They say that if you’re going to do boutonnieres, you ought to do corsages too. And I definitely wanted bouts. They were the only thing I had picked out before I got engaged. I don’t know where the MSW editors found this super-petite lily of the valley, but it’s so beautiful against the lamb’s ear leaf.

Corsages are something you don’t see very often in magazines, on websites, or anywhere else for that matter. For me, corsage was synonymous with prom fixture, and I wasn’t feeling it… fussy, traditional, baby’s breath, miniature roses, and, umm, no. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk around for five hours with one of these on my wrist or pinned to my chest:

Maybe I’m alone, but I wasn’t going to subject anyone else to that. And was anyone else shocked at the cost of corsages? No way I could justify that kind of pricetag for something I wasn’t crazy about in the first place.

So I started thinking of non-traditional ideas, and I settled on silk flower pins. I figured I could pin them to a ribbon (so they could be worn as wristlets during the ceremony), and then people could remove them from the ribbon and attach them to purses or coats in the future. And, lo’ and behold, I walked into the Limited one day and found soft, luxurious satin flower pins for 70% off!

So pretty on my custom-dyed Cam Creations ribbon, but they’re too tall, so the flower flops around. I deconstructed one of them and thought about hot gluing it to the ribbon sans pin, but it would’ve looked sloppy, and the whole idea was to have a removable pin.

I happened to have some pink silk peonies around that I bought on impulse from Etsy awhile back, so I cut the wire stems off of them and hot glued them onto the ribbon instead. The result isn’t as dramatic, but it was definitely more of a success from a wearability point of view.

Now I have these wristlets and the original flower pins, which people could just pin to their dresses. I might let them choose, or maybe I’ll save the pins and use them for something else.