Perfect for beach weddings!
Its only been a few weeks, but I have been getting a lot of questions about the bouquet and boutonnieres from our wedding. I just loved my tillandsia bouquet and was so happy with how well it turned out. And while technically, Miss Smarty Plants should probably be Mrs. Smarty Plants, this blog isn’t going to change!
Here are a few photos of the bouquet and boutonniere from our wedding. Aren’t they lovely?
Tillandsia Bouquet Supplies:
- Air plants (described in detail more below)
- Pins
- Hot glue gun
- Ribbon
- Bouquet form base
How to make a tillandsia bouquet
Plastic base covered with ribbon.
I started with this simple plastic base from Hobby Lobby that cost $3.99. I’ve never made a bouquet before so I need something to build off of at the beginning. I also bought some different ribbons to help dress up the plastic handle of the base and eventually used this for the boutonnieres too.
I had an assortment of tillandsias from Russell’s Bromeliads in Clermont, Florida. They are absolutely fantastic to visit but also have a really nice mail order site as well. To be exact, I started with 3 xerographicas and 12 Ionantha peach. I didn’t have much of a plan but I knew I needed to start with the large xerographicas. I used a needle to push a very small hole through the base of these so that I could insert wire to hold in place. I used hot glue for the rest of the plants, but these larger heavier plants needed some extra effort to make sure they were held tight. After the wires were through I pulled these on down to the base and tied them on here.
One of the Ionantha peach tillandsias used for a boutonniere.
The next step was to start filling in around the xerographicas with the smaller Ionantha Peach plants. And this is when my little glue gun made its first appearance! Feel free to use the small, cheap glue guns with these plants but I would not recommend the heavy duty glue guns that get extremely hot. The plants will not show any damage with the smaller glue guns but will actually burn with the big guy glue guns. You can put the hot glue either on the base or on the other plants that you want to attach on.
When these were all added things still looked a little… blah. I have not mentioned that I decided to make this the day before we were getting married. No pressure here.
I turned to the dried baby’s breath that I’d purchased and started adding small bunches
of that to the gaps and spaces that needed a little dressing up. It was easiest to use my floral wire to bunch together the small dried stems before gluing to the plant.
After doing five or six of these I knew that I was on to something great. I ended up adding about 15 small bunches throughout the entire bouquet but it was just enough to really dress up the other plants and give it the overall look I wanted. Whew!
Caring for a Tillandsia Bouquet
This is the best part. There is nothing to do to maintain the bouquet!
As I sat on the plane the morning of our wedding I was so happy that I didn’t have to worry about my plants wilting or even being damaged by some TSA jostling. These tough plants were just fine the entire time. Three weeks later my bouquet has been sitting out on the deck and looks just as nice today as it did a the day we took these gorgeous photos.
Tillandsia bouquet
Beads glued to the Xerographica added the “bling” my 3 year old niece needed.