Weddingbee Blog

For months I sewed fabric flowers at work every day and my colleagues had started asking, “When’s the wedding again?” or “Do you think you’ll get them done in time?” or the ever-popular, “How many flowers left now?” which I never had an answer for.

I was never stressed about getting this project done, though. I started in June and our wedding is in October. (Cough… next week…) So I took my sweet time sewing those flowers as slowly as I wanted to. I sewed them while talking to friends at lunch and did not worry about working on them in the evening or on weekends if I had better things to do. It took so long to get them done because I did this project about as slow as one possibly can.

But you can bet I was happy when I finished these babies and marched them to the post office!

It’s safe to say I love this labor of love. It was definitely my biggest, most time-intensive project of the whole wedding planning process.

I kept the sashes pretty short in the back to accommodate the bridesmaids’ short dresses.

Altogether there are three sashes. Each are completely unique, yet have similar designs to be cohesive as a group.

I had such fun embellishing the flowers with red and white beads.

When the sashes arrived safe in Columbus, SIL Funnel Cake tried them on with her white bridesmaid dress to give us a peek of what they’ll look like next week.

As I mentioned when I was looking at all those other great options available on the Internet, DIY-ing this in Switzerland was by no means cheap. In fact, it was downright expensive. Here’s this project cost breakdown:

• 3 metres of taffeta: 156CHF (because I was a dummy and bought 1 metre by itself the first visit!)
• 1 metre chiffon: 35CHF
• 90 centimetres black lace trim: 11.75CHF
• 2 metres dark red ribbon: 5CHF
• 2 metres bright red ribbon: 5 CHF
• 3 metres see-through dark red ribbon: 4.5CHF
• 2 metres see-through bright red ribbon: 3CHF
• 1 spool red thread: 5.5CHF
• 4-kind bead set: 5.3 CHF
• Glue: 3.9CHF (which I didn’t end up using)
• Rhinestones: 4.9CHF (also ended up not using)
• 3 sets of different sized pearls: 20.7CHF

Total Cost: 260.55CHF (At the time this was approximately $347.39 with the exchange rate)

Price Per Sash: 86.85CHF (At the time this was approximately $115.80 with the exchange rate)

So there you have it. I didn’t use all the materials I bought for this project, but we all know that’s part of the cost of crafting. Sometimes you need a little trial and error to find the right way to do something! This project was ridiculously high-priced and it illustrates why I have not taken up sewing here before. Buying materials locally is extremely costly. The current Swiss Franc to United States Dollar conversion puts this project at $295, but that doesn’t really make me feel much better about the cost.

I love these sashes. I loved the time I spent working on them and I will cherish seeing my girls wear them, but sometimes I wonder why didn’t I just buy the bloody $15 sash and call it a day??

Did you have any projects that would have been cheaper and faster to outsource?