Wedding planning often requires a number of details that cannot be missed. One detail many brides focus on, the flowers, brings with it a number of choices. Some brides choose to have real flowers at their event, while others decide to use silk ones.

The ladies at Sisters Floral Design Studio in St. Louis, Missouri shared their experience from professional floral designers' viewpoints in regards to choosing either real or silk flowers for weddings.

Colors in Real versus Silk Flowers

Some advantages of using real flowers include the use of more vibrant colors. Emily Testrake, owner of Sisters Floral Design Studio, said that using silks "is not actually a money saver. Good quality silk flowers can be more costly than using fresh flowers."

The floral designers at Sisters Floral Design Studio use fresh flowers in nearly 100% of their floral arrangements. From their experience, the colors of silk flowers rarely, if ever, rival those of fresh ones.

"We might add in silk flowers to a fresh flower bouquet if that particular flower is not as lively in the order we receive," Shahla Eskandari, floral designer for Sisters, said. "We love using fresh flowers for the different color combinations available."

Using Imported Flowers

Today, it is easy to import flowers no matter the season. Like other floral designers that use fresh flowers prominently in their designs, Sisters receives flowers from California and Hawaii, but also receives imported flowers from other countries.

Some popular places from where to import flowers in the winter include Thailand and South America. The latter is particularly popular in the winter because it is summer in the Southern hemisphere when it is winter in the Northern hemisphere.

Few Disadvantages to Fresh Flowers

The women at Sisters Floral Design Studio found very few disadvantages to using fresh flowers in wedding ceremonies.

One drawback they believed could occur when planning a wedding with fresh flowers involved peonies. Ms. Eskandari said if a bride uses peonies, they must consider what season they plan to get married.

Using silk flowers might only save brides money if they ask someone to do their floral arrangements for free. For example, brides doing a DIY wedding may have a creative bridesmaid or family friend arrange their bouquets with silk flowers they bought at a craft store. For the majority of brides, however, fresh flowers bring a number of advantages with which silk flowers cannot compete.

To learn more about Sisters Floral Design Studio, visit their blog at http://www.sistersflowers.blogspot.com/.