shadowboxes

Bouquet Preservation
Reston VA

shadowboxes pressed resin bas-relief

Your Bouquet, Held
in Three Dimensions

Three-dimensional wedding bouquet preserved in a shadowbox frame

You will spend thousands of dollars on a photographer. Hundreds of images will be taken. One ends up on the wall. The rest live in an album on a shelf, or a folder on a hard drive, rarely seen again.

Your wedding gown will be carefully preserved, and placed in a box. Under the bed, or in the back of a closet. Out of sight.

Bouquet preservation is different from any other wedding memento you could have. It is not a photograph that shows you what the flowers looked like. It is the actual flowers, exactly as they were. Every time you walk past it on your wall, you are not remembering your wedding day. You are back inside it.

Queen & I is a studio-based preservation practice in Reston, VA: wedding bouquets exclusively, handled personally by Daniel Marcey from pickup through delivery.

What is a Bouquet
Preservation Shadowbox?

A shadowbox is a deep-frame display that holds your freeze-dried bouquet in three-dimensional form. The flowers retain their full volume, their shape, and their spatial presence: the same depth and density the bouquet had the day you carried it.

Nothing is flattened. Nothing is rearranged into a new composition. The bouquet is preserved as it was carried down the aisle.

That distinction matters more than it might seem. When you hang a shadowbox on the wall, you’re not looking at a representation of your flowers. You’re looking at your flowers.

Because the shadowbox holds real depth, small details survive that would otherwise be lost: the way your florist layered individual stems, the natural gaps and overlaps between blooms, even the slight tilt of one stray flower against the rest. None of that comes through in a flat photograph, and none of it survives being pressed or rearranged into something new. It’s still there in a shadowbox, because nothing about your bouquet was altered to make it fit inside the frame.

Close-up of a freeze-dried wedding bouquet inside a shadowbox frame

A Higher Standard,
Built by Hand

For most of its history, the floral preservation industry in the United States has relied on two suppliers of pre-made display kits: fixed shapes and sizes that preservationists order and then fit their flowers into. One of those suppliers, CustomFramingDesigns.com, closed in recent years. InLine Ovals remains. The majority of preservationists working today still source their displays this way, selecting from a catalog of standard sizes and building around whatever fits closest.

At Queen & I, nothing is sourced from a kit vendor. Every element of the shadowbox is custom-made in Daniel’s Reston studio, built specifically around your bouquet.

The moulding is assembled by hand to construct the frame. The mat board is precision-cut using a Wizard International Computerized Mat Cutter, the industry standard in professional framing, for exacting interior dimensions. The stackers, the components that give the display its required depth, are handmade and fitted to each individual frame. The shadowbox itself can’t be brought off the shelf. It’s only built, one at a time, around your bouquet.

The difference in approach is straightforward: most preservationists fit your flowers to the display. At Queen & I, the display is fitted to your flowers.

Two Display Styles –
Replication and Bird’s Eye View

Every shadowbox at Queen & I is built in one of two styles, and the choice is entirely yours.

Neither is more correct than the other. Replication is the bouquet with no interpretation required. Bird’s Eye View is the bouquet as fine art: recognizable, but layered. The choice comes down to how you want the piece to live in your home.

The freeze-drying process is what makes all of it possible: a preservation method validated by the Smithsonian Institution for biological specimens. The materials used to build the finished frame are chosen to match that standard.

Shadowbox replication style showing the full bouquet with stems intact

Replication

Replication presents the bouquet as it was carried: flowers and stems together, in the full form you held walking down the aisle. There is no ambiguity in what it is. Anyone who sees it knows immediately they are looking at a wedding bouquet.

Shadowbox bird's eye view style showing the bloom design from above

Bird’s Eye View

Bird’s Eye View presents the flowers as seen from above, as though you were standing at the altar looking down into your bouquet. The stems are removed. What remains is the bloom design displayed face-forward.

Built to Museum
Conservation Standards

Every Queen & I shadowbox is constructed using materials trusted by the world’s leading conservation institutions.

Larson-Juhl moulding: one of the most respected moulding manufacturers in the industry, with a legacy of craftsmanship dating back to 1893.

Nielsen Bainbridge matting: the matboard that originated in 1867 and whose Artcare technology is the preferred choice of prestigious museums worldwide.

Tru Vue glazing: founded in 1946, chosen for UV protection and optical clarity, and trusted by conservation institutions worldwide.

These are not incidental choices. Every material is selected by design to offer the highest level of conservation and preservation, so the piece that hangs in your home holds up the same way a work in a museum does.

“A shadowbox is the one and only original. It is classic. There is no other preservation format that returns to you what you actually carried down the aisle: your true bouquet, exactly as it was.”

– DANIEL MARCEY, QUEEN & I

Bouquet Preservation
Pricing

$1,350

Shadowbox preservation at Queen & I is one price, regardless of bouquet size. No additional fees for materials or options.

The same price covers professional freeze-drying, your private design consultation, and a fully custom-built display constructed entirely in the Reston studio using museum-grade archival materials. Sales tax not included.

FAQ About
Bouquet Preservation

Freeze-drying works across all flower varieties. Silica gel does not.

Blooms with thick, water-heavy petals or dense, succulent-like structures hold too much moisture inside for silica gel to manage well. The outer layers can dry out long before the interior does, which leaves the flower prone to rotting from within, or the gel draws out so much moisture that the bloom collapses and loses its form entirely.

Color is another problem area for silica gel, especially with pale, light-toned petals. White roses, gardenias, and camellias almost never come out white, they typically shift toward a bruised cream, a dull yellow, or an unattractive brown. Gardenias are especially prone to this, browning almost the moment they touch the drying agent.

Freeze-drying sidesteps these issues by removing moisture at a molecular level, which preserves each bloom’s true color, its structure, and its full volume, no matter the variety.

Time is of the essence when you’re working with a perishable material like flowers, and the most common mistake brides make is waiting too long. By the time the reception ends Saturday night, those flowers are already several days old. Wait until Monday or Tuesday and you’re working with flowers approaching a week since they first arrived at the florist. This is why Daniel offers personal pickup the night of the reception, strongly recommended for the best outcome. Full pickup and delivery details are on the Wedding Service page.

There is no spray product that preserves flowers. Nothing off the shelf will preserve your bouquet in any meaningful way. Professional freeze-drying remains the only method that genuinely protects the flower’s color, structure, and form across every variety in your bouquet, for decades.

Your flowers will always be there. What changes slowly over time, measured in years and decades, is a subtle lightening or darkening of some blooms depending on their natural color pigment. The two biggest environmental factors that accelerate this are UV light and humidity: direct sunlight is the leading cause of fading, so keeping the piece out of direct sun helps preserve color longer, and high humidity should be avoided as well. A shadowbox built with museum-grade archival materials helps protect against these factors, but where you display and store the piece still matters. This is a permanent display, not a temporary one.

It may not be too late, but don’t wait. Before calling 703 989-4682, text a few photos of your bouquet as it is right now to the same number. That gives Daniel a reference point before the conversation starts and allows him to advise honestly from the first moment.

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is: is it really worth it?

The moment anything else goes in alongside the bouquet, the piece shifts from being a work of art to being a keepsake, and that’s worth thinking about in terms of the long term, not just the short term. A photo or invitation might feel meaningful to include now, but Queen & I strongly advises against it. The most obvious reason: the first time you see your finished display, your eyes will go straight to the invitation or photo, not to your flowers. Your flowers are the art (the focal point), and anything else in the frame pulls attention away from them.

If you’d still like to display a photo or invitation, it can be framed separately using the same moulding and matting as your shadowbox, creating a matched set that hangs beautifully side by side.

Reserve Your
Bouquet Preservation

Wedding
Coming Up?

Shadowbox commissions are one of just 2–3 spots Daniel takes on for DC metro brides each week, booking at least three months ahead gives you the best shot at securing your date. A call is the fastest way to start: Daniel will walk you through pricing, explain how your flowers will be collected, and answer any questions you may have about the preservation process. If you have the time and would rather see a finished shadowbox in person first, studio visits in Reston, VA are available by appointment.

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wedding
already passed?

Your flowers don’t need to be fresh from the wedding day for a shadowbox to still be possible. Time is crucial, so start by texting a few current photos to Daniel’s cell below, so he can see their real condition rather than guess based on timing alone. From there, a quick call lets him talk through what’s realistic for your bouquet, and help you get your flowers into the studio as quickly as possible. The sooner he can see and assess them directly, the more accurately he can tell you what to expect.

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Daniel Marcey, owner of Queen & I - Floral Preservation, Reston, VA

Daniel Marcey

Owner, Queen & I - Floral Preservation │ Reston, VA

Daniel has spent 35 years working with flowers, the last 25 devoted to wedding preservation exclusively. He’s also head of sales and lead trainer for Botanique, whose equipment much of the freeze-dry preservation industry depends on, having trained the preservationists who use it across the country. When a bouquet comes through the door of his Reston, VA studio, it is handled by the person who quite literally wrote the training.

about Daniel