($12-$16k) Costco Garland + Trader Joes Florals: Practicing Ceremony Decor for $185
We're having a small backyard wedding and doing most of the florals ourselves with flowers from a flower farm.
However, I wanted to practice hanging the garland, seeing how many flowers would be needed, and getting a sense of the quality of a Costco Garland.
Materials:
- 25ft Costco Garland - $110
- Trader Joe's Flowers - $50
- Farmers Market Snapdragons - $25
- Fishing wire and floral wire - $0 had at home
I had the Costco Garland delivered on Thursday and we put it up on Saturday. I purchased it just 3 days before but plan to order well in advance for the wedding weekend. The garland looked great in the box and we just spritzed it with water and left it until we were ready to start working with it.
For flowers I picked up what was available at Trader Joe's on Saturday. It was Easter weekend so the supply was a little limited, but I got spray roses, carnations, baby's breath, ranunculus (unclear if they actually were that or roses), and a few other flowers (not sure the names of them). The idea was to use the ranunculus as focal flowers and the others to fill it all in.
Hanging it up was the hardest part. It isn't super heavy, but it's very long, so we had to get creative with a few helping hands to figure out how and where to place the wire to support it. After it was hung, I started arranging flowers in the 3 focal areas, then spread florals throughout. I started by placing the ranunculus and snapdragons, then placed everything else. The final length that was hung was only about 13ft of the garland, so I'm planning to use the remainder to decorate the wedding arch. The photo of the full garland was before I added in small flowers throughout, so it looks a little bare. I also had a lot of flowers left over, enough to make two arrangements.
Unfortunately, the snapdragons were the first to wilt (it was 85 degrees that day), but everything else held up pretty well. I think for the wedding weekend, I'll hang the garland up the day before the ceremony and arrange the flowers the morning of.
Wanted to share in case it was helpful to other folks because I learned about the Costco garland in this community. Happy to answer any questions!