Your Wedding Flowers for Less

Wedding flowers can blow your budget. They certainly blew mine, and that's despite me knowing all the secret tips. Unfortunately most of my wedding tips didn't translate into French for my wedding, but if you're getting married in the UK, then this advice on wedding flowers is going to save you a fortune. If you're looking for super-high end designer flowers, then this is not the feature for you - but right now, most of us are trying to save a few pennies on our wedding budget, and I'm all about cheap and chic. To get you in the mood, here are a few pictures of my own wedding flowers, taken by the lovely Chloé from Caught the Light. We couldn't DIY all our wedding flowers, because we needed to hire the vases from the florist, and it worked out as more economical to keep him on-side. But we saved a fortune by buying clouds and clouds of baby's breath from a local market. Our wedding planner Kerry Bracken collected it on the night before the wedding and it stayed lovely and fresh. Our Provencal florist, Stéphane, was wonderful - I'd recommend him to any bride planning to get married in France.

Before the Big Day Tips - Your Wedding Flowers for Less

1. Keep it seasonal. For a list of what flowers are in season for your wedding, click here.

2. Consider using plants rather than cut flowers for your table displays. Some garden centres will rent you plants, but even if you need to buy them, you can give them away as lovely presents after your wedding. You could even grow your own plants, whereas growing enough flowers is a mammoth task.

3. Keep it simple. Single blooms in lots of vases take a lot less time to arrange, and that means the florist will charge you less for their time. This isn't going to give you a luxury look, but elegant simplicity is very in right now!

4. Choose a cheap variety of flower, and buy tonnes of it for a dramatic effect. For example, I used baby's breath - a flower I hate when mixed with roses, but adore on its own. Carnations have the same effect. They're dreadful dotted in bouquets, but when you mass loads of them together, the effect completely changes, from awful to awesome.

5. Buy direct from a flower market and ask a friendly florist to moonlight on your behalf. This probably only works if you have a friend or a friend-of-a-friend who's a florist, but it's worth asking around. They could do your wedding flowers instead of giving you a wedding present.

6. DIY. Now I say this with huge caution. If you're doing simple single blooms as suggested in Hint 3, then you're not going to find this too traumatic. If, however, you're thinking luxurious mixed and hand-tied bunches, then you're not going to be able to produce the effect you want. Plus it takes hours, and it has to be done really near the wedding. You do not want to be arranging flowers the morning of you wedding. Really, trust me, you don't.

7. Don't DIY your buttonholes. They're harder to produce than you think, and they're going to be in every photography. Ditto for your wedding bouquet. Even if your budget is tiny, splash out.

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