I recently hosted a gathering at my house for my girlfriends to pop in and visit. In doing so, I wanted to offer a fun activity.
I love flowers, and I thought having a flower station would give guests a chance to get creative. An activity also serves as an ice breaker for a people who don’t know others at the event. Finally, its something nice for them to take home.
Flower Arranging Party – What you need
- Vases: We got ours at the Dollar Tree! They have all kinds of decorations and vases for crazy low prices. It’s the perfect place to get party supplies.
- Flower mart: We have a wholesale flower market just 30 minutes away in downtown Los Angeles. If you want to know how to shop there, visit my blog post How to Shop at the Los Angeles Flower Market. More about what types of flowers to get, below.
- Coolers with water to put flowers in during car ride back – We didn’t do this but I wish we did! Our flowers suffered for it. Flowers need to be in the water at all times. Anything more than 15 minutes without water will shorten the lifespan of the flowers. We had them out of water for over an hour which resulted in the flowers lasting only a couple of days.
- Shears, scissors
- Ribbon, raffia or twine to wrap around vases
- Large buckets to store flowers INSIDE before the day of the event
Make sure you cut the stems once you get them home, before placing them in water. The fresh cuts allow the flowers to absorb water most effectively.
It’s important to protect cut flowers from wind and sun. I put all the flowers together in one of my sinks filled with water. In hindsight, I wish I placed them in large buckets, sorted by type of flower. They would have had more room to breathe.
Prepare flowers on the day of the event
- On the day of your get-together, bring the flowers outdoors. Keep them in water.
- Set up a table where people can cut stems and arrange their flowers.
- Make a few arrangements to display for guests to see examples of what they can create.
- Welcome guests to take a vase and make an arrangement!
Types of Flowers to Buy for Flower Arranging Party
We had decided on a wildflower theme and bought roses, sunflowers, snapdragons, aster, statice, and other filler type flowers.
In hindsight, I wish I bought just roses with simple greens and maybe one other type of flower to complement the roses.
You can buy 2 dozen roses at the Los Angeles Flower Market for as low as $15. They last longer than cut wildflowers, are inexpensive and give a crisp, clean look. And who doesn’t love roses?
The purpose of the flower station is to give your guests a pleasant experience and something pretty to take home. A vase of roses and greens achieves this purpose.
While it seems like it may be an expensive activity to offer, each flower arrangement ended up costing about $6. The guests had a great time and loved making their arrangements.
Do you think you’ll consider this for a future get-together? It’s a great way to make your guests feel spoiled. I will do this again, with a simpler selection of flowers next time.
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like my blog post on 4 steps to Professional Looking Flower Arrangements
