How to Make a Cascading Wedding Bouquet | Master Your DIY Wedding With YouFloria
Are you DIY-ing your wedding? If so, we can help!
Use our step-by-step guide below to discover how to make a cascading wedding bouquet with that magical wow-factor.
What is a Cascading Wedding Bouquet?
A cascading wedding bouquet, sometimes also known as a shower bouquet or trailing bouquet, is a popular option for brides looking to channel a bohemian vibe on their special day.
Characterised by its elegance, flowers and foliage cascade downwards like a waterfall in this arrangement, to create a romantically rustic look.
Step One: Starting Your Cascading Wedding Bouquet
Once you’ve chosen the flowers and foliage that you’d like to use in your bouquet, it’s time to start spiralling!
Choose a hand to hold your arrangement in as you build it — left or right, it doesn’t matter, just as long as you keep using the same one to hold your flowers throughout the creation process.
It’s also important for each stem to be placed in the same direction, so that the heads are facing towards your shoulder and the ends are pointing away from you.
Don't worry too much about how everything looks at this stage, as you spiral the flowers together by crossing the stems over one another. Given that you’re going for a looser, more natural effect with this bouquet, there’s no need to overthink it!
Step Two: Choosing Which Flowers Go Where
Keep layering more flowers and foliage together, working with the natural curve of the stems to select those with a forward lean for the front of the arrangement.
As you repeat this step, keep in mind which part will be facing out towards your guests. This is where the ‘cascade’ will form, so make sure that the bouquet appears longer from this perspective and shorter towards the back.
Throughout the creation process, the easiest way to check this is to stand in front of a mirror; however, you can also simply turn the bouquet back towards yourself (without letting go of the stems!) to observe it from the correct angle.
Step Three: Keep Tweaking Your Cascading Wedding Bouquet
This will very much be a case of trial and error, so we suggest putting your blooms in different arrangements to test out what they would look like before settling on your final placement.
Top tip: keep the hand that you’re holding the bouquet in relatively loose, so that you have freedom to wiggle the stems around as needed without losing the overall shape!
Once you’re at the point of finalising the lovely cascade at the front, you might also need to put some of the stems in at a slightly shallower angle, just to make sure that waterfall effect is front and centre stage.
Step Four: Tying Off Your Cascading Wedding Bouquet
With a piece of twine or wire — depending on the vibe you’re going for — make a loop around your flowers and pull it fairly tight. This is your last chance to make any adjustments before you tie the bouquet off!
If you’re not sure which end is attached to which head, waggle the flower at the top and you’ll be able to see which stem is moving at the bottom. From there, you can pull it to move around as needed.
Then, once you’re satisfied, cut the stems quite short to make sure you can comfortably hold the bouquet close to your body as you glide gracefully down the aisle.
If you’re more of a visual learner, why not head over to our YouTube channel to watch our expert florist, Ana, demonstrate how to make a cascading wedding bouquet?
Alternatively, you can check out how to incorporate other DIY wedding flowers into your big day in our previous blog post.
