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Donating flowers, leftover catering, and dresses is totally a thing, and you can get in on it. We'll talk fashion and catering another day, but for now, let's talk about how to donate your wedding flowers to hospitals, senior living facilities, and other locations. If you didn't opt for non-floral bouquets and centerpieces, what would you do with all those perishable flowers anyway, right?
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There are a number of services who will take care of the donations for you directly from your venue, or you can arrange with your florist or wedding planner (if you have one) to designate a drop-off location. Some organizations even provide a tax deductible note so you can claim the market value. Here is a list of organizations you can use to donate your wedding flowers.
- Random Acts of Flowers Knoxville, Tampa, Indianapolis
- Flower Angels, Massachusetts
- Petals with Purpose, Florida
- Flowers of Comfort, Silicon Valley
- The Flower Shuttle, North Carolina
- Floranthropy, Texas
- Petals for Patients, Wisconsin and Illinois
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If there isn't a specialty company near you, Google one of the following locations in your area and ask about arrangements for donations:
- local hospice
- senior citizen community or retirement home
- women's shelter
- hospital
- homes for the developmentally disabled
More ways to inject philanthropy into your wedding:
What organizations did we miss? Let us know in the comments!
About the Author: Catherine Clark
Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.
I never even thought about donating my flowers! What a great idea! I found this place in the DFW area if anyone is interested: http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp811447.jsp
This is SUCH a brilliant post – thank you for sharing this! We went with handmade paper flowers for our wedding (due to my husband’s allergies). We had a destination wedding, and when considering plants like succulents and ferns rather than flowers, one of my main concerns was that our guests were flying home the next day. They can’t take home the stuff like you would at a local wedding… Would the floral arrangements just get tossed? Where COULD they go if we opted for actual plants? This post is a truly helpful reminder there are other lovely options out there.
I’m so glad you posted an article on this! I was super bummed to discover there isn’t an option to donate flowers on Maui so unfortunately we have to just discard them since you also can’t take them off the island. Hope others can find options in their wedding locales if they are interested.
Can they at least be dropped off at a gardening center or someplace that composts them properly, to be used again?
I wish! Unfortunately, it’s just not something that is possible at our location on the island as we would have to take and store all the flowers the night of the wedding and then go handle dropping them off the next day as we can’t leave anything at the venue.
Fab idea. For UK / London based weddings, there’s Floral Angels:
http://www.floralangels.com
This is a great inspirational post! And super advice for upcoming brides and grooms to share their special day with the less fortunate among us. What else could a wedding couple donate, their shoes and accesories?
Great post. We directly benefited from someone donating their wedding flowers once.
My twins were in the NICU for 3 months. Walking past the maternity ward, waiting to be buzzed into the NICU waiting room, scrubbing in, and then finally entering the NICU was a daily torture. One morning as I walked into the waiting room to begin the hand washing process I was greeted by a half dozen colorful bouquets. They brightened up the grey waiting room so nicely. I asked our nurse where they came from and she told me a woman came by and dropped them off after her wedding. The nurses and this woman decorated the waiting room and the nurses locker room with all the left over wedding flowers.
There’s also a young organization in NYC called Love Buds! Love how many people want to spread the happiness.
Loudoun Rebloom in Purcellville, VA is another flower repurposing organization located in “DC’s Wine Country”, west of Washington, DC.