Supermarket flowers for the reception?

I think its a great idea. It would only be a problem if you want a 'proper' arrangement. If you're going natural / rustic it should look lovely.

We're going for live flowering plants that we can take away after - supermarket / garden centre - in nice pots.

I've got distressed zinc buckets with blackboard labels on the side so just want something to fill those and the rustic kind of look suits me absolutely fine. Although I do love your idea BumbleBees of flowering plants. Just don't want to spend a bomb on the floral arrangement kind of centrepieces from a florist x

I love the idea however only thing I would wonder about is whether the ones you want aren't in stock so I think you would need to be casual about the ones you want but Deffo yes especially if you have a bit of a artistic flare I wonder if a family member would be willing to help you out and be in charge of dealing with getting them on the day/day before to keep them as fresh as possible especially if your just putting them in vases

We didn't buy from a supermarket but we did but directly from a flower wholesaler. We did flowers and pew ends for the church and then put gypsophilia and roses in little milk bottles wrapped in ribbon for the tables and dotted around the venue. This cost us £170 for all the flowers and we had an abundance of gyp left over. The flowers we had lasted for ages - we still had the gyp and roses table decs weeks after the wedding. The quality of some supermarket flowers can not be so good which is the only thing I would be wary of.

I think it is an excellent idea if you don't want fancy flower arrangements. It is good that your regular supermarket can order you what you want and put it aside, that must be a great help.

Our friends did this and did it very simply but it looked lovely - they had a thin stem glass and put one of two flowers in each on each table. I think we'll be doing something similar as you can spend hundreds on flowers otherwise!

The lady I asked at the supermarket said the best thing to do was to go in the week before to see what they are stocking and then pre order from that. She also said as wedding not till next August keep an eye out this August then that will give me some idea of what types of flowers etc are available. I understand what's been said about the flowers not being such high quality but if I'm only buying them the day before I think they'll still look their best except for possibly a few rogue ones which I can just remove.

thank you for all your comments, it's given me the confidence to do this and save a fortune xx

Would only echo what's already been said apart from one most important point which is have you tested your zinc bucket to see if it's watertight? A lot of them aren't - most of the ones sold in wholesalers are labelled as non-watertight so the best way to find out is to fill it full of water and leave it in the sink overnight to see if there any leakages.

Also to add is when you have bought your flowers, unwrap them them all, cut the stems at a sharp angle and use the flower food provided to prolong their life. Oh, and keep them out of draughts and the sun/heat.

I think it's a great idea, maybe just have a practice before to see how it looks.

Thankyou for this overtherainbow, I did think about the buckets and if they'd be watertight, I need to dig them out and test and I'd there's leakage think about containers to go inside them.

thanks for the tips about storing them too.

We did a mix of flowers from the garden with some from the supermarket - not an arrangement as such just bunches then separated out. It worked really well we had a rustic theme.