Crafternoon: Wedding-Style

Today was a big day in weddingstuff, and craftstuff in particular.  In fact, I'm even adding a new label for this post (partially in hopes that it will push me to craft more often).  Today, my crafty girlfriends and I made the bouquets for the wedding.  "But Kim! Won't the flowers die?"  A-ha!  No!  We are awesome!  Magical, in fact!

Ok, not magical.  But we did get all fancy with the flowers, using wooden flowers and dried filler, (inspired by Brit's post on her bouquet, here) which actually feels more appropriate for our winter wedding in Tahoe than fresh flowers would.  They turned out beautifully, and we had a ton of fun (right?) assembling them.  Rather than bore you with big long explanations, I'll just tell you with pictures :)

First, we used hot glue guns to glue wire stems to the wooden
flowers, poking holes in them to get them to stick better.
(Thanks to Brit for the hole-poking tip! Worked great!)

Our supplies, spread out in various vases.

Don't forget the most important crafternoon supply: wine!
And an awesome team of can-do ladies:
Emika, Andrea, Rachel and Reed

Emika and Andrea, assembling small bunches of flowers,
later to be bundled together to create my bouquet.
Many small bunches put together = one lovely bouquet!
(note: while Brit did 3-4 bunches of 10, we did
several bunches of 4-5, and then added more flowers
and filler around the outside as needed to make it bigger)

Reed works on a boutonniere.
Pinecone, mini flower, knit flower "poof".
And yes, it says "wire cutters" on her hand,
a reminder to me to buy them at Michael's.

Emika, with a few nearly-finished
bridesmaid bouquets. Tiny and adorable!
All that's left is to wrap the stems with yarn!

I based my supply list on Brit's list: Natural Cedar Roses, Sola Shell Flowers, and Sola Roses, but my preserved Caspia arrived smelling rather fishy.  No, literally, it smelled like rotten fish.  Fast forward to this morning, when we found some fantastic replacements at Michael's -- white Caspia-looking stuff, some ivory Caspia-looking stuff with dried thistles and paper-thin flowers, and these crazy things that kind of looked like pussy willow, but with tiny papery roses instead of pussy willow puffs.  The little roses looked very similar to the Sola Shells, and worked perfectly in the bridesmaids' bouquets and the boutonnieres.

A finished boutonniere.
Freaking adorable.

Bridesmaid bouquets and two boutonnieres.

And ta-da! My finished bouquet!
My stem is wrapped in silvery gray ribbon,
and I'll be winding yarn around it
to tie my wooden ring to the stem.

I'm really pleased with the way they came out, and I love that they'll last for years and years to come!  

And as for the rest of our wedding-crafting?  Reed's going to make the remaining 4 boutonnieres (oh shoot, I think it's actually 8 more.  Forgot about boutonnieres for the parents), finish my hand warmers and start on the dads' ties.  I have to finish Will's scarf and make the neck warmers/cowls for the moms, maybe make my dad's tie if I can, and stencil the numbering on the guest books (one for each table, more on that later).  And soak the labels off some jars.  And buy some more jars/candles, probably.  And...something else I'm forgetting?  Good thing we have almost 4 weeks to go!