Crafts | Bow Bouquet | Beyond Pages

One of my besties recently got married and I was lucky to learn so many new traditions about western weddings! One of which is the Bow Bouquet!

The Gist: It's tradition to save the bows and ribbons received from her gifts at the bridal shower to make a bouquet to be used during the rehearsal!

Our Bride: Now in my case, our bride only received a couple ribbons and 2 bows! So I also saved the tissue paper, wrapping paper and a bunch of the decorations to see what I could possibly come up with! It's been a while since I had to do a craft where I was restricted on materials and frankly, I LOVE the challenge!! Check it out!

The Details:

Time: ~15 - 20 hours total
Expense: None, use only materials received from gifts/decorations at the shower

1. Collect all the materials: If you've been following my crafts, you know that I always start with as many materials as I can get my hands on, I never know what I may end up using and what I won't! Here's what I had in front of me:

Tissue paper, gift wrap, and gift bags
Rings from "find the rings" game from bridal shower
Bows and ribbons
Plates and napkins from bridal shower
Miss to Mrs Banner and other decorations
Any cards the bride received

2. Figure out the main construct: The plate jumped out as the best support system here! I took the cardboard cylinder from the inside of a paper towel roll and glued it to the middle of the plate. I added some of the ribbons for both decor and to balance the plate on all sides no matter how much weight was put it on. The paper towel roll was the only material I used outside of everything I had.

3. Start Playing! It's a bouquet, so obviously I think of flowers. And well paper flowers are very cute and doable! So I made two tissue paper flowers, a dahlia gift wrap flower, a dahlia napkin flower and a couple stick tissue paper flowers as well! See these posts to learn how to make each of those:

Tissue Paper Flowers - LINK
Dahlias - LINK
Stick Paper Flowers - LINK

4. Try using unexpected materials: I started playing around with rings I had from the bridal shower game. Hot gluing them together looked amazing but the glue didn't hold well. So I glued them together, glued a ribbon to them and tied the ribbon! The second layer in between and behind also had ribbon glued and tied to it to keep everything together. The middle flower was from a gift bag piece They turned out amazing and definitely added a dimension to the bouquet that was unexpected!

4. Start putting pieces together: So once I had a made a bunch of smaller pieces, I had to start putting them together to see if I needed more or had too many. I realized since the plate had a dip to it I needed to add some height so the flowers would actually be seen and create a good bubble like shape. So I took a bunch of the tissue paper and crumbled it up and glued it to the plate.

*** BONUS!!!

I had so many materials left over that I just had to make all the bridesmaids bouquets too!! So I made more Dahlias and Tissue flowers!

1. Back to structure, I couldn't figure out how to keep these bouquets smaller and only two flowers so I stacked them! I used the rings from the big decoration rings, and then traced them onto the plates as well since I needed 8!