Julia Read
Bagpiper & Harpist, Marlow, UK
Blog>make-natural-petal-confetti-for-wedding
How to make natural petal confetti for your wedding
Making natural confetti from petals isn't that hard. Natural petal confetti is environmentally friendly, completely natural and most importantly incredibly pretty. Also if you make the natural petal confetti from the flowers in your garden, then it is a wonderfully personal touch. You can use flowers from the garden of grandparents, friends and even your own.
I was given the task of making confetti for a wedding recently. This post shows how to make petal confetti, which flowers are best for making petal confetti, the time it takes and how much confetti you will make.
Hire a Scottish Piper for your Wedding
Why not hire a bagpiper for your wedding to play while the confetti is thrown?
Create a celebratory atmosphere and a strong impact for you and your guests.
You don't have to be Scottish to have a bagpiper play at your wedding. A piper can add a wonderful atmosphere to any wedding.
Find out more here.
Make your own natural petal confetti
1. Choose fresh flowers in full bloom. Choose flowers that have a rich colour to them. Here I'm using the rose Gertrude Jekyll. Avoid petals that are turning brown as they will go brown when you dry them.
2. Take the petals from the stem.
3. Put some paper towel into a microwaveable plate, and spread a layer of petals on it. I put these in a big bunch rather than a single layer as it was taking ages doing a single layer at a time. They will stick together if you do it like this, but you can peal the petals apart fairly easily.
4. Place plate in the microwave and heat until the petals are mostly dried.
5. Take out when mostly dry. For me that was 3:30 minutes. The petals will have stuck together, but gently pull them apart. You may tear a few, but this is confetti, does it matter if the petals aren't all whole?
6. Put the plate back in the microwave until the petals are completely dry. For me that was another 1 min. Make sure they are completely dry. They should feel like crinkly tissue paper. It is surprising how much they shrink down!
7. Store in a dry container. I put mine in a box and put them in the airing cupboard. This way they got a bit of extra drying out before they were needed as wedding confetti.
The confetti has been thrown. It is time to head inside for the drinks reception and wedding breakfast. As you and your guests sip champagne how about having a harpist play gentle relaxing music to accompany you. You need to hire a harpist for your wedding then if that is the experience that you are after :-)
Click here to find out more about hiring a harpist for your wedding.
How many flowers do you need?
For this big bowl, it took 10 Gertrude Jekyll roses to fill it. The bowl is about 1 litre in volume. I filled it right to the brim, more than is shown here.
These 10 roses reduced down to just this. They just cover the bottom of a shoe box.
I measured them out and that comes to 6 handfuls of confetti
How long does it take?
Using the microwave technique, it took me 1 hour to create 6 handfuls of confetti using 10 Gertrude Jekyll roses
I had previously been using the airing cupboard. That took about 4 days and it was only yielding a really small amount. About 1/2 handful of petal confetti from one baking sheet.
Also the petals shrank to a disappointingly small size.
So I gave up using the airing cupboard and tried the oven. But this wasn't much better. It took around 20 min to dry a baking sheet (ie 1/2 handful of confetti) at 80 degrees Centigrade.
Also the petals shrank, just as they had done in the airing cupboard. Which was disappointing.
Create a gentle and relaxing atmosphere for your wedding with the harp
Create a strong impact and memorable experience for your wedding with a Scottish Piper
Which flowers to use to make natural petal confetti?
Roses
Roses are a good flower for confetti.
You want a rose with a good colour to it such as Gertrude Jekyll or Harlow Carr. Those are both lovely pink rose, they have wonderful scent and best of all they come laden with masses and masses of roses. But if you want a red or orange rose to dry, then try Summer Song or Royal William; both are beautiful looking roses and have a wonderful heady scent.
If you have the time to dry them in the airing cupboard then they will keep their scent. They won't if you do them in the microwave. So what I did was to do most of them in the microwave and then keep drying some using the airing cupboard method. That gave a mixture and the confetti did have some scent.
Geums
Geums work very well dried. But keep the flower whole when you dry them. The beauty with geums is that they come in a range of orange/red/yellow colours. So if you are having an autumn wedding and want orange, red, yellow natural petal confetti, then consider Geums. I dried Totally Tangerine and Mrs Bradshaw. Both dried beautifully.
Peony
Peony make a wonderful dried flower if you dry the whole flower. We did this to use as dried flowers to scatter on the tables. You can also take the individual petals off and use that as confetti. Sarah Bernhardt is a wonderful peony and I found that it dried really well.