Felt Flower Bouquet Details

Hello Everyone!!

Well, the wedding is over and it was an amazing day/night!! Matt and I had such a wonderful day full of wonderful memories. Thinking back, neither of us could think of one thing that we would have changed or done differently. It was exactly the low key, intimate affair that we wanted from the very beginning and we didn't let anything or anyone deter us from that path.

I have had alot of questions about the materials for my bouquet and where I got my ideas. I owe alot of my inspiration for all my diy projects to etsy.com. This website is chock full of so many talented people, it would take years to muddle through all the amazing things that you can find there. I think the best part about etsy is  that no matter the product, pretty much anything can be customized. And every seller I contacted, even if I just had a question, was always nice and helpful. One seller, Really Bad Kitty, was my main inspiration behind my bouquet design. Their creations are sooo amazing and they are even available to do custom work to match your wedding colors and/or themes! I was also awed by this bouquet designer from Australia. Her button bouquets were the first non floral ideas I saw when I started my wedding planning and as soon as I saw her work, I knew that this was the way I wanted to go with my own bouquet. Honestly, if I had had the time or the means (and been less of a control freak), these ladies would have been my top choices in ordering my bouquet.

My bouquet was made up of felt flowers that I ordered from a vendor that already had them die cut. Once they arrived, I got to work hand embroidering each flower. After much experimenting, I realized I had to double the flowers so that they were stable and did not get all floppy when I put them together. After embroidering the flowers, I then assembled them using floral wire, using buttons as the centers. Most of my fancy buttons came from Joann Fabrics, I got lucky alot hitting their buy one,  get one free sales.

If you are wondering about the time I spent working on my bouquet, I would have to say, I started planning my bouquet as soon as we got engaged last February. We have always known we would not be having flowers in our wedding, so right away I was trying to think of different materials I could use in my bouquet. I wanted non floral, which also meant no silk. Etsy was my first stop. The first bouquets I saw were the ones made entirely for buttons, oh yea, I could do that! But, you cannot imagine the difficulty it takes to get THAT many buttons together. It was pretty darn impossible for me. I needed, literally, thousands of buttons. It just wasn't happening. So back to Etsy I went, and thats when I found the felt flower bouquets. A lot of people are not in to felt, I am one of them. I have always thought that felt was just a little too kiddish, alittle too hippy, alittle too....bleh, dare I say tacky? But, it was Christmas time now, I was getting down to the wire and didn't have alot of time left to figure this stuff out. So, I just went with it. And, looking back, I do not regret it. The  felt I received from the Etsy seller was very nice, easy to work with and looked wonderful when finished! By February, I was in full stitching mode getting all the flowers embroidered and ready for assembly. By the beginning of May, I had started putting flowers together on the wire with the button centers.

The week before the wedding, I had my MOH's bouquet and my own bouquet put together using floral tape. I decided that mine needed alittle something extra so I dug out some white beads and made some wire loops to tape around the outside making a collar. I also had some wide, black wired sheer ribbon that used on both bouquets to make another collar. I just cut a long length of ribbon and on one side, pulled the wire out to make it ruffle up. Then I hot glued it around the handle. I used black satin ribbon to wrap the handle. On the day of the wedding, I borrowed a brooch from my MIL and used it to decorate the handle of my bouquet.

And that's it! Everyone at the wedding really loved my bouquet and I received lots of compliments. It was something that none of them had ever seen and it really fit into our wedding. It was me, it was handmade, it was beautiful, it was different.

I have alot of pictures and ideas that I used in my wedding that I would love to share with everyone!! I realized I have not shared Matts boutonniere, so that is definitely going to be in the next post!! It was actually one of my favorite finished projects!

Hope you all are well and have a great holiday weekend!