Many brides ask me about rose petals. How many will they need to go down the sides
of the aisles? How much will it cost,
etc. So I purchased a bunch of roses at
WalMart and did my own scientific study.
First, don’t feel like you have to purchase rose petals from
the florist. They are very easy to make,
and you’ll save yourself a ton. Here’s
how you do it:
1.
Hold the rose with both hands, one hand holding
the stem up close under the rose and the other hand around the rose itself.
2.
Rock the rose back and forth gently till you
feel the petals disconnect from the stem.
3.
Hold the rose (now disconnected from the stem)
over a box, place your thumbs in the hole where the stem was, and gently work
the petals apart letting them fall into the box.
4.
Fluff the petals in the box to make sure they
are all separated.
5.
Remove any tiny center petals that don’t look
nice.
6.
Once you have done all your roses, place them,
by handfuls, being careful not to bruise them, into large zip lock bags, and
store them in your frig for up to a week.
Now, how many petals do you get from your roses? I think you would be surprised how many
petals are in a single rose! Usually
30-45 petals! It depends upon the
variety of rose of course. So what can
you expect coverage wise?
This is a 1 square foot area marked off on my desk:
Here is one rose, made into petals. These roses had about 35 petals each:
Two roses made into petals:
Three roses:
As you can see from these
photos, the more roses you use, obviously, the heavier the coverage will
be. Now, how does this translate to
putting petals down your aisle for your wedding? Well, if you want roughly the
amount of coverage that one rose gives you, and you have a 30 foot aisle,
(don’t forget you have to go down both sides, so that’s actually 60 feet of petals!) Then if you have a 6 inch wide band of petals
up each side of a 30 foot aisle, you are going to need to use 30 roses. If you want it to be really heavy coverage,
like the 5 rose photo, then you will need 150 roses to make a 6” row up both
sides. It just depends upon the look you
want.
How about on your
tables? If you want petals around your
centerpieces, you can use the same photos as a guide. If you just want a few petals around the
centerpiece, say, half the amount you see in the 1 rose photo, then if you have
30 tables, you’re going to need 15 roses.
Personally, I like to see a heavy coverage of rose petals around a
centerpiece, with somewhat random edges.
This “grounds” the centerpiece, ties it to the table, as it were. You need something under your centerpiece
that accomplishes this, whether it’s a mirror, a charger, a round of wood, a
doilie, petals, moss, rocks, whatever goes with the theme of your wedding. It gives your table a cohesive, “all
together” look.
Since your centerpiece will
be sitting in the middle of the petals, you can figure that in your
calculations, depending upon how large the “footprint” of your centerpiece
is.
In any case, you can see now,
how far a 20 rose bunch from Costco will go!
It’ll save you a ton, and you can do it earlier during the week of your
wedding so you won’t have to be making petals the morning of the wedding! Incidentally, this method will work for other
things, such as fall leaves, mixed flowers,
etc. that you might want to use.
Just mark off a 1 foot area, then do the math!
It’s an easy little DIY thing
that’s hard to mess up, and adds a lot to the look of your day!
