Though a monumental task, growing and designing my own flowers was one of my favorite parts of planning and prepping for my September wedding. Though I’m a lover of all things DIY, I don’t necessarily consider myself a seasoned gardener. I’ve kept a garden for a few years, learning as I go, and I have gotten so much joy from the process. So when my fiancé and I began planning a wedding, I decided to combine my loves of backyard gardening, DIYing something beautiful and a good challenge by growing my own flowers for the bouquets, centerpieces, corsages and flower crowns.

As with any good experiment, I started with a lot of planning. Dahlias, my favorite flowers and the centerpiece blooms of my vision, peak in the late summer/early fall here in Zone 7. We chose a September 25 wedding date to ensure the maximum number of blooms, but with little chance of early frost. For the rest of the flowers and filler, I chose a mix of annuals, including celosia and cosmos grown from seed and easy-to-grow perennials, including sedum and hydrangeas, that come back year after year. The annuals can be sown directly into the soil, while the perennials can be picked up as plant starters, making both options easier for a novice gardener than seeds that need to be started inside and transplanted. Mapping out the locations of the plants made prep much easier and kept me organized as they began to grow.

In Zone 7, Dahlias are planted in the spring as tubers immediately after the last frost. I ordered tubers within a single color palette, but with variation in the flower type and size to maximize my small growing area. Because these were to be the stars of the show, I focused on getting the dahlias planted as soon as I felt we were safe from a late frost. Dahlias can be notoriously slow to bloom, so I wanted to give them ample time. If the wedding date had been any earlier, I would’ve started the tubers inside in pots and transplanted them to give the dahlias some extra time.

I planted about 30 dahlia tubers in six raised beds. I built these two beds just for the project. Dahlias love well-drained soil, so they are particularly suited for raised beds. To keep the project manageable, I only planned to grow enough flowers for my bridal bouquet, about five large arrangements, wrist corsages for the mothers and a crown for the flower girl, as well as some extra blooms to add pops of color to the serving table.