The Brooch Bouquet

I have had quite a few people ask me about my wedding bouquet. How did I make it? What is it made of? What made me think of making it? So I figured I would share that with everyone.

As most of you know, I got married recently in Turks and Caicos. If any of you know anything about Turks and Caicos, you know it is EXPENSIVE! To order a wedding bouquet with simple white lilies was going to cost me $600. Well that just wasn't worth it for me. I opted to give my guests a private bar at the reception with that money and I decided to make my bouquet.

I thought it would be a walk in the park.... I was wrong.

First thing I did was I went on a search for broaches. I guess a "traditional" brooch bouquet is made up of only broaches, but I decided that I would incorporate any type of jewellery as long as it was gold, silver or blue. I got some jewellery from my mom, my husband's mom, my grandmother (who passed away last April), some of my close friends.... I incorporated a piece of all the people who are close to me into this project. I went to antique stores, jewellery stores and flee markets across the city. It took me about 3 months until I gathered what I thought would be enough pieces to make my bouquet. I had 60 pieces in total.

After about 30 attempts to make this bouquet in a bunch of different ways, I found what was going to work for me. I purchased a foam ball from Michaels and some pretty turquoise ribbon. I pulled out 3 pencil crayons and jabbed them into the ball to make a stem. I then duct taped the three pencils together to make a solid stem. I hot glued the ribbon so that it wrapped all the way around the foam ball and down the stem covering everything so it was all hidden by the blue ribbon. I then began attaching the pieces to the ribbon. I ripped off all the pins on the broaches and hot glued each piece onto the ball. I bought myself a pretty pearl necklace and glued some pearls where I thought there were holes between the broaches to make the bouquet look fuller. That's really about it...

Once I figured out an easy way to actually assemble it, it really wasn't that bad. I received so many compliments and it is a great original idea for a wedding bouquet.

The only thing I wish is that I had some bridesmaids so I could have made them each one as well. Here are a few idea for anyone who is looking to make a broach bouquet.

Thanks for reading,

Danielle