Bridal Bouquet

I swore I would never create my own bridal bouquet.  It scared me, I tought I would disappoint myself and hate it forever, I did not know where to even start.  Then reality set in and I swallowed my fear and jumped into the project (with the help of my lovely friend Jenna... I think she was the real courage booster!)

So now I am here to share with you our adventure of making my bridal bouquet :)  But as usual, I am first going to show you some inspiration pictures from around the web:

Once I had found enough pictures to serve as inspiration, Jenna and I set off to find silk flowers.  The first stop was a great store here in Springfield called Martin's Floral and Home Decor.  They have the best deals in town for silk flowers, and a huge selection to choose from.  I found almost everything I needed there, but we did make one stop at Hobby Lobby to round out the flower needs :)  Here is what we ended up with:

*One Dozen Roses
*7 Calla Lilies
*3 Ranunculus
*2 Hydrangeas

When we got home we separated all of the flowers into single stems, and cleaned up any leaves or other pieces that we didn't like.  Then we chose which flower we wanted to be in the center, and added flowers around it until the entire bouquet was made.  I wanted a bouquet that did not have a set order (such as one flower type in the center surrounded by a different flower type on the outside) so we really paid attention to not have too much of one type of flower in a given area.

Cameron snapped a picture of us while arranging :)  I just love this girl!

Once we had added all of the flowers we moved them around until we came up with an arrangement we liked, and here is the final producut:

Here is Jenna posing with the finished bouquet :)

We wrapped the stems in pewter ribbon just like the bridesmaid bouquets, but I wanted to add something a little different to make it look like a bridal bouquet.  I found this picture while perusing the internet and decided that I wanted to add som lace :)

I wanted the lace, but I still wanted the pewter to show, so I cut the lace in half to make it skinny and then wrapped it around the stems, leaving space so that the pewter ribbon could show through.

The final part of the project was to add a sentimental touch, inspired by this picture:

In the upper right corner of this collage is a picture of a little silver sillouette.  My great grandmother had a pin that she wore all of the time that had little gold hearts or sillouettes for all of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren (there are A LOT of little gold hearts and sillouettes on this pin!).  She passed away in October, but I wanted a way to have her part of the wedding as well as my little brother Bennett who passed away, so I asked for my heart and Bennett's heart to sew on to my bouquet.  I also sewed on each of our "little people" charms that my mom wore on a necklace.

My bouquet is beautiful and sentimental, and I cannot wait to walk down the aisle with it!

I also want to wish my future brother-in-law Carter a very happy birthday!  Can't wait to spend the day with you :)