Felt Flowers

I’m feeling a bit wistful. About this time last year, I was gobbling up To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (the movie…and then the books), trying to eat better for my wedding, and putting the finishing touches on my flowers. 

When I got married, one of the important things to me was to save as much money as possible; I didn’t want to be one of those people who took out a loan for their wedding. If the traditional wedding is your style, then more power to you (and honestly, maybe if I did have the disposable income, I might have felt doing things a little differently, hah!), but I have a car payment, student loans, and my husband and I were aiming for buying a house. We didn’t need an extra debt hanging out there. 

Weddings make people behave differently and everyone has their own opinion on how to plan and execute one, but surprisingly, the most popular piece of advice I got was:

“don’t put a lot of money into the flowers because only you will remember it.”

I think at least 5 people said that to me, and they’re right! I can’t remember anything about the flowers from anyone’s wedding (other than maybe they were beautiful). But does beauty mean you need to go into debt over it? 

In my opinion? No. It doesn’t. 

I like to make wreaths and felt flowers and thought, I wish I could make felt flowers for my wedding. And then I thought, well why can’t I make felt flowers for my wedding? How different could it be? 

Sample of a wreath I made for a friend

So I set out to do just that. 

I had to adjust how I make flowers for a wreath and learn how to use floral stems I got from Michael’s and Pat Catan’s (RIP). I also found that it was a more challenging task than I would have thought. I could do it alone, but it would mean working around the clock, and so I enlisted my family and friends to help out. Instead of a traditional bridal shower, my aunt hosted a day where I taught them how to make felt flowers and we worked for a few hours. We put those flowers in bud vases from Pat Catan’s (they were each $1 and we needed 36 of them). 

On my own, I made corsages, boutonnieres, my maid of honor’s bouquet, and my own bouquet. I think my bouquet, to this day, is my favorite thing I’ve ever made. I used seafoam green, teal, and white felt to make dahlias. I taught myself how to make them just by looking at images online and working backward to see how they did it. 

I really like the look of pearls. I knew I would wear pearl earrings and my mom’s pearl necklace on my wedding day, and I wanted to try to incorporate them into the bouquet somehow. Luckily I found pearl stickers in the scrapbooking section of Pat Catan’s (no worries they carry them at Michael’s, Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, etc.) I used hot glue to stick them in the center of the flower so there was no worry they’d fall off. To me, they added something extra without being too over the top. 

My husband sporting his felt flower boutonniere

I’m not entirely sure because I never added it all up, but I think the flowers were somewhere between $100-$150 for my wedding. I did use a lot of felt I already had in my arsenal but if you get acrylic felt from the store, it’s usually about 25 cents per sheet and depending on the size of the flower, you can make one or two from each sheet. 

I feel good about doing it this way because they were nice keepsakes at the end of the wedding for our guests (I’ve visited some of their homes in the last year and it’s nice to see the flowers displayed on fireplaces or bookshelves). Saving money was important to me but I’m also glad I was able to incorporate something I love doing for fun into my wedding. It felt much more personal that way. I’d encourage any other bride to try to incorporate something like that into their own wedding.