Button Bouquets and Ribbon Vases

 My husband likes to laugh at me quite often, I am some what of a conundrum for him. I am probably the most un-girly, yet definitely not a tom boy girl there is. He how ever is an over the top romantic sap (whom I love dearly, I swear). When it came to our wedding he was the one who wanted an over the top giant wedding and I wanted to go to Vegas and get married by Elvis, just the two of us. We settled for a ceremony at the JoP with a family style BBQ reception. 


 Project # 1 The Bouquet

I hate bees. With a fiery passion. Well anything with a stinger really. My in-laws have a beautiful back yard, but backyards in San Diego tend to come with bees and wasps. I refused to be running from bees on my wedding day so I didn't

My bouquet, Navy, ivory, gold, and wooden buttons

want to carry a bouquet. My husband said I had to carry a bouquet, because every bride has to have a bouquet.  This lead to the flower alternative bouquet searches. I found several absolutely beautiful paper flower, broach and button bouquets. Etsy even has several shops for them, all well out of price range. I'm talking several hundreds of dollars out of my price range. So I decided I could totally do it myself, which I did.
I did a couple of practice ones to get a feel for the best way to build the "stems" and then twist them together and not stab myself while holding it.

Flower girl's

Penguins, because I can :)

Bridesmaid's ( x 3)

 It ended up being a really fun project. Everyone got in the hunt of helping me find interesting and unique buttons. Several family button tins got passed down to me, so I ended up having generations of our families with us on our special day.

Project #2 the Centerpieces
 

Same problem with the bees. I knew I wanted to do some kind of glass votive centerpiece, but I
wanted it to be just a little special with out being froo froo. I got my inspiration from the flower
department of our grocery store. They had completely overpriced ribbon wrapped vases. This one was a super easy and quick project that came out beautifully and was easy to customize to our colors. I loved them because they didn't scream wedding and they are now living in the living rooms of several of our family and friends.