What I've been using for many applications is using a hair flattening iron. Austin turned me onto it and it works great. He said you can find used ones in St Vinnies, Goodwill etc however I just ordered one. I suppose if you used some aluminum foil to protect the iron you could 'Borrow' the lovely bride or girlfriends to try once. :w
One thing that's really nice about the hair iron is that you can apply heat to just a small area such as say the toe and heat and bend just that part.