Sarah's Wedding Bouquet

My friend Sarah's wedding came around pretty quickly because her fiance (now husband) is getting deployed in the spring. The ceremony was only immediate family and a few friends so she didn't want to go all out this time since they are going to have a bigger reception when he's back from overseas. So flashback to my Eco-Friendly Bouquet post, and the issue of what flowers to get was solved.

Now I can honestly say that I understand why you might pay $300+ for someone else on Etsy to create one of these bouquets for you, because it was a ton of work - and I didn't even help her to the final product! The day we started the project we probably spent 5-6 hours on it and only go to this point:

Though I feel like half the reason it took so much time was because we were trying to recreate something from a photo, and there was a lot of trial and error. Here's what some of the struggles were:

• Trying to figure out what size squares to use to get a certain sized flower
• Cutting out all the squares of magazine paper - The wedding colors were white, black and red so we were trying to cut squares with only those colors on them. Also we didn't have a paper cutter so every one was by hand
• Figuring out what size Styrofoam ball to use as the center. The original one was way too big , but we lucked out because when we tried to carve down the big ball there were 2 smaller ones inside!
• Arranging the actual flowers, they kind popped up on the sticks so you had to keep on pushing them down

Sarah ended up finishing the project with her mom, gluing black rhinestones to the exposed skewer end and adding floral tape and ribbon. It came out slightly larger and rounder than expected, but I'm pretty sure that's due to the spherical center. They also made boutineers! Check it out:

I don't know what the final cost was, but I do know it's way under $300 if you're willing to do the work youself. Another good thing about these flowers is that you don't need to dry them to save them as a keepsake!

~emy