What To Do With Dying Flowers

What to do with dying flowers? Take a million photos of them (if you're a photographer). Then, press them.

At the end of the night after our Montauk Club styled shoot last month, Jaime Lee Newman, the florist for our shoot, gifted me one of her beautiful floral arrangements. This made me super happy and sad at the same time -- happy, because I'll get to enjoy them for a little longer, but sad, because I'll be the one to watch them wilt and die and have to throw them away. If you're anything like me, it pains you to have to throw away pretty things. So for me, photographing these little beauties in their wilting stage helped me come to terms with this micro-tragedy ;) 

In all seriousness though -- Brides, pressing the petals or leaves of your bouquet is one way to make your flowers last forever. It's nice to be able to preserve a little piece of real-life beauty from your wedding day. You can use something as simple as an old magazine or textbook. I wanted a dedicated flower press, so my mom bought me this simple little thing from one of my favorite Etsy sellers, Arminho, last year for Christmas.

To press the flowers, you just flatten each individual petal between the pages of a thick book, or in my case, the cardboard sheets from my flower press. Three weeks later, you have some pretty florals to use for bookmarks, cards, scrapbooks, etc.

The final frame above shows the resulting pressed flowers, stored safely away, Project Life style. I used blank 3" x 4" and 4" x 6" Project Life cards to glue the pressed flowers/leaves. You can read more about how I use the Project Life scrapbooking system to preserve all of life's memories.