisle??

That’s where we come in! Bouquet Preservation is near and dear to our hearts and we are proud to be one of the only studios in the US that will press your wedding flowers and transform them into an heirloom piece of modern art that you can always have to look back on.

After 10+ years of creating one-of-a-kind preservation art pieces, we’d love to walk you through some of the FAQ’s we get and some of the common problems we’ve learned to work around to give you a peek into the world of pressed bouquet preservation art…

If you’re getting married in northern Colorado, you are more than welcome to drive your bouquet to our north Fort Collins studio and drop it off to us.

But, if that isn’t convenient or you’re getting married in another state, we still have you covered! We’ve created a bouquet shipping kit that includes all the materials you’ll need to safely pack up your bouquet and ship it to us. We even created this handy video about How to Pack a Bouquet for Shipping.

Be sure to overnight your bouquet to us via UPS or Fed Ex and never send it out on a Saturday or Sunday to avoid having your flowers wait out the weekend in a hot warehouse.

Our standard kit fits up to XL bouquets and we’ve even had brides fit some bridesmaid bouquets in to make sure we have enough flowers to create a large, intricate collection of art pieces for them.

When you drop off your bouquet or we receive your shipping kit in the mail, the first thing we do is inspect the flowers and updated you about their condition. We then carefully deconstruct your bouquet and sort the flowers.

If some of your blooms don’t survive the shipping process…don’t worry! We have a large collection of pressed flowers that we can substitute into your art to replace any items that arrive too damaged to use.

If you need substantial replacements, we have contacts throughout the floral industry and can easily re-order whatever flowers you need. A certain amount of complimentary replacements are included in the cost of your art and we only send you an invoice if we have to order multiple bunches of flowers to complete your bouquet.

After we assess the health of your flowers, they are separated and meticulously placed into our flower presses to being the process of drying, flattening and curing. We change out the special blotter paper regularly and check your flowers frequently to ensure they are as healthy as possible. This process takes about 6-8 weeks.

If you have lots of variety and small textures, a botanical piece might be perfect! If you have large, lush blooms, a classic bouquet design might work best.

Below you’ll see a comparison photo of our 3 most popular sizes layered over each other so you can get a feel for just how many blooms will fit in each size. If you have a lot of large flowers like garden roses, they really spread out when pressed

One of our most exciting offerings is to design a gallery wall that showcases your flowers in a mix of art sizes and even styles. In the photo to the right, you’ll see flowers from the same bouquet worked into a mix of horizontal and vertical orientations along with bouquet, botanical, tapestry and meadow designs. If you’d like to create a set or gallery wall project, just let us know and we’ll come up with something unique that perfectly fits the space you’d like to decorate!

After your flowers have cured and are ready to design with, Elycia, the owner and artist, creates a rough draft in the design style and orientation you chose. We then reach out to you with a photo to ask for any feedback or tweaks before your flowers are permanently mounted on glass.

At this time, we’ll also send frame choices and advise you which frame color(s) we think would pair best with your art. We even have a video all about Frame Choices for Preservation Art to give you some insight and tips when choosing your frame.

We know Bouquet Preservation in an intricate, lengthy process, so we are more than happy to walk you through every step and answer any questions you have so we can confidently create the most stunning piece of art out of your flowers that will bring color and style to your home or office!

If you live anywhere outside of northern Colorado, we ship your final art in custom packaging right to your doorstep. Over many years of shipping these pieces, we’ve learned how to get them safely to you and are continually testing and refining our packing materials to stay on the cutting edge of shipping technology and make sure that your irreplaceable piece of art is safe and secure till it reaches you! Elycia has two decades of shipping experience and knows all the ends and outs of how to properly pack, secure and pad delicate art pieces. We can ship your art anywhere in the USA and shipping is included in the price of your art!

It’s good to bear in mind that your preservation art is a natural product and it is normal to expect some shedding and a few small bits or petals to fall to the bottom of the frame over time. That’s why we recently redesigned our whole framing process to allow for frames to be gently opened to retrieve those small fragments.

The back piece of glass that the flowers are mounted to is the most fragile so make sure you have plenty of space to work and a soft, protected spot to place the back glass while removing flower bits from your art.

You can carefully open the back of the frame, set the glass aside on a clean cloth surface (like a towel or bed) and remove the bits with tweezers. If you have gloves you can wear, that will cut down on the chance of any fingerprints on the glass. Once you’re finished, simply reassemble your art and hang it back up on the wall!

Preservation Art Gifts

One fun way to use extra pressed flowers is to gift preservation art to people who helped pay for your wedding. Pressed flower art is a big hit with Moms, Aunts and Grandmothers and it makes a wonderful Christmas gift, Mother’s Day gift or just to say “Thank you!” for contributing to the most special day of your life.

Gift Registry Item
If you LOVE the idea of bouquet preservation but have most of your resources tied up in your wedding, one idea is to put preservation art on your gift registry list! Crowd sourcing can help contribute to that floral gallery wall you have your eye on or allow you to purchase an XL piece of art instead of a petit one.

Time to Redecorate
Since your flowers will be mounted on glass, it is totally normal to re-paint a wall to compliment them! After all, you chose this color palette for the most stylized and personal day of your life so it makes sense you might want to carry that theme into your home!

If you’re ready to secure your date on our botanical art calendar, hop over to our Art Order Form and fill out your details! We’ll be in touch with a proposal, contract and invoice for 50% of your project total to secure your date.

If you’d like to read more about the Bouquet Preservation options and process, head over to our Preservation Page for more info.