The Lasting Beauty Of A Silk Flower Wedding Bouquet
By: Donald Saunders
Most couples will put a great deal of time and thought into the selection of the bride’s bouquet and rightly so as the bouquet is not only an essential bridal accessory and a central part of the bride’s wedding outfit, but the flowers used in the bouquet will convey a very special and personal message to the groom.
To ensure that just the right flowers are available for the bouquet and to provide a lasting reminder of this very special moment in any girl’s life, couples are increasingly turning away from traditional cut flowers in favor of a silk wedding flower bouquet.
The art of making silk flowers dates back many centuries and the first silk flowers were believed to have been made in China. Silk flower making was also adopted in Italy and France during the eighteenth century and moved from there to England and then across the Atlantic to America during the nineteenth century.
Silk flowers are fashioned from nature with the first stage in the process being the manufacture of a series of dies which are used to cut the silk flower petals and leaves. These dies are modeled on actual flower petals and leaves and a great deal of care and time, as well as expense, goes into the manufacture or each set of dies.
The dies are then used to cut the flower petals and leaves from white silk before each piece is individually hand died using cotton balls and fine brushes. This is skilled work and it can take up to an hour to die a single petal.
Each petal is then placed into a mold and heated and pressed into the correct shape before being stiffened where necessary with fine wire inserted by hand and glued into place.
Finally the individual petals and leaves are assembled into the finished flower using a series of fine wires, each wrapped in floral paper and coated in a fine layer of wax.
The result of this highly labor intensive process is a flower of quite exquisite beauty which, in virtually all cases, is so realistic that most people would not be able to tell the difference between the natural flower and its silk equivalent.
For the bride this means the ability to use out-of-season flowers with ease and so express her faithfulness to the marriage through the use of blue violets, or her simple joy through the use of gardenias, whatever time of year she chooses to marry.
The use of silk flowers does not of course have to be confined to a silk flower wedding bouquet and can also be extended to the groom’s buttonhole, the bridesmaids’ flowers and indeed the floral decorations as a whole.
One increasingly seen benefit of the use of a silk wedding flower bouquet lies in the fact that the bride can, if she wishes, keep her bouquet as a beautiful and lasting memory of one of the happiest days of her life.
To find out more about the lasting beauty of a silk flower wedding bouquet please visit Talking Weddings today.