Making Your Own Wedding Bridal Bouquet

In the world of weddings, prices just keep going up. Why? Because retailers know that every bride wants to have that picture-perfect, princess-inspired wedding. They also know that many brides and their parents will pay whatever it takes to make sure her special day is perfect and exactly what she's always dreamed of.

Searching for the perfect bouquet for my wedding I found the perfect one in a magazine. It was gorgeous. The only problem: the price. This simple but elegant bouquet had a price tag of over $300. I admit it; I'm a bargain shopper. When I find something I want, I don't stop looking until I find the same or a similar thing at a price I'm willing to pay.

Just about to set out on yet another scavenger hunt for the same bouquet at under $100 I realized something the wedding industry doesn't want us to know. There's not really that much to making a wedding bouquet.

So I set out to my local Hobby Lobby to find the flowers-and I found them. These white calla lilies made out of a wax like material looked exactly like the real thing. The great news: at half price these flowers were only $1 each. I also found the white roses to surround the calla lilies at just over $1 each. I bought five calla 7 calla lilies and 10 roses. At this point, my total was about $19.

By using fake flowers I could avoid some wedding day stress about when the flowers would be ready and how fresh they would look. The best thing about fake flowers is they keep forever. So I could use this bouquet to decorate my home and forever remind me of that special day.

I found the perfect ribbon on Ebay: a plain black satin ribbon would do the trick as my colors are black and white. A roll of 25 yards of the ribbon was about $5. With so much, I could also use this for other decorations.

I found the strings of large fake pearls at Wal-Mart in the crafts section and I bought extra to use for my bridesmaids bouquets. This was $1.99 per spool with 25 yards per spool. My total cost: $26.