I Made My Wedding Bouquet [Out Of Buttons!]

Before we had decided on a venue, picked a day (or even a season), I was convinced of one wedding detail. I didn't want real flowers. 

I've never been big into flowers, I don't know anything about them and I'm notoriously cheap. I couldn't bring myself to spend hundreds of dollars on something I wasn't in love with. 

I also had a sneaky suspicion that I might wreck the bouquet before the night was over, as I am not exactly graceful. Before I ever made it into the car before Prom I managed to completely destroy my wrist corsage. 

So, I hit up Etsy searching for alternatives to real flowers and was amazed at the possibilities. Silk flowers, paper flowers, broach bouquets, felt flowers, and button bouquets. I immediately became fascinated with the idea of button bouquets. To order the bouquets would have been too expensive, it was about $300 for what we would need. 

I talked it over with Jay and realized we could probably make our own. I watched a few YouTube videos to get the idea and then went off in search of buttons and floral wire. 

Making the flowers was incredibly easy (though time consuming) but was something I did while watching TV and quickly had more stems than I could use. 

Stems can be bound together to make a bouquet in a variety of ways. The simpliest would be to tie them together and wrap the end of the wires in ribbon. You can also use floral foam to create the circle shape (pushing the stems through the foam each time). 

We discovered the floral foam trick after we had jammed hundreds of stems through a kitchen sieve. The stems fit through the tiny holes in the sieve and then we wrapped the metal edges with ribbon. For comfort we then wrapped all the stems in pipe foam, cut to fit and then wrapped in ribbon. 

I haven't offered a step-by-step tutorial for a couple of reasons. If you need one there are many available on other sites, but we worked on it for months and there aren't many photos to pull from. We also figured out many of the steps by trial and error, so if this is something you want to try I would just figure out what works best with your vision. 

Buttons In Action (Photos Courtesy of our Photographer, Samantha)

After we finished the bouquets (one for me, one for my MoH, and small ones for gifts), Jay helped me fashion boutonnieres with the remaining buttons and ribbon. Then we used large sized safety pins for attaching them to the jackets. 

We couldn't figure out, the best way to make button wrist corsages, so we decided to order flower corsages for our moms and grandmas. 

Materials Needed

-Buttons (various sizes) 

-Floral Wire

-Wire Cutters

-Ribbon

-Hot Glue 

-Sieve or Floral Foam 

-Safety Pins

I always add a little disclaimer at the bottom of these wedding posts, because I think all weddings are magical. If you chose real flowers for your wedding I'm sure that were beautiful and the right choice for you! If you think these button bouquets are tacky, probably they aren't the right choice for your wedding. But, the great thing about weddings is, every one is tailored to the couple! 

Linking up for Wedding Wednesday!

Keep Smiling :)