{wedding details} Fabric Flower Bouquets

Most of you know we spent MONTHS working on all of the little things we wanted at our wedding. The main things we worked on were our invitations and our flowers. I'll do a post on the invitations at another time. Today I want to focus on the flowers and bouquets.

I scoured the internet for bouquet ideas and tutorials. I found so many different ideas it was difficult to decide for sure which ones to make. We wanted our entire wedding to reflect our style and personality as much as possible. I've always loved crafting and we both always try to be as creative as possible so I knew we should definitely have something handmade. At first we were just going to do our own arrangements with real flowers, but then I saw some unbelievable crocheted bouquets in a real wedding featured on Green Wedding Shoes here. I spoke with the bride through Pinterest and she had no issues with us doing something similar for our wedding. She was very nice and helpful. So I began my search online for crocheted flower patterns and a friend of mine, Rita Polk at Crafting Mommies, offered to make them for me. I decided on a version of a rose, and a spider mum. spider mums are my favorite flowers, so I thought it was fitting.

As I looked, I decided that I wanted to incorporate more into the bouquets than just the crocheted flowers. I wanted a more "crafty" feel. I decided to add some other fabrics and buttons, beads and ribbons to the mix. My mom and I went fabric shopping with my cousin and Aunt to find the perfect notions. We found a really great fabric store about an hour away from here that carries piles and piles of discontinued fabrics, so there some from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Amazing. I chose a few fabrics and a little brass bee button that I fell in love with and HAD to have.

sorry he is a little fuzzy :)

Our kitchen was a mess of fabrics, hot glue, lace and burlap for WEEKS. It was a long and difficult job but well worth the results. Since my mom was making the bridesmaids dresses, we were able to purchase the exact color of fabric in a different type so they would match perfectly. I dug through my mom's button tins full of really interesting and fun buttons from years of collecting!

 Like I said in another post, I found a tutorial online which showed how to make a fabric bouquet using a whisk as a base. This was how I chose to make ours. I went to Walmart and found the large sized whisks and bought 7. When I came back and started putting them together, I found that all of the flowers we had spent all those weeks working only filled 2 and a half bouquets.... PANICK! After I took a deep breath I realized I would just need to buckle down and make a LOT more flowers. With the help of my wonderful friends, we were able to have all of the flowers we needed to make all the bouquets. I went out and bought the medium size for sake of ease. The Maid and Matron of honor had the larger size, as well as myself, and the other bridesmaids had the medium size. I think it looked nice though. Hardly even noticeable. 

Thanks again to our photographer, Angela Cox!