“It was so fun and rewarding just to see the growth of your little babies,” Mariah Reading tells PEOPLE

NEED TO KNOW

• In May 2026, Mariah Reading decided to grow her own wedding flowers after being quoted $400 for a single bouquet
• She spent the summer tending the garden with her then-fiancé, David, and learning how to grow flowers from scratch
• By their wedding day in September 2026, the garden had become one of the most meaningful parts of their celebration

A bouquet usually starts with a florist, but Mariah Reading’s wedding day arrangement started with a shovel, a packet of seeds and a patch of land in her parents’ backyard in Maine.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on florals for the big day, Reading and her then-fiancé, David Mainero, decided to grow their own flowers for their September wedding, planting a 30-by-50-foot garden filled with five long rows of blooms that would eventually become bouquets, boutonnieres and arrangements.

However, along the way, the garden became much more than a way to cut costs; it became one of the most personal and memorable parts of their wedding story.

“I just think [growing your own flowers is] so rewarding on multiple levels, and I think a lot of people kind of were picking up on the metaphor of tending to your relationship and adding water and providing for it and giving it sunlight,” Reading, 32, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I just think that’s really beautiful…to kind of start off a marriage with building that is just so sweet.”

@mariahreading

Planting our own wedding flowers!! 2.5 months of growth! From seed to blooms. This has been such an exciting process! #weddingflowers #diyflowers #diywedding #backyardwedding #mainewedding

♬ som original – 🎸🎶Oldmusic🎶🎸

Reading and Mainero met while working as park rangers at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, with their first date being a canoe trip.

By the time they began planning their Sept. 26 wedding on Reading’s parents’ Hampden property, they already knew they wanted something intimate and personal. They also knew they didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on flowers.

Reading had reached out to local florists about a relaxed, wildflower-style bridal bouquet and was shocked to receive a quote of $400 for the bouquet alone. With the couple also saving to buy a house in the area, she estimated that flowers for the entire wedding could have cost between $3,000 and $5,000.

So they decided to try something a little different: grow them with their own two hands.

The garden cost about $1,000, including a rented rototiller (a motorized garden tool that helps prepare garden beds), loam soil, seafood compost, locally ordered seeds and a chicken-wire fence to keep out deer and other hungry visitors.

Reading started planting in mid-May, with a vision for flowers that matched the season and personality of the wedding. She wanted the colors to reflect the “cusp of summer and fall,” bringing together vermilion, bright red, orange, lilac, soft purple, greens and chartreuse.

Amaranth added long, dangling shapes, while dahlias brought deep maroon, plum and magenta tones. “I just wanted it to be colorful and vibrant,” Reading says. “The theme of the wedding was vibrant, whimsical and fun.”

There was just one small problem… Reading had never actually grown a full-fledged garden before.

Reading’s parents had gardened when she was growing up, but flowers on this scale were “completely new” to her. As a result, she turned to a friend who gardens, did plenty of research and tried to trust the process. Most importantly, she gave herself permission for things not to go perfectly.

“It was mostly just fun and just knowing like, okay, if it doesn’t work out, then that’s okay. And we’ll, you know, go to the grocery store and do it,” Reading shares. “But we just wanted to try it out.”

As the months went on, she admits there were “hiccups along the way.” Some flowers did not take, and the white gladiolas bloomed and finished before the wedding, which she says was a “little bummer.”

Still, Reading found it hard to be too disappointed since she got to enjoy the blooming flowers all summer. The garden also gave her and Mainero a new way of experiencing and appreciating nature. Even weeding became something they looked forward to.

“It was so fun and rewarding just to see the growth of your little babies… and it changed our relationship with the seasons and the weather,” Reading says.

That kind of hands-on project required plenty of time, something Reading was fortunate enough to have that summer while working for herself as a freelance artist. “I had the time and flexibility, which I know is a privileged position to tend to these flowers. And I just kind of fell in love with it,” she shares.

The flowers, however, were just one part of the way Reading and Mainero made the wedding their own. Because Reading is an artist, the couple found creative ways to trade their skills for things they needed rather than simply buying everything.

One of Reading’s college friends hand-sewed her wedding dress, something that felt especially meaningful, as Reading made her a landscape painting in return. Her sister-in-law made the couple’s cake, a buttercream amaretto cake with strawberry rhubarb filling, and even used flowers from the garden to decorate it. A close friend filmed the wedding, while Reading also arranged a barter with her photographer, offering to teach her how to paint over a weekend in exchange for two full days of photography.

“It just kind of made sense to barter. And I feel like as an artist, I can’t afford other people’s art. So to be able to barter for things is just so special,” Reading explains. 

That same spirit carried into the smaller details. After taking a makeup lesson, Reading did her own wedding makeup, and a friend did her hair. She found fabric at the Salvation Army and turned it into streamer-like decorations, while the couple thrifted their tableware, linens and placemats. Friends and family became part of the process, too, lending everything from a large speaker to candle holders and coolers.

Even their wedding arch carried a piece of their story. Mainero, Reading and her father built it using wooden boat components they found through Facebook Marketplace. Reading then painted it with symbols representing Michigan, Maine and the island where the couple met.

With a wedding this homemade, Reading says perfection was never really the goal. “Both of us are kind of type B too, so it was also hard planning like where everything’s gonna be and what the arrangements are gonna be,” she explains. “We just kind of let the actual day and the week of take us and make the arrangements based on what we wanted in the moment.”

That approach led to one of Reading’s favorite memories. On the morning of the wedding, she went into the garden and picked her own bouquet while Mainero picked his boutonniere. “That was a really special moment that I’ll remember forever, and it just made it a lot more intimate and meaningful,” she recalls.

Their roughly 40 guests got to experience the garden, too, with some picking flowers and becoming part of the story. The couple even took a canoe ride after the ceremony, bringing their wedding day back to where their relationship began.

Friends and family were “excited and blown away” by the whole idea, though Reading said it ultimately fit the couple. “I think they also kind of expected it just because we’re both very creative, loosey-goosey people that really enjoy and appreciate nature,” she shares. “So I think it just kind of fit into our marriage and our personality.”

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For Reading, the decision to grow their own flowers gave her a special connection to each bloom in each bouquet — something she notes a lot of modern weddings lack. She wanted their day to feel like an extension of their lives rather than a collection of things they were expected to buy.

“The wedding industry is just so crazy right now… it’s almost disconnected from who the couple is. It’s, like, everyone has an extravagant…big wedding that’s kind of similar… so it was nice just to switch things up a little bit… kind of surrender to imperfection,” she emphasizes.

And as Reading looks back, those imperfections are some of the details she treasures most. “It’s easy to nitpick and be like, ‘Everything needs to be perfect,’ but I mean, the little imperfections, I feel like, were the things that we’re gonna laugh on and remember, and are the quirks that make it special and unique,” Reading tells PEOPLE.

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