DIY vs Faux Flowers

Hi!

I’m planning on having the only florals at our wedding be the bouquets and maybe corsages for our moms (candles only for the centerpieces, no boutonnières for the guys as my fiancé is very much flower neutral). I live in NYC and would like to keep my wedding as reasonably priced as is possible for a HCOL area, and I think one of the ways to do that is either DIYing live flowers or having faux flowers. I’ve seen some bouquets on Etsy that I really like, so if I go faux I’d purchase premade.

I’m wondering what people’s experiences with both have been—I do kind of prefer real flowers, but I’ve been looking into fifty flowers and am seeing mixed reviews. I generally like single stem, simple bouquets, so I do think DIYing would be pretty easy but I am concerned about ending up with a bunch of dead flowers.

TIA!