When my daughter Penny and I started to Plan her wedding to Jamie, the first thing she new she wanted was a bouquet made out of brooches and the second was that I would make it. Never having heard of one before I immediately hit google to see what I could find and to be honest it wasn't a lot.
We found a few pictures of brooch bouquets and a couple of places that would make them, however they tended to be made with flower shaped brooches and more Posey shaped then Penny wanted and because they were all bespoke they were more than we could budget for at £400 plus.
So I put my thinking cap on, and thought a cushion base would be a good start so we could fasten the brooches directly to the cushion. During a visit to Brides of Bailgate in Lincoln, a wonderful family dress shop run by Mother and Daughter, I was telling them what we had in mind for a base and they produced a beautiful Satin flower girl basket with a cushioned base. Inside the basket under the satin lining was there was a wooden base. It had a lace frill around the top of the basket with little ribbons that streamed from the base of the handles. Turn it upside down and we had our perfect base.
The only problem was that basket had a soft round satin handle and we needed a rigid handle for the bouquet, so I paid a visit to our local hardware store and spent about an hour looking for a solution. The answer came in the guise of a towel holder, the rubber type that you push the towel into, a screw and a piece of dowel.
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| Flower Girl Basket |
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| Tea Towel Holder |
Using the screw I fixed the towel holder inside the basket to the wooden base, the dowel rod then pushed inside the towel holder, I used some ribbon to pack the dowel to keep it central and to stop it from moving. When cut to the right length the dowel rod fitted underneath the soft handles of baskets, straightening them as much as they would go. I then wrapped white satin ribbon around the soft handles sandwiching the wooden dowel in the middle. I found it was easier if I used a couple of stitches to hold the ribbon in place, then wrapped it tightly around the handles as far up as you could go. There is a point where the fabric handles splay out to the side of the basket, I looped under then handles at this point to fully cover the dowel with the Ribbon.
So that was the base of the bouquet made, we now had to transform it into something truly unique and glamorous.
We wanted the bouquet to have a lovely vintage hollywood glamour look to it, so we decided to go for a diamante look that used clear and blue diamante brooches to complement the weddings royal blue colour scheme. So over the following couple of weeks we prowled Ebay, Charity Shops, Car Boot Sales, Antique Shops and even the Festival of Britain Vintage Fair at London’s South Bank looking for brooches.
The wonderful thing with this bouquet was that friends and family helped out enthusiastically digging out unused brooches and sending them to us. They didn’t know we were going to do with them, I am not sure we did really at that point but they thought we did and where genuinely pleased and excited to feel part of wedding.
Over the next couple of weeks we bought a range of brooches, we used around 50 brooches in the end, but it was good to have a range of our selected colour scheme and shapes to make sure every part of the bouquet cushion was properly covered.
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| Base of the Brooch Bouquet |
While I was making the bouquet I suddenly realised that if the brooches completely covered the cushion the ones on the edge may well catch on and damage the dress, after a bit of thought I decided to bring in elements from the bridesmaids flowers. They were going to have simple white posies of Gerbera Daisy’s, so I headed off our local garden centre and found some silk white Gerbera Daisy’s that I could put round the edge of the bouquet.
As I mentioned earlier there was a lace strip running around the basket which was perfect, I unpicked sections of the lace, slid the stems of the daisy’s through and then simply sewed loops of thread through the cushion behind the stems, out over the top of the stems and back into the cushion, there is usually a little gap where the flower heads join the stems, so I hid the thread in there to keep it looking tidy. I did this until they went all around the edge of the cushion.
It was then a case of laying out the brooches so we could get them into the correct positions, there was a lot of trial and error with this, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time. Just undo the brooches and move them.
When we had them all in position we added a couple of stitches of white thread to each one to hold it in place.
The costs for this bouquet worked roughly as follows:
- Basket for base - £25.00
- 7 Silk Daisy’s - £14.00
- Brooches – £100.00
If you have more time you could probably do this cheaper, finding cheaper brooches but by the time we figured out how to make the bouquet we had less than a month to find everything and make it.
The final cost for this absolutely stunning and unique bouquet came in around £139.00.
The other thing with creating you own bouquet is it is truly personal, Penny attached a locket with photo’s of her grandparents and the grooms mum who are no longer with us so that there were there sharing the day with us.
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| Penny and a Very Proud Dad |
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| Penny and Jamie |
We hope you love the finished article as much as we do, close up it might not have been perfect, but is was incredibly personal and everyone absolutely loved it.
Don’t be scared about making your own bouquet, we have proved that anyone can do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect in every detail, if its not you will be the only one who knows. It is your Wedding and your Bouquet and you can make it however you want.
One word of advice if you want a bouquet to throw, I suggest you get a small Posey of flowers to throw that way you keep your bouquet and the girls catching the bouquet nice and safe.
Links
Dress Supplied By
Brides of Bailgate
Photography By
Pavone Photography
Venue
Leez Priory
You can also read all about Penny and Jamies wedding at
Funky I Do A a great new wedding blog.
Send through pictures of your Brooch Bouquets and I will include them show what a lovely addition they can make to your wedding.
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