paper wedding bouquet

In the next few months, I'll be making a paper wedding bouquet for my dear friend Nikki Porter. This is really exciting to me for a number of reasons, but mainly because Nikki is really awesome and deserves a super amazing bouquet of her dreams.

The wedding is in November so it's only right to include warm harvest colors in her bouquet, sure--but we're going to be careful not to let it get cliche. No straw, or wheat or what have you. No gourds of any kind (I suggested she simply carry a jack-o-lantern down the aisle, making the "tossing of the bouquet" a bit more interesting. She didn't want to do that, strangely enough.)
So here's the palette I'm thinking about:


(This cute guy can be found on paper-source.com) Nikki loves and has always loved orange. The damn diamond in her ring is orange. I think she chose November because it's a month that's appropriate for an orange wedding (Can't blame her there, it also means pink is entirely inappropriate. Phew!)


I can't find a good solid dark green, but that will be thrown in there as the darkest base color for the bouquet as well.
For the handle/"stem" of the bouquet Nikki and I agreed on wood: small branches with character, with some white and dark shades throughout, and some curly twigs thrown in there. I think some tiny twigs can be sprinkled around in the flowers as well. Also we were thinking about incorporating amber-colored glass beads just to dress up the sticks. Nikki may be a flower child but I'm not, so I think we're trying to steer this away from looking too much like some kind of prop in a hippie production. Glass beads may not work or they may do just the trick, so there's something to think about...



Now to the meat of the bouquet, I found this great looking one on MarthaStewart.com of all places. It's made from tissue paper with a skeleton of wire and styrofoam (sounds much like a middle school art project but it sure doesn't look like one.)



I'll make it easier for you than it was for me, here's the direct link: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/crafted-bouquet?xsc=stf_MSLO-ARTICLE

So I guess my next step is to go on a hunt for tissue paper and floral wire that I can play with. Martha Stewart says it takes only an afternoon, but she and her team are also an exception to basically every rule of average motor skills and coordination so I should probably start now.