Brides: if you’re dying to find out how to make a brooch bouquet, we are here to help! This brooch bouquet tutorial will help you make a gorgeous bridal bouquet and, most importantly, avoid the pitfalls that mean serious headaches and crappy bouquets.

We are going to show you how to make a brooch bouquet with flowers or without. You can use fresh or silk flowers, but be aware that if you are using fresh flowers, you’ll want to assemble your brooch bouquet ONLY the day before your wedding. Keep in mind that the more to-dos you have the day before your wedding, the more stressed out you’re likely to be, so consider delegating this task to someone else (make sure to share with them this brooch bouquet tutorial!).

If you choose silk flowers (or no flowers), the awesome thing is you can create your DIY brooch bouquet well ahead of time. If you go with fresh (which we love), you can do 90% of the prep work ahead of time (i.e. making the brooch stems), so you won’t have a ton of work to do at the last minute.

Awesome “How to Make a Brooch Bouquet” videos are below!

How to Make a Brooch Bouquet: 5 Pro Secrets

1) If you don’t want flowers, use silk flowers. Uh, what? Here’s the thing: If you use silk flowers, you create a bouquet “base” into which you insert your brooches. The trick is to use so many brooches that the silk flower foundation is hidden, which is easy to do. A great base flower is hydrangea, whether fresh or silk. You want big, ruffly flowers that will easily fill the gaps between your brooches.

2) Don’t use styrofoam. Some brooch bouquet tutorial videos recommend using a styrofoam ball as a base. DON’T! Here’s why: The styrofoam is simply not sturdy enough to hold your brooches. Also, some of the styrofoam is going to show through because it’s virtually impossible to get the brooches perfectly touching all over the bouquet. Sure, you could spray paint the styrofoam, but it’s still going to result in a bouquet that looks like it has gaps in it. If you use silk flowers, your bouquet will look full because the tiny gaps between the brooches won’t look like holes; they’ll look pretty and ruffly.

3) Double up your floral wire. To make a DIY brooch bouquet, you need to thread wire through your brooch and twist it together underneath, then wrap the wire in floral tape (see the how to make a brooch bouquet video below). Basically, each brooch will look like a little flower, with the brooch as the head and the floral wire and tape as the stem. However, if you only use a single thickness of floral wire, you are going to have a droopy brooch since brooches are pretty darn heavy. Instead, fold the wire over once so you have a double thickness and THEN wrap it around your brooch. The result will be a super-strong “brooch flower” that will take you from confused about how to make a brooch bouquet with flowers (or not!) to a virtual pro – for a lot less money.

4) Choose your brooches wisely. You can save a lot of money by shopping around for brooches. Check thrift stores, craft stores, department stores, etc. Of course, you will also want to ask loved ones to donate brooches for your bouquet – you can give them back after the wedding! This adds special sentimental value to your DIY brooch bouquet. On the other hand, while you are gathering your brooches, do think about your color scheme. Don’t go too crazy with colors unless you want a rainbow look. Try to stick to one or two or a max of three colors if possible and also try to keep it to one metallic (unless your color scheme is silver and gold).

Also, keep in mind that you don’t ONLY have to use brooches! Vintage earrings (clip-ons are great), necklaces, hair accessories… all of these can be used in your bouquet. When you choose them, look to see how you might attach the floral wire. If there isn’t an easy way, choose another bauble or you are just asking for headaches.

If you are doing a good sized bouquet and you don’t want any flowers showing, expect to use 80-100 brooches or more (this can get costly, but it will still be cheaper than hiring someone). If you’ve been wondering how to make a brooch bouquet with flowers that show, you can use as few brooches as you want (around 10 or more).

5) How to make a brooch bouquet: assembly – Because you aren’t using a styrofoam ball, you assemble your brooch bouquet just like you would a regular flower bouquet. Lay your stems (both flowers and brooches) in an arrangement that you love, then wrap tightly with a coordinating ribbon. See the second video for more detailed instructions.

Another pro brooch bouquet tutorial tip is to accent your bouquet with crystal picks, pearl pins, or the like. Not only will this add extra sparkle to your bouquet, but you can place pins strategically to add extra strength to your bouquet. The last thing you want is to be walking down the aisle with your brooch bouquet rattling!

Brooch Bouquet Tutorial Videos (Watch Both!)

Photo Credit: Nina Matthews Photography and emperialduo on Flickr