More shiny!

One of the wedding issues I'd been wrestling with was the idea of flowers. I love real, live flowers, but they are crazy expensive. So, I'd decided I was going to do silk and make my own bouquet... with blue flowers, or maybe sunflowers for a POP! (even though yellow is not a wedding color). I began thinking again, though, how I'd really rather spring for real. I found a vase type of flower arrangement for around $50 that I thought I could make into a good bouquet, and was contemplating that, until I was browsing Etsy and ran across this...

Bouquet by Noaki

Gorgeous, no?? I had not heard of brooch bouquets before. I knew I could never afford one of Noaki's lovely creations. I knew I could do something inspired by this idea on my own, however. It's a pretty straight-forward idea, but I like to see how people do things, so I googled brooch bouquets to see what other information I could find. My favorite tutorial was this one from Fancy Pants Wedding. I liked seeing how they wrapped the wire for each brooch.

I knew mine would not be as full as any of the ones I'd seen thus far, as I hand only a handful of brooches to use. I decided to intersperse them with a bouquet of silk flowers. I'd picked up some bouquets of white roses at Michael's, for my bridesmaids to carry, but some of the people I'd invited now are unable to make it, so I had extra bouquets. I decided to use one of these to augment with the brooches. I used silver florist wire I had on hand to make the stems. Other than that, I used a roll of ribbon from Dollar Tree, some floral tape, and $8 worth of beads from Michael's (I wanted little shiny bits and some blue accents to mix in with the brooches.

Here is what I've come up with...

 

I wish you could see how shiny it truly is! I love the bling! The brooches I used belonged to my great-grandmother, so this is also going to be a great way to pay tribute to her on my special day. The wire can be snipped and untwisted when the wedding is over, if I wish to get the brooches back to wear. I think I may leave them in the bouquet and display it after the wedding, however :)