Festive florals: fake and fresh

Not that I want it to be all wedding, all the time here, but since I DIYd most of my wedding kit, I thought I'd do a few separate posts of how I made it. Today: my hair flower, my bouquet, and the DC's boutonierre.

Fake first. It's not the first time I've made my own hair flowers, so I was pretty confident it would work out. I used this tutorial as inspiration; she sent me to the Martha Stewart peony download. Note: for some reason, the petal template on the first page and the small one on the second page are identical. I decreased the scale to 75% for the first page and printed that out so I'd have three different sizes.


I folded a leftover silk panel in three, pinned each template to it, and got cutting. I was fully prepared to cut more petals if I needed them, but it turns out that the nine pieces were all I needed. I then put Fray Block around the edges.

Fray Block removes the lustre from the silk (which is why I didn't want to use it on my dress) so be careful not to drip it all over.

I played around with folding them in various ways -- at first I tried folding each layer in four and smooshing them together, but I liked it better when I folded them in a stack. I stacked all the pieces concentrically from smallest to largest, rotating them so that there were no gaps, then I sewed them button-style in the centre so they wouldn't move around for the next part.


Originally, I folded all the layers together, but I didn't like the way the big petals looked in the middle, so I settled on folding the inner six petals (all the small and medium ones) in four as a group and sewing across the base. Then I folded the large petals individually around the inner bunch, overlapping them and sewing in place as I went.


I then sewed the broach/hair clamp piece on and added a few dabs of Mend-It glue on the other side for good measure. It seemed pretty solid.


And voilà! Pretty good, yes? I was considering adding crystals to the centre, but sort of ran out of time. But now I have a hair rose that exactly matches the dress.


On to the fresh: When I told people I would probably make my own bouquet, they would try to convince me not to because it would take so much time. Well, it took me an hour, tops, for both bouquet and boutonierre. I followed this amazing tutorial for the bouquet. It tells you everything except to keep the floral tape taut as you're winding, which I learned from this tutorial for the DC's boutonierre.

I bought my gear from Shaw Flowers and Gifts on the Wednesday before the wedding. I found some creamy-white roses that, it turns out, perfectly matched the dress, and I bought 14 of them. The owner gave me a deal and threw in a staggering amount of fern and baby's breath and a roll of floral tape for and additional $6.50. I found out when I started tearing off the leaves that he had already removed all the thorns, too! Go shop there! I made out like a bandit.

I left the flowers in water until Friday to open up a little more; we kept our screen door open to keep the room cooler so they wouldn't get too blousy. It worked perfectly. They were beautifully open by Friday and stayed that way through Saturday.

The bouquet tutorial I linked to above has really great pictures, so I'll only show you a few of my process shots. Which are, to be honest, mostly finished-product shots. Aaaaanyway...

I started with the three most open and rose-looking blooms for my anchor. Wrapped those with floral tape (holding the tape taut; I found it was easier to rotate the blooms instead of trying to physically move the tape). Then I added more blooms and a sprig of baby's breath. Wrapped. More blooms. Wrap. More blooms and baby's breath. Wrap. Blooms and ferns. Wrap.

When I got to the outer blooms, I lowered them a bit to give a more rounded look to the bouquet. I found that a dozen roses made a nice, complete posy.

Wrapping in small groups not only gives you more control, but also a nice fist-sized handle to hold on to.


I wrapped the whole thing with a 1 inch ribbon that the DC and I have been using to wrap each other's birthday gifts with. It's the ribbon he put on the lambda necklace he gave me on our third date. The DC says we need to retire the ribbon now, so it's wrapped around all the cards we got. I did tell you we are that couple. By dint of careful spacing, there was just enough ribbon to cover the floral tape.

I used silk pins, poking them in perpendicular to the ribbon edge. I was going to use white, but decided the red would not make the slightly uneven winding as noticeable.

I asked the DC how many roses he wanted in his boutonierre, and he said one. I added a sprig of baby's breath, a small fern, and some rose leaves. Unfortunately, the stem of the leaves was kind of short, so they fell out pretty early one the next day. I chose the most tightly curled bloom and pulled off three of the outer petals.

I differed from the tutorial by not using any floral wire (or any wire). I figured the rose's stem would be strong enough. I didn't have any more ribbon, so I covered the tape with some burgundy Snug Hug (which I bought to finish the seams of my dress but wound up not using after all). That worked out well because it meant we could stick the boutonierre in water overnight; I took it out when I left and the "ribbon" had dried by the time the DC put it on.

Alas, the DC's flower started shedding petals at lunch -- I found a whole bunch under his seat -- the rose leaves with their short stems having fallen out long before. By the time we got to the Red Room, it looked like this:


Lucy was very involved in almost every step of the wedding prep process, by the way. Her help here consisted of lying on the cut greenery and breaking my scissors by pushing them off the table. Thanks, cat.


I'm dead pleased with how these turned out. Don't let anyone tell you not to make your own bouquet! Centerpieces, now...