In the time before a funeral, you might choose to make your own funeral wreath. This will take more time and effort than buying a premade wreath, but it will also be more personal and may well be less expensive. If you’re looking for memorial wreath ideas or practical advice on making a funeral flower wreath, here’s a simple guide to how to make a wreath for a funeral.
Funeral wreath ideas
If you’re not planning the funeral yourself, making a funeral wreath is a gesture the family will appreciate. However, it’s worth asking the organiser what they have in mind for the funeral. For example, is there going to be a particular colour scheme? How formal is the funeral going to be? You can use this information to create a wreath that will fit in with the other decorations.
Here are a few things to consider when creating a wreath:
- Are there any flowers the person who died particularly enjoyed?
- Did the person who died have a favourite colour, to your knowledge? If not, is there a particular colour you associate with them?
- For more unusual funeral wreaths, you could consider whether it’s possible to work the passions or hobbies of the person who died into your wreath. For example, if they were an avid writer, you could incorporate pens or scraps of paper amongst the flowers.
The colours on funeral wreaths tend not to be very bright and intense; whites, blues and light pinks are more common than, for example, magenta. You might choose to break with this tradition if the person who died was very lively and you think bright colours would be a fitting tribute to them. If you’re not the funeral planner, though, you should probably discuss this with the planner beforehand.
How to make a funeral wreath
Your method for making a wreath will depend on the base you choose to attach the flowers to. You have a couple of options here.
Firstly, you could use a dried vine wreath base, also called a grapevine wreath. You can buy grapevine wreaths premade, or you can make one by taking a bundle of vines and shaping them into a loop, winding them around each other to hold your creation together. You can incorporate coathanger wires to make sure your grapevine base keeps its shape more easily.
If you’re making a grapevine wreath from scratch, you’ll need to use vines that are fresh enough to be shaped. Once you’ve finished, give it a couple of days to dry before you begin adding decorations.
You can use string or wire to secure decorations to your grapevine wreath base, or you could tie them on with ribbons for a more visible, striking method.
Secondly, you could use a floral foam wreath base, also called an Oasis wreath. If you’re working with foam, it’s worth planning how you’re going to distribute the flowers first, because it’ll damage the foam if you keep changing your mind and rearranging things.
After soaking the foam base in water, you can trim the stems of your flowers to a couple of inches and sink the stems into the wet foam. The foam will help to keep the flowers in place and will feed them with water, keeping them fresh.
Neither wreath base type is significantly more expensive than the other, so you can just decide which you’d prefer. Because of the way the foam holds water, a foam wreath can keep flowers looking fresh for longer, but you’ll need to cover it completely to hide the foam. The advantage of a grapevine wreath is that it’s a pleasant, natural-looking wreath base, so it’s not a problem if the base shows through the decorations.
Whichever method you choose, making a funeral wreath is an absorbing way to create something beautiful and pay tribute to a person you miss.