The bouquet toss was once a ubiquitous wedding tradition: the bride tosses her flowers toward a crowd of single women, and whoever catches them is supposedly the next one to marry.
But some brides are not only reconsidering this ritual: they are also keeping the bouquet.
Lauren Wallace, 28, owner of a flower preservation business called Maed by Mini in Syracuse, New York, should know. He said that by 2023 he had enough business to dedicate himself to full time, and this year he has scheduled more than 120 bridal bouquet preservations. (As for her own wedding last October, “I didn't even consider throwing a bouquet.”)
His work is influenced by the oil paintings of bouquets by the Flemish masters of the 17th century. To preserve the bouquet, the flowers are processed in silica gel for about a month to dry, before being emptied into a custom wooden container. Several layers of resin are then poured over the flowers to create depth and clarity before sanding, applying a top coat of resin, and refinishing the wood.
“There's not much you can take away from your wedding day, but this can be transformed into something new,” Wallace said. Starting price is $1000 and you can use remaining floral scraps on coasters, earrings and pendants for an additional cost.
The trend may also reflect a shift in cultural attitudes toward being single. “Marriage has started to feel like less of an accomplishment,” said Amy Shack Egan, who calls herself “the anti-wedding wedding planner” and founded Cheersy, a booking platform for wedding coordinators. “So throwing a bouquet to your single friends, assuming they're all dying to get married, is almost offensive.”
He added that lately he rarely saw a bouquet of flowers thrown.
Instead of opting for real flowers, brides are increasingly experimenting with alternative shapes. Donna Collinson, an artist from Thorpe Waterville, England, known as Glass Florist, started making glass bouquets during Covid and quickly became an internet sensation.
“The impact of fresh flowers on sustainability is enormous,” he said. Instead, a bouquet “can become an heirloom that is passed down from parents to children.”
The bouquets are made from glass rods that Collinson fires to about 1,200 degrees before using various tools to shape the molten glass. Their bouquets range from $250 to $900. A typical bridal bouquet costs between $100 and $350.
“It's basically a two-in-one,” said Rachel Pecuh, the designer behind Le Métier, a French beaded flower shop based in Vancouver, Canada. Last year, one of Pecuh's TikTok posts garnered more than 15 million views.
“About 85 percent of what I do is for weddings or wedding bouquet preservation — beaded recreations of people's bouquets,” she said.
Since that surge in interest, Pecuh last year left her job as an archaeologist specializing in resource management and now does accounting full-time. Costs for their bouquets start at just over $300. “It takes me two to three days to complete a bouquet,” she said. “I usually send a sketch and bead tone collage to the client, making sure I capture what they want.”
Skye Nilsson started making bridal bouquets out of seashells after seeing a rise in floral preservation artists online. “I thought, how amazing would it be for a beach bride to have a themed bouquet that also didn't need to be preserved forever,” she said in an email.
His business, Treasures Untold Au, is based in Sydney, Australia, and his commissions are booked until November 2027. “The shells I use are byproducts of the fishing industry that would otherwise go to landfill,” he said. Nilsson makes the shell flowers in batches and attaches them to the stems. The bouquets take about a month to create and cost almost $450.
Some brides are making their own. Emma Pearce, who works in fashion merchandising and lives in Jersey City, said that as a child near the beach, she collected seashells with her mother. “I mentioned the idea to my mom,” she said of a seashell bouquet, “and she found inspiration on Pinterest to figure out the base.” In April, Pearce, 26, posted her mother's presentation of her shell bouquet on TikTok and it spread quickly.
For her wedding last year, Danielle Felix, a content creator in Madera, California, wove her bridal bouquet in about three days. “I threw a dollar tree bouquet instead of throwing my bouquet,” said Felix, 27.
She said she hopes her daughter, if she has one, will one day walk down the aisle with the bouquet she made.
Out of 300 weddings over the past three years, Kristine Sattorre, founder of wedding content creation service Modern Brides BFF, has only seen two brides toss the bouquet.
“The consensus is that it's very archaic and uncomfortable,” he said. “Many couples choose to get married, rather than thinking they have to get married.”
