Eco-friendly, Homemade Boutonnieres!

I've been googling and estying around to find a simple, yet catchy homemade boutonniere style. One that I easily make 30 from without ripping my eyes out at the last minute! Flowers are nice, but not very environmentally friendly if your flower choice is not in season or grown locally, not to mention by the end of the night they are wilted and mangled from dancing! My mother is growing the flowers for our centerpieces and we could have used those flowers to make the boutonnieres, but I had a dream of chaos erupting the day before the wedding when the floral boutonnieres fell apart because we did not know how to make them!

So, instead of using the traditional flowers from a florist for boutonnieres, we decided to make our own sans flowers! Using clearance ribbon from a craft store and old buttons from my mother's button jar, we came up with these! The buttons are hand-painted to correspond with our color theme and each design is simply sewn together (with the help of a little double-sided tape too! haha!)





I'm excited to see how these look on everyone! They turned out spectacularly! The great thing about this is that I can get all of them finished ahead of time and we do not have to worry about refrigeration, or putting them on too early! I recommend hand-making boutonnieres to anyone planning a wedding! It's a special touch and you get to see your craftiness on everyone throughout the night! Plus, it's a little sentimental gift for each person who took part in your special day! What could be better?! :-)

Wine Charm Party!

I recently had an "OH SHIT" moment when I realized that this past weekend was the last free weekend I have until August 29th. Our Sept 26th wedding is coming up VERY QUICKLY and I seem to be getting more DIY ideas as the days go by! So I sent out a party invite to my lovely Chicago women and they all came over for a wine charm-making cocktail party! IT. WAS. FABULOUS!
I cannot thank them enough! We made over 250 wine charms! Charms ranging from old clip on earrings, keyboard keys, puzzle pieces, fishing lures and seashells! I'm storing them on clothes hangers for now and 100 fit nicely per hanger! It's a great way to keep track of the numbers! Here are some of my favorites that I quickly picked out. The charms will be on the wine glasses and the entire set-up (glass + charm) will be the wedding favor for guests to take home with them! All the charms were made from recycled items, things that normally would have been thrown away, or found at a garage sale/thrift store! Thank you so much ladies! I know it was last minute but it was tons of fun! You were so helpful! And the free beer at Duffy's definitely made the night even better! I can't wait to see all your shiny, happy faces at my wedding! It's going to be quite the party!