Make A Do It Yourself Boutonniere And Wrist Corsage

Make a do it yourself boutonniere for your groom, his groomsmen, your fathers, brothers, and grandfathers. This will be a lot cheaper than to pay a florist to make them. Use silk flowers for additional savings. That way you can make them ahead of time and use your valuable last minute time to get yourself ready for the wedding.

Making a boutonniere is simple. The hardest part is deciding what flower, greenery, and accent plant to use (if any).

Cut a bloom off of your silk flower stem, keeping just a short stem of about one to two inches. Wrap the stem in floral tape. These days floral tape comes in all sorts of colors so you can choose to use traditional green or you can match the groom's suit by using black, white, blue, gray, or brown. After wrapping the stem, add leaves or other greenery behind the bloom. You can also add some type of berries or anything else you think will look good with the flower you chose. Wrap that on to the flower stem with floral tape.

You can leave it as is or add some decorative wire by wrapping a bit of it around the stem for an attractive accent.

Then use a large floral pin that goes through the back of the wrapped stem, through the lapel, and back into the bottom of the floral stem to hold the boutonniere in place.

You can make a do it yourself wrist corsage for your family and bridal party. You can wear one yourself for your engagement party and for your rehearsal dinner.

I suggest using silk flowers because you can make your corsages ahead of time and keep them for always. You can use fresh flowers, but be sure that you make them a day or two before the event and refrigerate your corsages so they will be fresh. Use sturdy flowers if you are using real ones.

Either way, use three blooms. For some reason, things look good in threes with candles and flowers, etc. Wrap floral tape around the largest bloom's stem, which should not be very long. Then add a flower next to your wrapped flower and wrap it with the first flower. Add your third flower and do the same. If you like, add some type of greenery behind the three flowers and wrap that stem together with the others.

At this point, you can also add some lace behind the flowers for decoration.

You can buy a wrist holder made especially for do it yourself wrist corsages at any craft store. I have seen them at Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and Garden Ridge. I have not seen any at Wal-Mart in the crafts department, but they get new stuff in there all the time so keep checking. These come in several colors.

Let's put the flowers on the wrist holder. First, I decide where on the wrist holder I will put the flowers. Then I put some hot glue on the holder where I want the flowers to go with my glue gun. Immediately stick the flowers on the glue and hold them for a few seconds until the glue dries. Then tie the stem on for extra security with the strings that came with the wrist holder.

To make it even prettier, tie on some ribbon, either in a bow or just hanging. Curl the ends of the ribbon with scissors. Slip it on your wrist and you have a beautiful corsage that becomes a keepsake of your special event.