DIY Preserved Wedding Bouquet -- Critique 4 Years Later

In honor of my fourth anniversary today, I thought I'd share how I preserved my wedding bouquet.

Supplies:
-Bouquet
-Thin rope or pipe cleaner to suspend bouquet
-Deep shadow box (mine is from A. C. Moore)
-Aerosol Hairspray
-Hot glue gun
-Hot glue sticks

What I did:

-The day after the wedding, I hung the flowers upside down in an unused closet using pipe cleaners.

-I left the flowers alone for 2-4 months until thoroughly dried out. Note that tightly closed blooms will take longest to dry. Warning: the flowers smelled awful for quite a while!

-Once dried, I sprayed them with Aquanet hairspray (I read on a website that this helps preserve them).

-I had to split the bouquet in two parts because they wouldn't all fit in the box without getting squished (this was a little traumatic as some little petals flaked off when I pulled them out of the bouquet).

-I used straight pins and hot-glue to tighten up the ribbon, making sure that the alterations would be hidden when placed in the box.

-Once thinned enough to fit under the glass, I hot-glued the 1/2 bouquet still in the ribbon into the box, concentrating the glue on the stems rather than the blooms.

-From the unused half of the bouquet, I cut the blooms off of stems and hot-glued them into the secured half to really fill out the side the viewer will see. (I was able to fit in every single flower still in good condition!)

Verdict: Some bits of flowers have flaked off and are on the floor of the box, the green leaves and stems browned, the white flowers have yellowed, the ribbon has faded some. But, overall, I would consider this a success!

Bonus Picture... Origami version of my wedding bouquet that hubby made for me on our first anniversary (traditional gift is paper)