Weddingbee Blog

Did I mention that we are going to have FOUR of our little nephews in our wedding? We don’t want them to be overly scripted or get too rigid with their roles, so I envision just sending them all down the aisle as a group to do what little boys do: make noise and make people smile.

I wanted to give the boys boutonnieres, but didn’t find the idea of having anything too formal pinned to their outfits. I started to look for a cute alternative. First, I found ribbon badges all over the internet. My favorite came from the Weddingbee boards.

The button in the middle of the ribbon badge from those images was cute, but not cute enough. I wanted something that little boys would like. I also hoped that it would be in some way related to the wedding. That’s when I started looking for little golden retrievers. I was thinking of boutonnieres like these from Fritts Rosenow:

From Love and Lavender / Boutonnières by Fritts Rosenow

Mr. Mink, who I call eagle eye when we shopping, helped me comb the scrapbook and jewelry sections of the craft store one Sunday completely expecting to find some little golden retrievers.

We completely struck out. There were plenty of little dog paws, dog bones, and little cats, but no little dogs! I wasn’t even being picky about breeds…any dog would be fine. We looked at the Schleich animals and doll house figures at the toy store and didn’t see anything there, either.

I thought I’d come home and find what I needed online, but didn’t have any luck finding the little dogs (I think they are called chipwood embellishments in the scrapbook worlds).

So, I had to change my strategy. I started looking for any sort of golden retriever and found two possible options. The first was a little golden retriever made out of polymer clay that I found on Etsy. I might be able to make these myself…

Clay dog from Etsy

The second option was to use buttons with dogs on them, so the boutonnières would look very similar to the ribbon badges at the top of my post. I found loads of cute buttons on Etsy. Here’s one example:

Dog buttons from Etsy

When I was about to order the buttons, I remembered some tiny, porcelain animal figurines that one of my friends collected when we were little. Back then, they came glued to a small, ivory piece of card stock. After some Googling, I found that those figurines are made by Hagen-Renaker and they’ve been around for over 60 years. Luckily, two local shops carried the figurines and I was able to gather four golden retriever puppies for my ring bearers’ boutonnieres.

Photo by Miss Mink

Now I had to figure out how to make rosettes out of ribbon. I found what might be considered a tutorial on the Martha Stewart website, but it was missing illustrations of most steps, so I took pictures as I went along.

Photo by Miss Mink

First, I folded the ribbon like an accordion, with each layer being about an inch long. I used some binder clips to hold the accordion together and pulled thread through the stack on the short side. I tied the ends of the thread together and then took the clips off the ribbon.

Photo by Miss Mink

After gluing the edges together, I moved each layer into place to flatten the stack into a rosette. I made a second rosette with a second, slightly thinner ribbon and then layered the two rosettes using canvas and hot glue to keep the rosettes flat.

Photo by Miss Mink

After gluing the two rosettes together, I searched online for the magnets that are used on the back of name badges in lieu of pins, which could leave holes in clothing. I added a little puppy to each boutonniere and was done.

Photo by Miss Mink

I fear I made that project seem quick and easy. It wasn’t. It took a few hours to make all four boutonnieres once I gathered materials and I finished at 1 AM on a Friday night.

I admit that this is one of the quirkier ideas I had for our wedding. I’m so excited to share these with my little nephews because I know they’re going to love them. That makes the time investment (and lost sleep) worth it.

Did you plan any ambitious DIY projects for your wedding? Was the reaction to what you did worth the time and effort?