Flower Girl Dresses with Kanzashi Flowers

Whilst I was working on this stunning bronze gold wedding dress, the bride also commissioned me to create two bespoke flower girl dresses for her daughter and her maid of honour’s daughter. She wanted two simple, pretty pre-teen dresses in ivory duchess satin.

I especially loved incorporating the same rose gold silk from the brides dress into the dresses of the girls, giving the wedding a beautifully cohesive look. As well as experimenting with a new technique of making kanzashi flowers.

Photography – Duncan Ireland

It was so lovely that the flower girls designed their own dresses, and using leftover pieces from my dress was a great idea. I hope you have more brides who decide to do that – from my point of view it was worth every penny to have such happy flower girls.

– The Bride

If you want to see the bride’s gorgeous golden dress in more detail, you can here.

The Making Of The Flower Girl Dresses

The original design I sent to the bride. She was happy with it as a starting point, and in the end, we didn’t change much when it came to the final dresses.

Here you can see part of the process of making these pretty embellishments; kanzashi flowers. Kanzashi is the traditional Japanese art of folding and stitching fabric petals.⁠ This is the tutorial I followed, choosing a 5-petal design. I opted for pearls for the centre – I think pearls look beautiful paired with the shot silk dupion.

Here is the finished dress on the stand. Adorable, don’t you think?

The final dresses had round neck bodice with a natural waistline. I added sashes made of the bride’s beautiful silk dupion, with a neat little bow at the back. I made sure the sweet puff sleeves had a cuff to match the width of the sash – after all, it’s the little details that matter. The skirts were full and hung in folds over netting to give a slightly puffed silhouette, resting at around mid-calf length.

The dresses were fully lined and closed with a concealed zip at centre back.

If you look closely you’ll see that we opted not to have kanzashi flowers on the sleeves, as per the original design. Like Coco Chanel said, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”

Trying on the Dress

With the bride and her daughter standing together, you can see how using the same fabric for the details of flower girl dress is a really lovely way of outwardly showing the beautiful bond between mother and daughter.

If you want your flower girls to feel extra special on your big day, I think giving them creative input into their own outfits is so lovely. And the imagination of children is often really inspiring. ⁠

If you’re looking for more ideas, you can find further examples of my bridesmaid and flower girl dresses here. In particular these dresses that were made using similar orange gold silk. And if you’re already excited to get started, you can book a no-obligation consultation with me.