DIY Boutonnieres

Once I finished up with the bouquets, I was feeling pretty confident in tackling the boutonnieres. First, I snapped some “potential option” pictures for Dave to take a look at, to see if he wanted any greenery (and if he did, how he wanted it arranged). I had a variety of ideas utilizing the smaller leafs from the hydrangea stems that I used in the bouquets.

After showing all of these ideas to Dave…. he ended up going with no greenery at all. Fine with me, made my life a little easier in putting these together! So the plan was to have a single, mini gerber daisy in ivory for the groomsmen, and a single, mini gerber daisy in fuchsia for the groom.

I started out by bending the stem of the boutonniere right behind the flower, so that it would face straight once it was pinned on. I had to bend it as close to the head of the flower as possible though, so it didn’t pop out 3D style from the jacket. Thankfully, the stems already came partially bent from the vendor, so that they could be packed flat without damaging the flower head. I just had to bend it a little more towards ninety degrees.

Next, I needed to trim the stem down to an appropriate length. We wanted enough stem for the guys to have something solid to pin to their jacket, but not too long. We chose the 2 1/2″ mark to trim them all down to.

Then, it was time to wrap the stems. I started by hot gluing a good portion of the ribbon to the stem itself, to make sure it would stay firmly in place while I wrapped.

Then, I folded the end down to begin the wrapping. This part is really key to the way the bottom of your wrapping will look, so it might take you a few attempts to get the look you want.

Continue wrapping under the stem…

By this point, the bottom of the stem should look like it has a tied look.

Once I had it wrapped to the point where the bottom part looked spot on, I secured it with a bit of hot glue, so I could work the rest of the wrapping without worrying about undoing the work I had done so far.

I kept wrapping all the way to the top of the stem, around the bend, and then used a for of hot glue to keep it secure.

I’ll be the first to admit that the wrapping isn’t perfect (these photos especially show that, as they were my first attempt). But as I did each boutonniere, I got better and better at the wrapping, and each looked more sleek than the last.

With the top glued down, I snipped the excess ribbon off.

Here, you can clearly see the way the satin ribbon frays at the end once you cut it. Like I did with the bouquet ribbon, I used a tea light candle to heat seal the end of the ribbon, so that I knew it wouldn’t fray over time. Here is the same end, after I heat sealed it.

I used a bit more hot glue to seal down the very end of the ribbon, and had a fully wrapped stem.

We chose the black ribbon so that the stem wouldn’t stand out too much against the jackets. But we did want the groomsmen’s boutonnieres to have a bit more color, so we chose to add a small bow in a blue to match their ties. To do this, I started by first just wrapping a piece of ribbon around the stem where I wanted the bow to be placed. This way, it would look more like the ribbon was actually tied around the stem.

Then, I learned how to tie a perfect bow (thanks Martha Stewart), and proceeded to make 6 of them.

Once I had all six of them, I attached them to the stems with a little hot glue.

Dave thought his own boutonniere had enough color, so he didn’t want a bow on his.

Since we still have seven months before the wedding, I put them in a ziplock bag to keep them safe and dust free.