Once upon a time I started my very first blog. Although I have put that one to rest, it was a wonderful learning experience and gave me the confidence to start the two sites that I manage today. Rather than filing all the old posts away, I’ve decided to bring a few back from the archives, including this popular one – DIY Flower Arrangements Part 1 which has been retitled, Easy DIY Boutonniere Tutorial. Enjoy!
PARTIES & ENTERTAINING
Easy DIY Boutonniere Tutorial
January 9, 2014
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How to Make an Easy DIY Boutonniere
Doing your own flowers for your wedding or any special event can save hundreds, even thousands of dollars. If you do not have any floral arranging experience, you can still make simple, beautiful arrangements for the day of. One of the easiest florals to make for a wedding is the boutonniere. In this post, I will show you step by step how to make an easy DIY boutonniere for the groom and groomsmen.
When time is of the essence (which is never truer than the day of a wedding!), the key is proper preparation. This goes for every aspect of the wedding planning process. In regard to the floral arrangements, you will want to order and pick up the flowers early enough in advance so that it won’t interfere with any other planning activities, but late enough that the flowers will be in full bloom and not wilting. It’s not always an easy task.
The examples used in this tutorial were the actual flowers that I used in our wedding. These could be used for any special event including weddings, bridal showers, baby showers, homecoming, prom, etc. Having zero training or prior experience with flower arranging the goal was to come up with a selection of bridal party flowers that were quick and easy to make.
Selecting Flowers for an Easy DIY Boutonniere
The first thing that you will need to consider is where you are going to procure the flowers. For our wedding, we were lucky enough to live within an hour of a wholesale florist. As long as the purchaser has a business license (not necessarily a florist business license), then the wholesaler would sell the flowers at the discounted cost. This is by far the cheapest way to obtain large quantities of flowers because you are able to purchase the flowers at the same cost as a florist would.
If this option is not available, you will need to shop around and find the best price for flowers. Some options to consider include your local grocers (Publix, Winn-Dixie, etc.), private florists (which is usually higher, but may have a better selection of available flowers), or wholesale stores (such as Costco or Sam’s Club – if they have a floral department).
Next you will need to decide on a color scheme. Once you know the colors that you are using for your wedding or event, you will be able to determine what flowers are available in that color scheme during the time of year that you will need them. This means that if you want peonies in late September in lower Alabama, you are either not going to get them or will have to pay an exorbitantly high price for them. I learned this the hard way.
DIY Wedding Flowers Plan
Finally, you will need a game plan for planning, pickup, storage, creation, and delivery. Knowing that I needed at least 1 full day plus part of another day to finish all the floral arrangements meant that the flowers needed to be picked up on Thursday for our Saturday wedding.
To ensure that the flowers don’t wilt before the big event, you will need to have adequate storage (your refrigerator will most likely not be big enough). A separate refrigerator or freezer set at a higher temp is key. The floral wholesaler recommended keeping the flowers in a room at 55F. This step is very important.
Transporting Wedding Flowers
After the flowers are arranged, you will also need to decide how they are going to be transported to your event location. Luckily, an easy DIY Boutonniere and even bouquets are easy to transport. However, if you are making larger arrangements, you are going to need s transportation plan.
If you can make all the flower arrangements on site, then you are in good shape because this can be another headache if anything falls over or gets too heated during transportation. We were lucky to get into the facility one day early, but it was not enough time to finish all the flowers. We had to work out a plan for the remaining arrangements.
Although the flowers did survive, it wasn’t pretty, and it was very stressful. As with every part of the wedding planning process, if you have extra hands to help, take advantage of it. Another option to consider is having a florist make and deliver the larger arrangements while you take care of the smaller ones.
Simple and Easy DIY Boutonniere Idea
For our wedding, our color scheme was simple – white and ivory. Luckily, there are many flowers that work with this color scheme so we just needed to decide what would be the most feasible. The flowers we decided on for our arrangements included hydrangeas, baby’s breath, traditional roses, garden roses (in place of the peonies), and stock.
By using different combinations of the flowers above, we were able to create the bridal bouquet, bridesmaid’s bouquets, flower girl bouquets (in lieu of petals), groom’s boutonniere, groomsmen boutonniere’s, mother’s corsage, centerpiece arrangements, cake topper, church centerpieces, and aisle markers.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to make an easy DIY baby’s breath boutonniere, which works perfectly for a simple groomsmen boutonniere. I will also show you an easy alternative, which was used for the groom’s boutonniere.
How to Make an Easy DIY Baby’s Breath Boutonniere
Materials:
- Baby’s Breath
- Floral Tape
- Boutonniere / Corsage Pins
- Scissors
The key to a successful boutonniere is making sure it can be easily secured and will lay flat. Because of its simplicity, baby’s breath is the perfect flower for the job. If you are looking for something more masculine or rustic, cotton makes for a creative alternative as well.
One of the best things about baby’s breath is that it will hold its color for several days. We made all the groomsmen boutonnieres on Thursday evening (with the wedding planned for Saturday evening), placed the boutonnieres in a small container in the fridge, and they held up beautifully for the big day.
Step 1: Taking a small piece of baby’s breath, cut off the stem, leaving about 3 inches of white flowers.
Step 2: Using the floral tape (I prefer the green kind), begin wrapping the stem. It should be approximately 1.5 inches in length. Wrap the stem several times to ensure that the boutonniere pins will be able to easily pierce it and still hold together.
Step 3: Add 2 boutonniere pins to the back and you are done.
And there you have it! Your first boutonniere. Luckily, these only take about 5 minutes or less to make. Times that by the number you need, and you will have a good timeframe for how long it will take to make the boutonnieres for your wedding or event.
How to Make an Easy DIY Groom’s Boutonniere
Materials:
- Baby’s Breath
- Stock
- Floral Tape
- Boutonniere / Corsage Pins
- Scissors
Typically, in a wedding, the groom’s boutonniere should stand out from the groomsmen’s boutonnieres, even if only slightly. My initial thought was to use two leaves and one traditional rose for the boutonniere. But our roses were so large that they didn’t look very attractive as a boutonniere, and it was difficult to get it to lay flat.
That wasn’t going to work. Baby’s breath with a little white stock did the trick. If you are not familiar with the flower stock, it is a delicate flower with small, ruffled flowers and a light perfume fragrance.
Step 1: Using the same method as with the groomsmen’s boutonnieres above, take a more generous portion of baby’s breath (about 2-3 stems) and one stem of stock. Using the baby’s breath as the back of the boutonniere, lay the baby’s breath pieces flat and place the stock slightly below it. As with the groomsmen’s boutonniere’s this should be approximately 3 inches tall.
Step 2: Take the floral tape and generously wrap the bottom portion of the boutonniere. The stem of the stock is much thicker than the baby’s breath stems so it is important that the tape is thick and tightly wound.
Step 3: Place 2 boutonniere pins in the back of the floral tape and put the finished boutonniere in a small cup of water inside the refrigerator or cooler.
Unlike the boutonniere’s made solely of baby’s breath, the stock will require water to keep its color before the event.
And that’s it. With our easy DIY boutonniere plan, we were able to make 4 groomsmen and 1 groom boutonniere in under 30 minutes! It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
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