Submerged lilies for centerpiece help please

[Mickey1Fan]

My DS and his DFi are getting married in two weeks. She wants a lily submerged in a vase with a floating candle for the table centerpieces.

My problem is how do I submerge the lily and keep it submerged. They just want to float to the top of the vase.

I know the stamen has to come out or the water will become cloudy.

Any suggestions are appreciated. The florists in this area are not willing to share their secrets. I did a google search and the only suggestion I found was to wrap a fine wire around the stem and it may keep the flower submerged.

Thank you

[Sarah <3 Disney]

Some questions first:

Will the flowers still be attached to the stem? Are the vases yours or are you renting? Will you be using some glass beads at the bottom of the vase? It is easy if there are glass beads!

But the first couple of things that come to mind would be:
1. Use a floral frog at the bottom of the vase. They look like this:

Then you just push the flower's stem right into the pins, and it will stay in place. Obviously, you would use something to cover the bottom, like glass beads or rocks.

2. Hollow out the inside of the stems a little bit and add/glue in some sort of weight inside. Perhaps a fishing weight.

3. Glue down the bottom of the stems with a small dab aquarium glue. If you are careful, you could probably get away without using glass beads to cover it up. Might be a pain to remove the glue though! Would have to use a razor blade to scrape it off after wards. Hence my renting vases question!

If she just wanted some blooms suspended, I imagine you would either have to use floral gel, or somehow suspend a couple lilies in a row using fishing twine. For instance, poke a tiny hole in the center of the flower and thread the twine through (or wrap the twine around a stable part of the flower). Knot the twine just before and just after the flower, to keep it in place (if poking holes). Repeat with more flowers farther down. Then attach the twine to the bottom of the vase. Because the flowers would like to float up naturally, you should get a nice line of blooms going up through the vase.

Now, I am for sure not a florist, but this is what I would try! I would definitely suggest doing some trial runs with this! Hope that helps!

[mindy5648]

what kind of lily are you looking for? We had calla lillies. The stems were long enough to swirl in the around vase we had. The great folks at disney did it for us but it was still pretty easy looking
You can kind of see it here...we also had rocks on the bottom

[Mickey1Fan]

Hi, thanks for your suggestions. I found a florist who would share secrets .

The lily that I was going to use cannot be submerged. It will disintegrate in the water. I am going to use purple orchids. They sink pretty well on their own so that is what we are doing.

I kind of like the idea of aquarium glue to hold it to the bottom. Guests will take them home and they can figure out what to do - LOL.

[Sarah <3 Disney]

Originally Posted by Mickey1Fan

I kind of like the idea of aquarium glue to hold it to the bottom. Guests will take them home and they can figure out what to do - LOL.

Haha! Well that is one way to take care of it! But yeah, a stem of orchids should be heavy enough to stay submerged between the stem and the multiple flowers present. It is the stems with single blooms (especially if you don't want them tightly packed together) that cause the most issues. Good luck!