Wedding Details: The Feather Flowers

When I tried on my dress (which I got at The English Dept. in Portland) they put this feather flower on the sash to show me different ways I could wear it. I fell in love with it. But for $52 I was like, I could make that!
Well, it turns out I could make it. But it wasn't as simple as I thought it would be.


After much searching, I finally found high quality feathers. Putting "feathers" into a search on Etsy does not yield good results. The key word is "millinery". Put that in and a whole new world opens up. I ordered a selection of things, not knowing exactly what I would need. I could not find directions for this on the internet, but luckily Aaron is crafty and had a vision.


The first thing he did was cut a circle out of white felt, then cut a slit in it to the middle. Picture a drawing of a circle with the radius drawn in. He then overlapped the ends and hot glued it to make a cone shape.
Next he cut the feathers to the desired length. They naturally make that shape when cut.


He then placed larger feathers around the outside and then just kept layering them in. Smaller feathers were difficult to place because the quills were flimsy and they had to be poked into rapidly cooling hot glue. Pearls were either glued directly or first threaded onto a head pin and then glued in.


The end result:


I had a hard time finding a picture of it actually on my dress - it really blended in in photos. But you can see it here, right after the ceremony. It was more visible in person. It also got completely trashed, my arm was rubbing over it the whole night.


I also wanted one to put in my hair, so I made this one for myself. I wanted to tie the yellow from my shoes into this flower, so I added some yellow feathers in addition to the white. I also stuck in 3 Camilla feathers, in the back because they had some gray and black on them. I love how this looked, especially in the black and white photos from the photo booth.


Here are some crappy pictures I took tonight (no good light) to show the backs. We hot glued a clip to the smaller one for my hair.



Final cost was around $35 for both, plus more feathers than I needed. I was really pleased with how these both turned out, and I'm glad we made them ourselves and not just because we saved money.