Some brides spend thousands of dollars on their wedding day flowers, since it’s always been their dream to carry the gorgeous bouquet of roses and walk into rooms that have been decorated into a sea of blooms. And that dream can come true on a budget! Check out the following tips on how to get more floral look for a lower price, without sacrificing your style wishes.

•Choose flowers that are going to be in-season for the best prices. Ask your florist for a chart on which flowers are going to be plentiful at the time of your wedding, and take advantage of seasonal prices. You can certainly order out-of-season flowers, but they will be pricier for your florist to get.

•Choose locally-grown flowers over imported ones. If you’d like to use imported flowers like stephanotis from Hawaii, you can still use them as accents to your bouquet, rather than as the entire bouquet.

•Consider non-bridal flowers. Especially in peak wedding season, all those roses and gardenias are going to be priced higher because nearly every bride wants huge quantities of these very bridal-image flowers for their big days. If you look outside the usual wedding choices – say, to clematis, daisies, tulips, ranunculus, and so on – your bouquets and centerpieces become very unique and eye-catching. Look through flower Web sites, your florists’ flower charts, and at nurseries, botanical gardens or even big flower expos to discover completely different flowers than everyone else will be carrying. And you’ll have spent a lot less.

•Still want orchids? You can use these and other pricey flowers as part of your bouquets and centerpieces, but then use lovely but more inexpensive flowers to round out the rest of the piece.

•Use fillers for your bouquets and centerpieces. You already know that baby’s breath is the filler of choice when you get a single-stemmed rose from your sweetheart. They’re inexpensive, delicate and provide a pretty contrast to the color of the flower. Some to consider: Queen Anne’s Lace to ivy to leatherleaf ferns, to that pretty little filler with the teeny tiny yellow flowers you saw at the nursery. Look at fillers with some color and texture, and your floral pieces will stand out for less. Using these in conjunction with a few dramatic, exotic flowers could make your pieces look expensive when they really cost next to nothing.

•Very popular right now: wildflowers. Especially for outdoor weddings and décor for rustic barns that have been converted to wedding locations.

•Select smaller bouquets as a way to save money. Fewer flowers and less work equals a bargain price.

•A bouquet made with several shades of color will pack more visual impact than a monochromatic one and you may need fewer flowers to make the same effect. In contrast, an all-white or an all-red bouquet will usually require a greater number of blooms to really stand out. Talk with your floral designer to see which design in your choice of blooms will have that financial break attached.

•The price of bouquets is dependent on the labor hours it takes for the designer to make them. A Biedermayer – or dense-packed round bouquet – is usually priced higher than a hand-tied traditional bouquet simply because it takes the floral artist a larger number of hours to create that particular style. So keep the factor of labor and crafting in mind when you choose a bouquet style, and ask which of the styles takes less time to make. A thick grouping of ribbon-tied tulips will obviously cost less than an intricate Biedermayer pinned with countless roses, gardenias, lily of the valley, clematis and so on.

•Go for simple elegance. A hand-tied collection of calla lilies, wrapped at the base with a color-coordinating satin ribbon works with the color accents in your gown or those of your maids.

•Forget the extras, like the top-of-the-line handle for the bouquet, the lace covering to the handle that no one is going to see, and the ribbons or lace hanging down from your bouquet (you don’t need them, and they have a 1980s flair to them).

•Skip the pearlized or crystal pushpins inserted into the centers of all your bouquet flowers.

•If you’re a DIY-type, you can buy simple push-in accents from a garden center or craft shop. You may find elegant push-ins like butterflies, seashells, even crystals on a long wire for your own, personally-done accents to your bouquets (and also your centerpieces!).

•Shop at a flower wholesaler for the perfect callas, roses, tulips or daisies, and then hand-tie them yourself, adding inexpensive ribbon from the fabric store, and keeping them fresh for the wedding a few hours later. If you feel you’d be up to an easy craft on the morning of the wedding – or if you have a friend you entrust with this task – why not? You will eliminate all labor costs, and cut your supplies cost to a fraction. Just be sure you’re choosing a simple style and that you’re happy with using whatever the floral mart has in stock on the wedding day. You don’t want to be left in tears when the wholesaler doesn’t have any white roses left in stock that morning.

•Make your bridesmaids’ bouquets smaller than yours to save money.

•Moms can be given nosegay bouquets rather than corsages or floral jewelry. Moms love being handed their bouquets on the morning of the wedding, so choose a smaller style in a less labor-intensive design, with great fragrant flowers.

•Bridesmaids and moms/grandmoms can carry simple long-stemmed roses rather than intricate bouquets for a formal, classy, elegant look on the cheap.

•At more informal or outdoor weddings, they can carry hand-tied bunches of tulips, daisies, even sunflowers.

•If you still want their bouquets to be traditional, then they can carry the less-expensive, non-bridal varieties of pretty flowers while you get the more expensive roses and gardenias for your own bouquet.

•Flowergirls’ bouquets should be small, perhaps nosegays or even fresh or faux-flower pomanders.

•If flowergirls will sprinkle rose petals before your path down the aisle, no need to load them up with lots of petals. Just a few handfuls each will do.

•Fake flowers are not less expensive than real ones. The really good silk versions are quite pricy, so stick with the real deal.

Sharon Naylor is the author of 1000 Best Wedding Bargains as well as over 30 additional wedding books, www.sharonnaylor.net