Wedding bouquet & boutonniere

Step 9 Boutonnieres!

Using some of the smaller flowers, and some of the greenery left over from the arrangements I bought.

The boutonniere follows the ikebana rules (Japanese flower arranging) - always use odd number of your predominant pieces.

I wired the tallest of the little mums for extra strength, then tapped the two smaller flowers to the tall one.

I added two loops of the long grass-like greenery (just looping, taping, then cutting off the ends) and two small leaves that were actually from the lilies. These were all just taped to the three flowers.

Wrapped the whole little guy in ribbon (maybe 4 inches worth) and used one pin to tuck the end and stick it into the stems.

This boutonniere cost "pennies a glass" since it was made out of leftovers, and took about 10 minutes to make from start to finish!

I left the test boutonniere out of water to see how long it would last - a whole week! The official boutonnieres on the wedding day didn't last quite as long, they mostly got squashed because of hugs, dancing, and being left on jackets on the back of coats. Oh well!