As a lover of peonies and a bride on June 1, 2024, I knew I wanted these beauties to be the floral focal point of my celebration.

I started planning in the spring of 2023, tracking their bloom time to ensure they would be at their peak when our wedding day approached. However, they bloomed three weeks early!

I panicked and had to quickly figure out how to preserve the peonies that my neighbor and I had grown to showcase at my wedding.

I scoured the internet for tips and tricks to learn if and how I could cut these extremely delicate flowers three weeks in advance of their intended use. I came across many suggestions and decided that I would incorporate my education as an OSU Master Gardner into the plethora of information I had obtained.

I love a cut flower garden and was hopeful these cut flowers would adorn our tables and fill my hands as I walked down the aisle to marry the man I love.

I started collecting my peonies early each morning. I chose flowers that felt like they were the firmness of a marshmallow. I also cut some blossoms that were completely bloomed and preserved them as well.

The first step to preserving these delicate flowers is to use sanitized, sharp shears to cut each stem. After collecting the peonies, lay out a length of paper towels — I did approximately 6 feet at a time.

Remove any excess foliage from each cutting. Place each flower approximately 8 inches apart onto the paper towel so that the petals are completely protected. Once you have reached the end of the paper towel length, gently roll the flowers into a bundle.

Place a plastic grocery bag over the cut ends and tie this well. Take another plastic grocery bag and loosely tie it over the blossom end. Place each bundle into the refrigerator immediately. I repeated this process every day as the peonies were blooming.

After the third week of harvesting peonies, I had hundreds of flowers in three separate households’ refrigerators. It was the day before our wedding and GO TIME!

I started gathering these flowers from various refrigerators at the break of dawn. I had no idea if they would survive up to three weeks in the refrigerator, let alone look decent. I gathered upwards of 20 5-gallon buckets to get these beauties going again.

Each bucket contained warm water, a small amount of bleach, and some sugar to feed the flowers. I cut every single stem on a diagonal, approximately an inch from the end and placed it into the warm water. I could not believe my eyes.

Within 30 minutes, the marshmallow-feel flowers were opening up beautifully. Every single flower responded to the food source.

I mentioned that I cut some fully bloomed flowers; they were lovely at first, but quickly lost their petals.

Not only did I have the flowers of my dreams at my wedding, I also learned the resilience of a peony. Perhaps this year I will try an experiment in which I cut several different flowers from my garden and preserve them for varying lengths of time to see what type of results I get.

Happy gardening!

Vadjunec is an Ohio State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteer in Mahoning County.