I'm not sure where to post this. I want to make a fresh fruit bouquet this weekend. How far in advance can I cut the fruit? I'm thinking of using cantalope, strawberries, grapes, and pineapple. Can I make it 24 hours ahead of time?
I have church on Sunday and then 2 hrs later all of my family will be here. I'm just not sure how much I can get done in that short amount of time. Because I think I will have to make the strawberry short cake the day of or my whipped cream will become all leaky and watery looking. Any thoughts? TIA!

How-To's for fresh fruit bouquets:

http://tinyurl.com/4f9xxs

http://tinyurl.com/4mf2dw

http://tinyurl.com/3lvy8o

HTH

I'm seeing that you can make the flowers ahead of time and refrigerate them, but assemble the bouquet as close to serving as possible. Makes sense, you don't want to leave fruit out on the table for too long.

Here is a quite different looking one.
http://www.do-it-yourself-gifts.com/edible-fruit-bouquet.html
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf3gMRGx4rA&feature=related
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Store Owner on 03/20/07
I was searching the web for how our franchise pops up in the search engines and I came across your blog!
I am an edible arrangements store owner. We use no chemicals on any of our fruits. We do not ship them. They are made fresh everyday for the orders that we receive. If you want to send one to your Aunt Sue across the country, the order is made fresh from the store that is local to Aunt Sue and is delivered from that store (like FTD). Our product is all natural. It is very perishable. Once designed the arrangement only looks great for about 48 hours. After that we tell customers to take the fruit off the skewers and put it into plastic bags or containers to retain the moisture in the fruit. If stored properly, you can eat it for another 3-4 days. I bought a franchise because I received one as a gift and loved it so much, I knew everyone else would too. Try them, you will love them!
And we don't use citric acid. No additives, just the fruit.

You can make the arrangements the night before, if you really need to. They will have to be refrigerated. If I were you, I would work with the fruit as late as possible the night before, because time is of the essence. And I would leave the arrangement in the fridge until the last minute.

I made one for my sister's Sunday graduation last year. I woke up Sunday morning (8ish) and cut it and assembled it and put it downstairs in the finished basement and covered it with a wet towel (which remained on it until people began arriving around 3. Turned out it was one of the hottest days of the month and my parent's AC wasn't working so overall it held up pretty well once it was brought upstairs. I have no idea how large yours will be but it took me about 1-1.5 hours to put it all together and it was my first time.