many sources on the net state that you should use some resistors and blocking capacitors in front of the first LED since they tend to be quite easily harmed by voltage spikes. Honestly, speaking I never did this and did not kill a single LED yet. Just wanted to mention.
Also take into account that the 3.3 V logic level might seems to be sufficient on the test-bench but the 3 m wire from the controller to the LED-stripe in the final application might create a lot of head-scratching

Hmmm. thinking more about it, I wonder if the logic-level theory fits... since, if the first LED only receives rubbish digital values, it just forwards digital rubbish at now 5V to the other LEDs. However, I remember to read that the level shifters in the LED are more forgiving then other parts of the LED circuitry. Ultimately, I guess deshipu is right to say it would be much better to adapt the logic level.