Flowers for everyone!

Ok, so maybe not everyone, but it's pretty traditional in most Asian weddings (at least for my family) to have corsages and boutonnieres for all important extended family members - aunts, uncles, cousins even. And it's always a nice guesture to have flowers for your wedding helpers: musicians, guestbook and gift attendents, ushers, DOC, etc.

So... Mr. Ramen's mom is one of 5 kids, his dad is one of 4. My mom is one of 6 and my dad has (thank God!) only 1 brother. Since the majority of them are married, this means for aunts and uncles alone, we'd need to provide about 25 or so corsages and boutonnieres. And then another 15 at least for our helpers. At $8 a pop for a measly single rose, our budget definitely couldn't handle that! How to fix this dilemma?

Miss Ramen: "Oh, I can TOTALLY make all of the boutonnieres and corsages. How hard could it be?"
And before you start to laugh in my face at my DIY naivete it's actually... not that hard!

So I started by attempting to make them out of fake florals since they could be made well in advance, and ended up with these (thankyouverymuch Michael's and Joann's floral clearance sales!):

These were some basic mock-ups before I started the wrapping. I just used fake lamb's ear, ranunculus, and astilbe, with some random berry-like things and some feather trim with guinea feathers that I found at Tuesday Morning for 99c! You will also need some wire cutters, floral wire (maybe about 24g), and floral tape - and ribbon if you want to cover up the tape with that.

So basically (and sorry I don't have step-by-step photo instructions for this), I wrapped the floral tape a couple of times around the lamb's ear leaf stem. You might want to strip the floral stems down to the wire, if you can, because this will keep the wrapped stem part nice and thin.

Slowly add in your other fun bits - feathers, flowers, etc, wrapping about 1 time around each new thing to your base leaf. You might need to wire smaller items, if the stem is too short or non-existant. It's important to make sure all parts are anchored together!

Wrap the entire assembled bout stems several more times, until the fake stems/wires are covered. you could even extend the tape wrapping further, so you can make one of those cute little curly tails at the end. And voila! You have yourself a beautiful, reusable, forever bout/corsage. I was content with this, and set about making some for the ushers and started on the family flowers.

And then my cousin C's wedding happened. She had asked some ladies from her church to help her with flowers, and they had easily whipped up a large number of REAL rose bouts/corsages for the family members. I asked one of the lovely ladies about it, and she explained to me how they made them in about 7 min/bout or less, and then told me that I could totally do it for my wedding!

So of COURSE I had to try. I stopped by Costco, found some light pink spray roses and went to Safeway where I discovered a greenery bunch of seeded eucalyptus (they smell great, but if they're too old, the little seeds fall off EVERYWHERE, which is NOT cool), eucalyptus leaves, and bear grass and went to town....

I might have looked up some tips from here - although these directions are for an orchid, you can pretty much modify them for any flower (at least in my mind that makes sense). Similar to the fake bouts that I had made, I slowly bound each piece together with the floral tape - and made a nice little curly tail on the end on one. (BTW - that floral tape gets your hands REALLY sticky, which is gross and really weird, because it seems like it won't even stick where you want it to...)

One thing that kinda helped too, because sometimes I was too over-eager and snipped the stem too short: you can salvage the bud by sticking a piece of wire through the base/top stem part, and twisting it around the stem remnant - just make sure you cover it well with floral tape! (Note to self: leave stems too long...)

Voila!!!!! If I can do it, YOU can do it too!!!!! (Pardon the one on the right - I cut the tape too short and then was too lazy to fix it.)

The one on the left with 3 buds will be for the aunties/special ladies at our wedding. The bout on the right will be for our uncles/special guy helpers. Yes, I am very proud of myself. I then stuck the samples into the fridge uncoverd to see how long they would last before looking nasty. I think I could start making some on Thursday, and they'd still look pretty good on Saturday. But to be on the safe side, I think Mommy Ramen and Sister Ramen and I will whip them up pretty fast on Friday morning before the wedding, possibly enlisting any bridesmaids/family members who are hanging around.

So - what do you think hive? Should I add anything to them/take anything out? Should we mix it up with white + pink buds?