Here are some great tips for a choosing a bridal bouquet from USA Bride.

First of all, make sure that the flowers you choose are in season. This keeps costs down and the flower is usually in better shape.

Select flowers that you think can keep their shape for the entire day. This is especially true if wedding photography takes place later in the day. If you like, you can use a bouquet holder, which is a little plastic vial filled with water, to keep your bouquet fresh.

Make sure that your flowers go with your dress. If you are small don’t get a large bouquet that dwarfs you. Let the florist help you choose flowers that will match your dress. Bring in pictures of your wedding day outfit and don’t be afraid to listen to suggestions. If you don’t know exactly what you want but have an idea of your tastes try cutting out some pictures of bouquets that you do like from a florist’s or wedding magazine. This will give both you and your florist some inspiration for what will go best.

Keep in mind that silk flowers are less expensive than those fresh flowers as the bouquet. Symbolically they are precious as they keep fever.

Photo by  JamesKidsArts

The holidays are always a very difficult time for those of us watching our figure. But for the bride, it can be especially distressing. Well, now that the holidays are over, it’s time to get serious about fitting into that dress just in time for your wedding. Healthy eating and excercise are the best and healthiest way to lose weight in the long term, but brides are looking for tips that can help them lose the weight a lot faster for this one time most special event where all eyes will be on her. One diet that is out there is called the Wedding Day Diet. It claims to have tips and tricks to help someone drop weight quickly in time for a deadline. It also includes tricks on making yourself appear thinner and last minute water weight loss. Check it out at the Wedding Day Diet.com.

Photo by House Of Sims

According to Favor Ideas, a site about weddings, there are certain flowers that are better for winter bouquets than others simply because they last longer and also look better with the darker clothing colors associated with the season. Hydrangeas are suggested because they are hardy and also can have their shade deepened or controlled to match a darker dress.  They are also a very inexpensive flower.The calla lily is also perfect for winter, especially the miniature ones in gold or red tones. If you are going to have roses in your winter bouquet, the experts at Favor ideas recommend choosing buds in deeper burgundy tones to lend it the bouquet graceful touch of fall romance. Unusual elements such as seed pods, berries, vines and rye grass can also be used in this type of bouquet but the idea is to not go overboard or it could look a little too artsy or crafty.

Photo by booleansplit

Is it possible to order your wedding flowers and then not have them arrive? That is what happened to Trent Tomlison and Jessica Lowman. According to the Great American Country site these two got screwed by a wedding planner that dropped the ball when it was time to make sure that the flowers would arrive. Thousands of dollars were spent on flowers and none were enjoyed because they arrived too late. You need to be so careful when it comes to booking your flowers and keeping them refrigerated or you can end up with a bare wedding. So how do you avoid this type of disaster? The simplest rule is to order locally and keep it simple. This means ordering flowers that are already in your area like daises or roses and staying away from the huge exotic blooms like orchids that have to be flown in from Ecuador or Hawaii. Basically the less distance that the flowers have to travel the better off you will be.

If it DOES happen to you, it might be best to send out everyone you know to all the local florists and even grocery stores with at least one or 2 colors in mind. They can find every flower they can in those colors so at least you can have something last minute.

Photo by Duke LeNoir

There is a website in Toronto Canada that has the right idea when it comes to organic weddings. It is called Eco Flora, and it specializes in Fair Trade, wildcrafted and organic flowers.This fits in nicely with the trend towards having a green wedding. Fair Trade flowers make sure that nobody was exploited in the process of their cultivation. Many flowers for wedding bouquets come from countries like Ecuador and Columbia where people are not treated fairly. Wildcrafted flowers are not full of pesticides which can leech into water tables and poison the lakes and rivers. Organic flowers are grown naturally as well in both wild and contained enviroments. There are several initiatives that Eco Flora follows when it comes to its Fair Trade Flowers. One of them is the Flower Label Progam (FLP) which has 37 certified organic and Fair Trade in Ecuador. Another is Max Havelaar, which also has free trade flowers that are sold to Eco Flora from a farm in Ecuador.

We know you must be excited about your upcoming wedding. You might also be wondering what sort of wedding you can afford – especially if you are familiar with the typical price of a wedding today. According to CostOfWedding.com, “The majority of [U.S.] couples spend between $14,366 and $35,915 while their wedding budget is typically 50% less than the amount spent. This does not include cost for a honeymoon or engagement ring.”

So, a big question for many couples is how to save money…

The book, Wedding Planning on a Budget, is the perfect resource to help find tips and tricks to do just that. This book was written by a couple who themselves were stuggling with fitting their dream wedding into their not-so-dreamlike budget. Along the way they found lots of tips and tricks and ended up getting a $24,000 wedding for only $2,000.

Tips include:

• Secrets to low cost catering
• How to get your wedding dress super cheap
• How to save a fortune on flowers
• Where to find wedding bargains
• 93 helpful web links
• 7 keys to budget wedding planning
• Where to find free wedding tools
• Where to find discounted services and products

One of the great things about this book, is that it comes with free wedding planning software, wedding ministers kit, personal wedding website, and wedding planning guide. We think the price is pretty good for the budget conscious at just $19.95.

This book is instantly downloadable, so you don’t even have to wait to get all that great advice!

Click here now to download Wedding Planning on a Budget by Tim and Lisa Spooner.

Trying to look beyond the usual wedding vase décor. Brides has come up with a few interesting new ideas for vessels to decorate the tables at your wedding.

One idea, for instance is to use white china soup tureens. These can fit a tightly wound bunch of rananculus flowers together so that your guests appear to be looking at a bowl of flower soup!Another interesting idea is to make a flower creation that looks like a three tiered wedding cake. This is easy enough to do with foam and spears and flowers such as peonies, roses or hydrangenia.

Also intriguing is the floral presentation set made from a sugar, cream and teapot set. White or pale pink roses look very romantic set in an older slightly tarnished found tea set.

We found these fun pop art vases at www.uniquedecoronline.com.

Hand tied table bouquets are the funkiest and most creative ways to display flowers at a wedding.  There are lots of creative ideas for this type of wedding centerpiece at Foxglove Flowers.

If you are having a summer wedding you could benefit from the good luck offered by bouquets of Sunflowers on your table. These are flowers that symbolize the sun and also prosperity. They are also large and sturdy enough that your guests can take them home with them.

If you want the most elegant of white wedding table centerpieces consider a mix of cream and snow colored roses, lilies and hydrangeas punctuated with a coo9ling touch of green ivy. In the winter these flowers also look good with sprigs of evergreen and white berries like mistletoe.

The hippest hand tied bouquet still has to be the green bouquet, which consists of green callas, green tinged roses and carnations and hydraganeas.

If your wedding is this spring then don’t underestimate the seasonal value as well as beauty of a bouquets of hand tied tulips on your reception tables. Double tulips nowadays are so luscious they practically look like peonies!

In Tampa there is a fairy tale place known as the Event Factory. This is a big hall, like a big department store divided into several different theme environments. Many people get married on the sets that are included there including one set called the Enchanted Garden. This is interesting as it is the kind of theme that could build for your own wedding to give it a great twist. All you need is a room that can be turned into a set. The walls and floors could be painted black and with stars. You can then bring in all kinds of flowers, bushes and trees to create your very own personalized enchanted garden. You could put fake birds in it, chandeliers, fountains and string everything with a fairly land of tiny twinkling lights. The options are endless. This sounds expensive but it is not. You can buy fake flowers very cheap, especially fake ivy and fake roses, which can look very nice, lit up by tiny twinkling lights. A little fake fountain or babbling brook made out of blue plastic could complete the look!

There are some types of traditional wedding flowers that are more traditional to wear in the hair than others especially if you are getting married in white.  In Hawaii or Asia it is more common to wear one or more large colored blooms but in Western weddings the flowers worn in the bride’s lock tend to be smaller. They also always tend to be pastel colored or white if you are thinking in traditional terms. Of course nowadays modern brides wear every shade and variety of flower in their hair from green orchids to burgundy calla lilies to miniature roses.

However, if you want to be standard about it then the flowers usually chosen are small gardenias, roses, orchids and lilies. Daisies are often worn in the hair as well but this is more of a contemporary touch that was actually popularized by Drew Barrymore. You can see a nice selection of these traditional floral bridal hair accessories at Late Bloomer Boutique.