Local, Fresh, Flexible, and Affordable Wedding Flowers
Imagine the day before your wedding…
Instead of rushing from appointment to appointment, you’re gathered around the kitchen table with your bridesmaids, sisters, moms, cousins, and closest friends.
Music is playing. Coffee turns into charcuterie. Someone laughs because the ribbon won’t stay tied. Your sister discovers she’s unexpectedly good at arranging flowers. By the end of the afternoon, you’ve created bouquets and arrangements that are as unique as you are AND you’ve made one more memory you’ll talk about long after the wedding.
Some couples remember their flowers. You’ll remember making them.
“I’ve never arranged flowers before…”
Don’t worry. Most of our DIY couples haven’t either. Simple hand-tied bouquets and mason jar centrepieces are surprisingly beginner-friendly. You’ll have The Bloomstead team behind you! Every flower is grown by Lisa and harvested specifically for your wedding, while Jenna helps plan the details behind the scenes.
“I loved my wedding flowers – they provided the perfect colorful boho vibe! Lisa and Jenna were wonderful to work with: patient, kind, and eager to help me find the right flowers for the kind of bouquet I wanted.”
Why DIY Doesn’t Mean “Settling”
Some couples hire a floral designer. Others choose to create their own garden-style arrangements and make life-long memories with the people they love most.
Every bucket is harvested specifically for your wedding just a day or two before pickup. That means fresher blooms with amazing scent, and flowers that truly reflect the best of our northern seasons.
We can often accommodate short notice requests for small events within our peak growing season of late July through to our first hard frost (recently that’s been around Thanksgiving). We grow the best of what our northern seasons provide right here in our backyard in Thunder Bay.
If you’re planning a wedding or special event in Thunder Bay, DIY flowers can be an affordable, beautiful, and flexible alternative.
You bring the vision.
Tell us your colour palette and style, and we’ll harvest the best blooms that week.
“I was so excited by how beautiful the flowers were when I first picked them up. And they stayed in good condition for the wedding day 48hrs later. The flowers were so well taken care of that even drying them after my wedding was easy! I would recommend The Bloomstead for anyone looking for reliable and beautiful flowers for their wedding day or any event!”
How Bloomstead DIY Wedding Flowers Work
Have A Plan and Know What You Want
Flowers are sold in bulk by the bucket (we just call them buckets, but you’ll receive wrapped bundles of about 40 stems each). One bucket typically creates 1 large bridal bouquet OR 3–4 bridesmaid bouquets OR 8–10 centre pieces OR 25–30 bud vases.
Grower’s Choice Bucket
A seasonal mix of focal flowers, fillers, and greenery grown at the farm. We do our best to supply all the components needed to create the arrangement you have in mind in each bucket. You would receive a few focal flowers like dahlias and lilies, some secondary blooms (smaller than focals) like zinnias and cosmos. We try to include some stems that would add visual interest like bunny tail grass, nigella seed pods, some linear spikes like delphinium or lilac, etc. You’ll also receive some seasonal greenery to help make the arrangement nice and full — all in one bucket. These are bundled by like blooms, they are not arranged. You do the arranging. It helps us to know if you’re creating bouquets, table centers, bud vases, large room tabletop pieces, looking to decorate an arch, etc.
Tell us your colour palette and style, and we’ll harvest the best blooms that week to match.
$120 per bucket (maximum order of 5 buckets). Couples usually spend between $240 – $600.
Colour Choice Bucket
For couples or events planning a year ahead who want certain colours or specific varieties grown for their wedding. These buckets can include specific blooms or colours. If you want a pop of blue for instance, you could have us grow forget-me-nots to bloom in time for your wedding. Or there’s a particular variety of dahlia that grandma grew that you’d really love to have in your bridal bouquet, we need to have that info a full growing season in advance.
Contact us for pricing.
A Note About Seasonal Flowers
The Bloomstead is a micro urban flower farm in Thunder Bay. That means our flowers follow the rhythm of the northern growing season. We currently only sell our growers buckets between: Late July, August, and mid September. One of the joys of seasonal flowers is that every wedding is unique. Rather than recreating a Pinterest photo exactly, we’ll harvest the freshest blooms at their peak and create a colour palette that captures the same feeling.
We may have flowers as late as Thanksgiving depending on the weather. The upside? Your flowers are fresh, local, and completely unique to the season of your wedding. If you have one “must-have” flower, let us know! We’ll always be honest about whether it’s likely to be available, suggest beautiful seasonal alternatives, or help you plan a combination of Bloomstead flowers with a few specialty blooms from another supplier.
Wondering what flowers might be blooming for your wedding date?
→ Ask What’s in Season for Your Wedding
FAQs
Can I choose colours?
Yes! We grow some varieties specifically for weddings with large blooms and lovely pastels, but we also grow for traditional seasonal colours as well. We promise the look and feeling you’re after, using the very best flowers nature gives us that week.
What if I don’t know flowers?
That’s OK – let us worry about that! Send us some inspo pics and tell us what it is you love about those flowers or that look. We may not have the exact blooms you’re looking for, we’ll do our best to match the palette and look you want.
How long do they last?
Some blooms are going to last longer than others. We aim to have five days of vase life, some will be longer or shorter. Popular wedding flowers can be one-day wonders, so make sure to let us know how long they’ll be out of water, if your wedding is inside with air conditioning or outdoors in full sun, what you want to use the flowers for (bouquets or arches or bud vases, etc), and if you want to be able to dry them afterwards.
Can I pick them up the day before?
We do our best to accommodate your preferred pickup time. We harvest flowers the day before pickup early in the morning when the air is coolest and stems are fully hydrated. You can choose a pickup time that works with your wedding schedule, but ideally you’ll pick up the morning before you want to use them.
Do I need buckets for greenery?
Each “bucket” will include greenery. You can order a bucket of just greenery (40 stems) if that’s your preference.
Can I request specific flowers?
We’d love to hear about flowers and greenery you love! If you’re booking a Colour Choice Bucket well in advance, we may even be able to grow particular varieties for your wedding.
For our Grower’s Choice Buckets, however, we work with whatever is thriving that week. Weather is part of farming, and every season is a little different. Rather than promising exact flower varieties, we promise beautiful, fresh blooms harvested at their peak to complement your colour palette and wedding style.
What happens if weather changes?
Farming always comes with a little uncertainty, and weather can influence exactly what’s blooming during a particular week. Heat waves, drought, cool night time temps, forest fires far away, or a surprise heavy rain may change when varieties peak and wane.
If that happens, we’ll choose beautiful seasonal alternatives in the same colour palette and style whenever possible. Because we harvest specifically for your wedding, you’ll still receive the freshest flowers available from our farm.
What if I only need one bucket?
If you’re just looking to make a single bouquet, or create small arrangements, we’re happy to accommodate your small event, no matter how small! An alternative is to order a custom bouquet from us as well.
Do you have roses, baby’s breath, and eucalyptus?
We grow seasonal flowers, so what’s available depends on the time of year.
- Eucalyptus: Yes! We grow our own, but it’s typically available only in September and October.
- Baby’s Breath: We grow perennial baby’s breath, which usually blooms in early summer.
- Roses: We don’t currently grow roses.
If roses are part of your dream bouquet, don’t let that stop you from working with us. Some couples purchase our Grower’s Choice Buckets for fresh, locally grown seasonal flowers and add a few roses from another supplier to complete the look.
Many garden-style weddings don’t need roses at all. Flowers like dahlias, lisianthus, cosmos, snapdragons, and other seasonal blooms can create the same soft, romantic feeling while celebrating what’s naturally at its peak in Northwestern Ontario.
We won’t recreate someone else’s Pinterest wedding. We’ll provide flowers that feel like they belong at your wedding.