What Does Chicken Wire Have to Do With Wedding Flowers?

When you make your own wedding flowers, you need to have something that will help hold your stems in place in your vase or container. One way of doing this is by using chicken wire, which can be purchased from large hardware or farm supply stores and will be galvanized. If you have the opportunity to buy it from a florist wholesaler, you'll be able to get green plastic-coated wire. This is more expensive but is easier on your hands.

Chicken wire can be used either around a container, inside a container, or around floral foam.

Around a Container

A long narrow strip of small gauge chicken wire can be folded into thirds so the wires overlap each other and create a lot of little holes.

• Wrap this around the outside of a basket.
• You'll need a plastic container inside your basket to hold water. Pierce a hole through opposite sides of this plastic container.
• Put a piece of wire through the holes that you made in your container and use that wire to anchor the chicken wire to your bowl.
• You can now insert pieces of long lasting foliage into the wire. This will create a foliage covering around your basket. Mist the foliage often to keep it alive since it has no water source.

Inside a Container

This is the best way to hold soft stems and flowers which need lot of water (such as anemones and spring flowers).

A good size wire to use is 2 in. (5 cm) and how much you need depends on the size of the container you are going to use and the thickness of the stems you need to support. A general guide would be to cut a piece a little wider than the width of the opening and about 3 times the depth. Cut off the stiff outer edge (the selvedge).

• Crumple the wire so that if forms approximately the same shape as the container.
• Fill your container 2/3 full with water and gently work your foliage and flowers into the chicken wire. If the mesh of your wire is small, the holes will be hidden and disappear to nothing once you have several layers.
• If you need more support than the wire because your stems are so thick and heavy, put a pinholder at the bottom of your container and then add your wire.
• Put your first thick, heavy stem through the wire and into the pinholder firmly. This should provide a good firm anchor to hold your wire in place for the rest of your arrangement.

Around Foam

If you need to create a larger arrangement, you'll probably have a few heavier stems that will need extra support.

• Make a little “hat” of chicken wire and place it gently over your floral foam.
• Secure the chicken wire to your container with strips of sticky floral tape.
• The 2 in. (5 cm) gauge used for inside the container is too large for this because it will cut into the floral foam too deeply. Use a 0.5 in. (1.25 cm) gauge instead.

When you make your own wedding flowers, chicken wire is a great tool for holding heavier bulky stems as well as soft stems that need a lot to drink. It is not used as often as floral foam because it can be tricky to work with and it doesn't hold the stems as precisely as floral foam does. But if you need to put together a large arrangement for in the church or for a focal point at your wedding reception, chicken wire is the best tool for anchoring the larger, bulkier stems that are necessary for larger arrangements.