Your girls have your back. Maryink gives the Handmade Wedding Series some ideas for bridesmaid jewelry — great for the wedding and great for bridesmaid gifts!

Buttercream or fondant?  Buffet or sit-down dinner?  Pearls or diamonds?  Readers, the choices when planning a wedding are endless.  Luckily, you, the bride-to-be, often have help, in the form of one-to-several bridesmaids.  They are your go-to crew for one of the most important events in your life, and I think they deserve pretty jewelry!  Jewelry can complete your vision of loveliness, as well as serving as an excellent gift (or bribe!) for the help and support you’ve received during this exciting and stressful time.  I would likely make my own bridal party jewelry as I do for other brides, but if I got into a bind, I’d delegate an Etsy jewelry designer for the job.

With thousands of jewelry shops on Etsy, you have the opportunity to find the perfect artisan for your bridal party jewelry. So, how do you go about making a custom order on Etsy?  If you spend much time browsing here, you might have seen a jewelry designer whose style you admire, and maybe you’ve even bought from them before. 

If you haven’t come across the perfect jewelry designer yet, start searching! With limited time to search a huge category, you’ll want to do a targeted search. You will get a pool of maybe a few hundred instead of several thousand.

From here, you will likely find shops that have other items of interest.  I love new takes on pearls, so I entered “modern pearl sterling earrings” in the search box. 

My results included this perfect pair from gemmafactrix.

Hopefully your chosen shop can do custom requests through their shops. If they can’t, but you have a vision of what you want, you may want to start a public Alchemy entry. In either case here are some things you should address:

What is the setting for your wedding?
This is where my fiancé and I have gotten stumped.  Should we have a formal wedding at night?  In a garden during the day, or on a beach?  A June wedding, or dead o’ winter nuptials?  If I did a nighttime wedding, I'd probably make something fancy for my bridesmaids, with faceted gemstones with shiny gold or silver.  Then, I think about a little destination wedding on a Caribbean beach, and I would have to talk TaniaNovaCrochet about it.

For a garden wedding, I think I'd like Honeybee's willow pieces, all of which work well together:


What do the dresses look like? 
If you have them, it helps if you have pictures of your bridesmaids’ dresses to show the designer.  For my wedding, I'm thinking about my bridesmaids in dresses of their own choosing.  Still, I'd need to know about necklines and sleeves.  If the dress is sleeveless, a big bracelet or two would be cute.  I'd definitely want to know about the neckline to make sure a necklace will hang properly.  This lariat from ERMoriginals would look great with a deep v-neck.


What do your bridesmaids like?
Some of my friends have a definite preference of silver over gold, and others like both.  Consider what the preference is with your friends.  Also, physical things to address are pierced ears, and sizes so as to gauge approximate necklace and bracelet length.   A bracelet made with memory wire from JUSTAGIRL27 can fit many wrist sizes.

So now you are confident your chosen shop can do custom Alchemy requests. If you’re not, but on the other hand, you have a vision of what you want, you may want to start a public Alchemy entry. In either case here are some things you should address:

What is your budget?
Having a dollar amount budgeted for the whole project is the easiest way to go.  If you’re looking to work with a particular seller, you can get a good idea if he or she can work with you just be looking at the prices in their shop.  If you’re doing a public Alchemy posting, you should do some research to get a sense of the price range. Hundreds or even thousands of dollars can be as easily spent as $50 on a bridal party set here; there is a huge range in materials and cost. Some things to consider when taking price into account: stones or beads, type of metal, and level of intricacy.  If I were to make some casual pieces with vintage glass and sterling silver, they would be a fraction of the cost of pieces fabricated in carat gold and high-end gemstones, especially in today’s metal market.

How many pieces do you need, and when do you need them?
The jewelry designer will then be able to let you know the feasibility within your budget, and give you a time frame.  The sooner you can figure this out, the better. There are usually many orders, kids, and even full time jobs that need to be accounted for, and the designer needs to plan accordingly.

How about payment arrangements?
It will be better for everyone if you put down a 50% deposit for your jewelry order, just like you are doing with all of your other vendors.  It lets the designer know you are committed, and gives them the cash to buy materials.  With Alchemy you can arrange the payment one on one.

Making it all hang together...
I think choosing one designer to work with is the way to go for your bridal party’s jewelry to have a pleasing visual unity.   The collection of pieces can have the same theme but needn’t be matchy-matchy, i.e, everyone doesn’t need to wear the same pair of earrings.  Choosing one metal type and using coordinating elements such as unique design features, gemstones or beads, makes everything work together while leaving room for individuality.  I recently did a custom order for a client whose theme was gold with faceted pink sapphires and tourmalines.  To break it up, I chose to compliment each piece differently using gorgeous pearls, citrine, and peridot.

Best wishes, congrats, and good luck finding the perfect seller for your bridal party jewelry!

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