My daughter (who is 18 months old) has been selected to be a flower girl in an upcoming wedding for her Aunt (my younger sister). It occurred to me just recently that I have been in over 9 weddings personally (this will be my 10th as I'm in the same wedding as my daughter), and due to my family size (I'm the 7th of 10 kids with an extensive extended family) there's always some special event to attend. But I had never before realized how pricey it is to participate in a wedding with a kid in it too. Flower Girl dresses and head wreaths and shoes, baskets, etc are really not proportionally priced (nope- that child's size 5 shoe costs the same as my adult 6.5...I know I'm slightly behind for not realizing this before).
My sister has been an angel when it comes to allowing some wiggle room (since my daughter won't be 2 yet and the dress she had selected for the other flower girls didn't come in a smaller size) she allowed me to select a nice inexpensive ivory/champagne colored dress and I will be adding plum accents to it. (Her wedding will be lovely with sliver, champagne and plum as her colors). The dress I bought is cute and will be adorable when I add the plum sash to it. (I promise when I do it- I'll post pictures).
The sticking point for me was the head wreaths. My sister had selected head wreaths that matched the other flower girl dresses (and would have looked lovely with my daughter's dress too) but they were too big for my daughter's head (she is rather petite) and cost $30 a piece! Which isn't horrible, but since she's 18 months I think it would be wishful thinking to expect it to stay on her head past 2 minutes...and potentially will be trashed quickly). I luckily have a very understanding sister who allowed me to make my own head wreath for my girl (as her dress was different anyway) so here's what I came up with:
I went to Hobby Lobby with a swatch from my dress as I am short and had to shorten it to avoid the embarrassing potential tumble down the aisle (a plum color) and matched it to two widths of un-wired organza ribbon. Then I found a lovely cream/ivory/champagne ribbon. I also found small roses and a hyacinth in plum to use. Then I brought all home and measured my daughter's head so I would have the right length of wire to use. I do jewelry making for fun, so I had some jewelry wire to start from and few ivory color pearls to secure flowers with on hand.
I started with a circle of wire slightly bigger than her head, then wrapped a second wire around that and added flowers as I twisted to make a simple wreath. The roses were on a post so when I removed the post it left a small hole in the center- perfect for stringing the wire through, adding a pearl and then stringing back through the hole to continue wrapping. After I had made it all the way around I wrapped all the wire with the ivory ribbon (to prevent any poking or wire from showing) then wrapped it loosely with the plum ribbon. At the end I attached several long ribbon strands and made a bow to have the streamer look of the expensive variety. I think it turned out quite lovely.
Here it is on my little girl (while she enjoys her breakfast). The downside of course is that the ribbon and flowers cost $21 for all of them. (So only a 9 dollar savings) However my sister loved it so much she asked if I would make the other two for the other flower girls (and bonus- I used less than 1/3 of the flowers on the silk plants I bought). So It ends up being only slightly more than $7 per head piece- which is a huge savings for all of us. And I think these will look just a bit more lovely than the $30 ones as they are exactly the bride's colors.
Here are two of the finished ones- my daughter's is the large one and the really small one is for a little girl who will be wearing her hair in a bun and wanted a wreath to go around that instead of the whole head. Should look adorable on her too! I do have to go and get some more of the ivory ribbon, and I ended up using champagne faux pearls on the other two as I ran out of ivory ones and then I will be doing the other one. I should be good on flowers (as the little one used fewer flowers so the last wreath should be just perfect for the last little girl. Tada!
Yay for weddings allowing you to continue your crafting obsession and save some money in the process. Once I alter the little flower girl dress I will post about that too. I still have to re-hem my dress and then the extra material may be used for another project as well. We'll see.
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