PAPER ANNIVERSARY- Celebrate your first Anniversary with a Bouquet Recreation

Are you looking for the perfect gift to celebrate your first year of marriage together, your Paper Anniversary? Or looking for a lasting keepsake to remember your special day by? Petal & Bird can recreate your bridal bouquet or elements from the bouquet for you too treasure forever. A perfect gift for your Paper Anniversary.

TREASURE FOREVER

Your wedding is one of the best days of your life and something I’m sure you will treasure forever if your soon to be married or if you are already married I hope you agree with me. It’s not often you get to see all your favourite friends and family in one place. To get dressed up, dance all night, eat your favourite food and celebrate all day (or the whole long bank holiday weekend in our case)

I found the first year of marriage to go so quickly, looking back at photographs it only feels like the other day (and what a day!).

I wanted to treasure lots of memories from our special day. That’s where creating paper flowers all started for me. You can read more about that here…I just love that I get to see my bouquet every day.

THE GIVING OF PAPER

They say that the giving of paper on your first year together as a married couple comes from the idea that your first year of marriage is like a blank or clean sheet, and it’s also relatively fragile as your relationship has not had the test of time. (Well in my case I was with Jake 8 years before he popped the question! What about you?)

RECREATING A BRIDAL BOUQUET

I was recently commissioned to recreate a beautiful Bride’s bouquet created from my bespoke paper flowers for a husband to gift to his wife on their first ‘paper’ anniversary. (My heart melted a little when I received the email as such a lovely idea that I have wanted to do since starting Petal & Bird)

After a few emails back and forth I was in possession of a great collection of photographs of the Bride’s beautiful wedding day bouquet and was ready to begin making.

“She wishes she could have kept the bouquet after the wedding”

BEGINNING THE BOUQUET

I began by really studying the different photographs I had been sent, figuring out all the individual flowers and checking I had the matching coloured papers to begin creating.

First I started on the daisies. This was a new flower design that I had tried only once before. This time I really wanted to achieve realistic centres, so I began working on cutting the paper to make a frayed edged that I could wrap around the wires. With some trimming the little daisies centres were ready for the tiny white petals to be added. These I did individually, one by one fixing the tiny petals into place.

I then moved on to the larger daises which I felt were the focal point to the real bouquet that I wanted to be a real feature to the paper anniversary bouquet. I wanted to achieve the concave effect of the centres that I could see in the photographs and working with a range of green papers, trimming to different lengths I had achieved the desired look.

DAISIES DONE NOW FOR THE HYDRANGEAS

Next I moved onto the cream hydrangeas. I made these by creating individual little flowers with green centres and then grouping the stems together to create a dome shape. Two bunches of little flowers later and the hydrangea was complete.

It was now time to tackle the roses. I started with two small yellow roses that I saw snuggled in amongst the foliage. Then began creating the pale pink roses. Working with a finer crepe paper to achieve the velvety look of the real flowers.

LOVE IN A MIST

I had now left all the fiddly flowers to last. Love in a Mist and gypsophila. I had not made either of these before. Love in a Mist is a childhood favourite of mine. It was a flower that I grew from seed and that came back every year in my Mum’s garden. With its paper like qualities in real life it as great to have an excuse to make this lovely unique flower and I was pretty happy with how they turned out. Adding a little splash of blue to the bouquets hidden in amongst the other lovely flowers and foliage.

Finally, the gyp. This is made up of tiny little white flowers, many to a stem and it is normally uses as a filler in real bouquets. A couple of trials later and I had figured out how to create the tiny petals with out having to individually cut and glue them on.

TIME TO WRAP THE STEMS

Time to wrap all the stems, this is a repetitive process, but it is one that really transforms the flowers and foliage, adding little leaves around the flowers opening and giving them a more realistic feel.

ARRANGING TIME

Arranging time…With the photos printed out in front of me of the different angles of the bouquet I began to arrange the flowers, adding in the dark green leafy stems that I had made and getting the overall feel of the real bouquet.

IT WAS COMPLETE!

The paper anniversary bouquet was complete! And looked pretty awesome (if I do say so myself). Feeling proud of my achievements I sent a few sneak peek photos off to my customers to check I was on the right track. Its so lovely to get positive feedback and know that your hard work and efforts are appreciated.

Hessian wrapped around the stems and the bouquet was complete. A lasting recreation of a real wedding bouquet that sadly didn’t last. A keepsake that the couple will now have to fill their lives and to forever remember their special day!

When I received an email back from my customer I was so so happy. (Queue happy dance around the room) This truly is the best part, I just love hearing what my customers think about their paper flowers and seeing my flowers in action.

‘The bouquet is gorgeous, Thank you! My wife absolutely loves it and couldn’t be happier.’

If this is something that you would like to order then please get in touch, I would love to recreate a bouquet for your paper anniversary or maybe you are after just a few elements made into an arrangement of your choice. I previously made a bouquet recreation arrangement that was used as a cake topper for a 30th Birthday that she also now gets to treasure forever.