A fresh flower, has a hard bottom of the flower head, you can not squeeze it.  The flower will feel crisp like a piece of fresh lettuce - if it feels like a piece of lettuce that you would not eat - the flower is not fresh.  Just like fresh fruit - you will be able to feel the difference with flowers.  Test this out the next time you go to the grocery store.

We picked these orange roses - but you can pick any type of fresh flower you like.  Roses, orchids, carnations, mini carnations last longer than other flowers you will pick. 

Spring flowers and lilies, do not last as long so be careful how many you decide to use in making your own wedding flowers.  Tulips, daffodils, and iris are not very long lasting and I would stay away from making a corsage with them out of fresh flowers.  In addition to not being very long lasting - they are also quite hard to work with and break easily - therefore you will need extra if you decide to use these as you will break probably about half of the flowers while wiring them.

You will need to remove any damaged petals from the roses.  Look at each stem and remove any bruised, or damaged petals.

If your flowers are not open - and you want them open you will need to do some special steps in order to make them open.  If you have closed roses, and want them to open - you will need to put them in warm water (as warm as your bathtub water) and then cover them with a plastic bag.  Do not put them in a cool place.  It usually only takes a day or so to get the flowers to open.  However, sometimes you will purchase flowers which we call Bullets - you will see a lot of them at Valentines Day - they are roses, which will not ever open.  If you want the flowers to open - you will need to purchase roses that look similar to the ones above.  You can see all the petals.  If you do not want them to open get roses that look more like this.