DIY Boutonnieres

After seeing gorgeous handmade boutonnieres that kept showing up on wedding blogs and on Etsy, I decided that I wanted to try to make my own boutonnieres for the wedding. I already planned to make all the bouquets the day before the wedding, so I knew that it would be hard to make all the boutonnieres the day before as well (this is assuming they would be made with fresh flowers). As a result, I decided to use a variety of different dried flowers and silk flowers to make all of the boutonniere so that they could be all finished and ready before I left for Boston.

Here are all of the different types of flowers and foliage I used. I tried to incorporate a variety of colors, as well as textures and sizes. I also used some feathers, beads, and pearls for some of the boutonnieres.

Supplies

After I decided which flowers I wanted for which boutonnieres, I cut the flowers, tied them with wire, and then wrapped them with floral tape. The last step was to wrap the boutonnieres with matching ribbon. I decided that I wanted certain groups of boutonnieres to be distinguished from others, so I made sure to use different colored ribbons and flowers for those. For Dean and his groomsmen's boutonnieres, I also made leaves out of the leftover fabric from my ring bearer pillow. Here's how they turned out:

Dean's boutonniere + tie

Groomsman's boutonniere + tie

Boutonnieres for the parents of the bride + groom

Boutonnieres for male + female relatives + helpers

I spent about two full days making (roughly 15-20 hours) almost 80 boutonnieres. The time goes by pretty quickly though since it's something you can do while watching TV. I think I almost went through a whole season of How I Met Your Mother while I did this! (Time well spent, I might add.) :D