A fixture and method for installing turbine buckets is disclosed. The fixture is adapted for mounting a plurality of turbine buckets with dovetails to a rotor wheel of a turbomachine that is separated from an adjacent rotor wheel by a spacer wheel, the rotor wheel and the spacer wheel each having a plurality of circumferentially aligned dovetail slots, the fixture includes: a turbine bucket holder having a dovetail that is configured to engage with one of the dovetail slots of the spacer wheel. The profile of a bucket holder dovetail slot substantially aligns the dovetail of the turbine bucket with a dovetail slot of the rotor wheel for at least partial transfer of a turbine bucket thereto.