Boutonnieres vs. Pocket Squares: Part Two

part one

Okay, I know that part one was probably super boring . . . lots of words, no pictures.  My least favorite kind of post.  I'm sorry!!  This one will be much better, I promise.

Summary of part one:  I'm currently trying to decide between bouts or pocket squares for the guys.

What better way to make a decision than to look at lots of inspiration pictures?!  Here goes...

First up: Green Boutonnieres

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The Contender: The Pocket Square

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Umm, how cute?!

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I think what will tip the scale one way or another, is if I can find the right color green material to make the squares out of.  If that happens, then I'm leaning 98% towards doing the pocket squares instead of the boutonnieres.  Good thing we still have plenty of time, for me to find the material, and to change my mind a few more times!

Boutonnieres vs. Pocket Squares: Part One

Side note: I cannot for the life of me manage to spell boutonnieres right the first time, so for the remainder of this post they will likely be called bouts, or some other derivative.  I'm just lucky the title is spelled right currently, it took me three tries!

In a previous post, I clued you into how much my florist is charging me per bout ($7.00), and at 16 bouts I'm looking to spend over $100 on flowers....for guys!  Don't get me wrong, I love these guys, but that's a lot of money to spend on something they'll throw away the minute they get the chance.  I'm at least hoping the girls might bring their bouquets home and put them in water to look at for a couple days until they die.  The guys on the other hand, not gonna happen.

So in that post, I came up with a fake floral alternative that I am pretty happy with.  It cuts down the cost dramatically, and were super easy to do.  But then my lovely mother voiced her concerns about them and got me thinking.  She has an incredible talent for this, by the way.  She thought that maybe it would be weird, or look funny, or the guys might actually care that the bouts are fake when everyone else has real flowers.  I'm not worried about the guys caring, but I am wondering if it matters that the bouts will be the only fake flowers.

As a solution to this whole ordeal, lately I've been thinking about doing a pocket square instead of a bout.  Just totally scrapping the flowers altogether.  I think you can still get the visual interest with a pop of color peeking out from the pocket.  I was looking at tuxes this weekend, and priced out pocket squares out of curiosity.  There the guys would each buy a $6 pocket square that they would keep after the wedding is over.  There's two drawbacks to that: it would cost almost as much as the originally quoted bouts, and they didn't have the green color I would need. 
The nice thing about a pocket square, though, is that it's essentially a square piece of material with finished edges.  DIY anyone??  If I make them myself, I'll know that the green matches exactly, and it will cost a whole lot less.

Part two will be a picture heavy post, with ideas for bouts and pocket squares.  So while this post may have been a little boring, you won't want to miss the next installation!

DIY: Boutonniere

Originally I had our florist include all 16 boutonnieres we would need in the initial quote.  So technically, I can afford to pay $7.00 per bout, although when you think about it, $112 for boutonnieres seems a little crazy!

Yesterday while I was wandering through Hobby Lobby, I decided I was going to make my own.  So I bought some white roses, green hydrangeas, and some really cute green stick things that I guess pass as berries?  Anyways, they're super cute as you'll soon see, and the perfect chartreuse green.

Well my first attempt was a fail.  If you need photographic proof, here it is.

It's not totally bad, I just don't like it.  I posted it here for about a day, and started a discussion about it over on Weddingbee, hoping you guys could convince me to like it.  But it just wasn't happening.  The stem is way to skinny, the "berries" are too long, and it's actually pretty big.  All of those things are fixable, but somehow I just didn't feel like trying with this one.  I just didn't like it enough.

So I started again.  And this time I came up with something I think will work.  I made 5 of them, so I must be pretty pleased with the way they look.  Here is the almost finished product.  (It still needs ribbon wrapped around its base).

As you can see I decided to completely forgo the white rose, and just stick with an all green bout.  This will match the girls' bouquets, so it's better anyways.

How-to:

Step 1.  Start with a leaf, and three pieces of "stick-like things" which I'll refer to as berries from here on out.

Step 2.  Attach one of the berries using floral tape.

Step 3.  Attach the second berry, so that they form a "V".

Step 4.  Attach the third berry, smack dab in the middle.

Step 5.  Add in the bits of hydrangea, filling to your preference.

I wrapped around the base with floral tape a few times just to smooth everything out and make sure it isn't going to go anywhere.

I'm going to add to this either black or white ribbon, I just haven't decided yet.  I'd like to do black, but I think it's going to blend into the tuxes too much, unless I add white to it.  So we'll so what I come up with, and I'll make sure to share with you guys when I do!

Price Breakdown of 5 Bouts:

Hydrangeas (50% off @ 9.99) = $4.99

Floral tape = $1.99

Berries = (50% off @ 2.99) = $1.50

TOTAL = $8.48

Price per bout = $1.70

I currently have enough hydrangeas left to make 3 or 4 more bouts, and the berries will probably get me through all of them.  The tape came two to a pack, so there will be plenty of that.  So when it's all said and done, I'm looking at less than $1.00 per boutenniere, which will save me about $96.00