Saving Money on Prom Flowers

Okay, I realize that this post should have been written and posted a couple of months ago in order to be truly helpful for this year’s prom goers. I apologize for the bad timing. But, flowers for prom are also a great deal like flowers for weddings, Mother’s Day, wedding and baby showers, and other occasions, so the same information can still be useful for other times of the year. At least, I truly hope so!

I am quite lucky that my DS18 is dating a wonderful young lady, who happens to be one of my best friends’ daughters. This proved quite helpful to coordinate efforts and share costs as we both needed to provide flowers for her daughter’s prom night.

I don’t have a full tutorial, as I was not organized enough to take the appropriate photos, but I did consult a few video tutorials ahead of time that were terribly helpful, so I will link to them below in case someone would like to view them before starting their own projects.

As my boys have been homeschooled and weren’t terribly interested in proms and other formal events, I didn’t arrange for them to attend one. So, this was my first formal dance to get prepared for.

We priced flowers at a few places, but it was apparent that due to a super hectic schedule that day, we weren’t going to be able to keep them cool and fresh between the time we would have to pick them up and time to pick up his date.

So, that pretty much helped us to decide on silk flowers, which will also be a lovely momento of the date. Pricing a simple, white, silk, pretty plain wristlet corsage nearly gave my frugal soul a heart attack! The mass produced model was nice, but would set us back $40 from a grocery store florist. If I was going to pay $40 for a corsage, I wanted something more along the line of an orchid than fabric roses.

Our date liked the idea of a largely white and silver corsage to go with her dress (a tasteful navy blue number that was classy and stunning). When queried, her favorite flower was the dogwood (not a standard floral choice).

So, my friend and I decided to surprise the kids and craft the prom flowers ourselves. We went to our local Hobby Lobby and found a wristlet, floral tape, floral wire, wide lace ribbon (for the “puff” that the flowers sit on), silver and navy ribbons, pins, pearl sprays, silk fern, and (gasp) a spray of lovely, silk, dogwood flowers. I didn’t get the receipt, but we split the supplies and spent way less than $40!

On a night with no kids around, we met and created the corsage and boutonniere to match. It took a bit of work, but the end results were so impressive and nicer than anything we looked at. The kids were both thrilled at the results and completely surprised by the dogwood flowers.

In the future, as she goes off to college, if they choose to go to another formal dance together, these can be used again and will still look much more special than the mass produced ones that we originally saw.

I referred to the following videos for ideas and techniques as it had been a few years since I had done any floral crafts.