How to Make a Casket Saddle

Professional flower displays for funerals can be expensive. With a few tools and time, you can create your own arrangement to decorate the casket. You can choose between natural, sweet-smelling real flowers or long-lasting, lifelike silk flowers for your casket saddle.

Trim the stems of your fresh or silk flowers with floral shears. While fresh flowers are more natural and give off a pleasant scent, silk flowers can look realistic and last much longer.

Cut floral foam with a knife to fit inside a casket saddle container with about 1 inch of foam visible over the container. If you plan to use fresh flowers, soak your floral foam in water for several minutes to supply your flowers with moisture. If you use silk, leave your foam dry.

Insert the flowers into the foam, beginning at an almost horizontal angle toward the edge and adding them at an increasingly vertical angle toward the center of the foam block. This will give your casket saddle a pyramidal, dome-like shape over the casket.

Use greenery to fill in gaps and add interest to your arrangement. Add a ribbon bow to the top center of your casket saddle, and position the ribbon tails to trail over your arrangement.

Adjust the legs of your casket saddle base so that it fits snugly on the casket. Make sure the arrangement has symmetry from side to side and front to back.