Wedding/Home DIY - how to make artificial peony centrepieces

As I've mentioned before my wedding inspiration was definitely 'Pinterest-on-a-budget' and the only thing that probably sums up a Pinterest wedding as much as perfect bunting and sequin tablecloths is a room filled with peonies.

Sadly I really didn't want to spend a ridiculous amount on something that just dies at the end of the night my budget probably wasn't going to stretch to huge peony displays everywhere but I do really like the look of them so I decided to get a little bit creative with my centrepieces and try and make them myself. My bouquets and buttonholes were actually real peonies by the way but I think they all worked pretty well together.

I only had to make four centrepieces so I didn't need a ridiculous amount of supplies, here's what I actually used for the floral part of my centrepieces:

• 4 x circular pieces of florists foam from Ebay
• 4 x artificial pink peony bouquets from Ebay
• 4 x artificial cream peony bouquets from Ebay
• A couple of smaller artificial flower bouquets to use as space fillers
• Scissors (wire cutters would be much, much easier as there's wire in the stems to make them flexible - that would be my top tip!)
• Patience

I think each bunch was about £3 in total and they came from China so allow enough time for them to arrive if you're doing this! A lot of the UK based artificial peonies I saw weren't really any cheaper than buying real which defeated the point a bit unless you're using them in your house.

The process is straightforward enough, cut the stems with the flower heads on (leave the stems longer rather than shorter, you can always cut them shorter if you need to) and add the stems into the florists foam, making sure that it's covered and that the piece sits as it should. It's quite time consuming so I locked myself away in the spare room to do them on a Sunday morning with these little guys helping:

Someone told me florists arrange properly not in the foam so it looks how they want overall and then place in the foam to recreate the look. This annoyed me when I tried to do it so I just freestyled. They all looked slightly different and I definitely think they got better as I went on. Here's the bouquets I put together:

A few people thought they were real flowers which was nice because I was worried they'd look really fake and rubbish. One of my friends fell in love with them so much I let her take one of the bouquets home, she's just bought a new house and decided they'd look perfect in her hallway so they're there in pride of place now. I liked her idea so I totally copied and I've got a bunch in my living room now as a nice reminder of the wedding, the rest are in my wedding memory box

I'm selling some of my wedding centrepieces bits and wedding accessories on Ebay - please feel free to take a look!