It’s easy to learn how to freeze dry wedding bouquet because you can buy a freeze drying machine in stores and online nowadays. This three-step tutorial will teach you how to use a freeze drying machine for your wedding flowers and bouquet.
You’ll also know tips for preserving flowers and bouquets. But if you forgot about your bridal bouquet and it’s already dry, you can read our separate guide on what to do with a dried wedding bouquet.
How To Freeze Dry Wedding Bouquet At Home
Step 1. Prepare a freeze drying machine
- Buy a freeze drying machine for home use, but expect that even the smallest dryer can cost over $1,000; it might be more practical to bring the wedding bouquet to a professional if you’ll only freeze dry once
- If you’re planning on using the machine to preserve other wedding flowers and perishable items in the future, then get a quality freeze dryer
- Read the instructions for your unit before using it to avoid accidentally damaging the machine
Step 2. Prepare the wedding bouquet
- Before you start preserving the wedding flowers, prepare them beforehand by ensuring that they’re not too dried up
- Ideally, you want to freeze dry a fresh-cut wedding bouquet and not an arrangement that’s already dried
- Recut the floral stems and put them in a vase with room-temperature water
- After 12 hours, you can begin the freeze-drying method
- You want to remove all the greenery on the freeze-drying flowers and then trim their stems to help with hastening the process
Step 3. Freeze dry the wedding flowers
- To begin preserving the flowers of the wedding bouquet, you will pre-cool the machine’s specimen chamber by setting the temperature to −5 °F and then press start
- Take apart the bridal bouquet and arrange the flowers on the trays of the home freeze dryer; you want them evenly spaced out in a single layer
- Return the trays to the freeze dry machine and seal the door shut; check the manual regarding securing the trays inside the machine and ensure that the door is secured to have successful preservation of the wedding bouquet flowers
- Please make sure the machine’s vacuum pump has started, then freeze the flowers for a day at −5 °F to remove their moisture
- For ten days, you’ll increase the machine’s temperature by 0 °F every other day; the temperature by the last day should be 20 °F
- If the flowers still have some moisture on them, you can continue freeze drying for one more day; otherwise, simply take the wedding bouquet flowers from their trays as the freeze drying is complete
Can You Freeze Dry A Wedding Bouquet?
Freeze drying is a helpful method for preserving a wedding bouquet if you want to maintain the original structure of the flowers in the bouquet. You can freeze dry your wedding flower petals and use them as decors later.
However, please understand that the best flowers to freeze dry include: calla lilies, carnations, dahlias, daffodils, gardenias, hyacinths, gypsophila, iris, hydrangea, peonies, and roses, to name a few. They are often used in bridal bouquets, so you should successfully freeze dry flowers from your wedding bouquet without issues.
Please check the complete list of flowers compatible with freeze drying by Cuddon Freeze Dry to be sure if your wedding flowers can be preserved this way.
What Is Freeze Drying And Why Is It Useful?
Instead of turning them into dried flowers for pressing, one of the best ways to preserve flowers from the wedding is by freeze drying. It is preferred because you help the blooms retain their original shape since you remove the water vapor from frozen flowers.
Therefore, they’ll still be natural-looking and maintain their actual size and form. To further understand how freeze dried flowers work, they’ll undergo the following process:
- You’ll put fresh-cut flowers inside the freeze-drying chamber
- The flowers are frozen solid to lock moisture into their cellular tissue
- The freeze drying chamber will also become a vacuum since the air inside is pumped out
- The ice within the flowers will turn into vapor, which will contact the ice condenser
- The vapors will then become ice or undergo the process of sublimation
- The flowers are preserved but still maintain their original appearance
How Much Does Freeze Drying Flowers Cost?
Freeze dried flowers can cost you a starting price of $150 onwards. This method of preserving flowers can also include arranging the flowers inside a frame if you bring them to a preservation center.
On the contrary, for those who decide to preserve the flowers at home and buy a machine, you will need to spend around $2,000. Therefore, it might not be a reasonable purchase
But if you don’t mind your flowers losing their structure, read how to press wedding flowers for an easy and affordable preservation method.
Cost of a freeze drying machine
- Freeze drying machine: $2,000 to $10,000
- Mylar bags and oxidizer packets: $24 onwards
- Vacuum pump oil: $20 onwards
- Electricity use: around $20 per month or $2 per batch
Conclusion
And that’s it! You just learned how to freeze dry wedding bouquet in three steps.
Start with buying the machine, preparing the flowers from the bouquet, and then freezing the blooms inside the machine. But since it can be expensive to buy a machine for one-time use, it might be more practical to bring the wedding bouquet to a preservation expert instead.