Wedding Wednesday

I previously posted about the Birthday Guest Book, but this one rivals it for one of the most fun, creative guest book ideas I've seen!

via

So, each guest writes a note to the Bride and Groom about one thing that they just MUST do together now that they are married.  AWESOME!!!

I think there are a few different ways you could do this.  I think one of the most important things that you should do with this idea is have a card already made so that their suggestion AND their name is on there.  That way you know who made the suggestion and it would be a great chance to send that person a post card or a note once you do what they've suggested.

I think another cool thing that you could do with these is give each one a page in a scrapbook that could be used as your check list.  You take pictures or save mementos from the experience and then add them to the scrapbook page with notes about the experience.

No matter how it's done, I think it's an amazing idea that gives couples some really great ideas of things that they could do together "as long as they both shall live".

You can find all my Wedding Wednesday ideas on my Wedding Wednesday Pinterest Board!

Happy Hump Day!

Guest Book - CHECK!!!

J's mom has been putting our guestbook quilt together and it's DONE!  When I say done, I mean that the squares are put together and it's ready to sign.  After the wedding, we'll have to pick a backing material to put on it and then have it quilted.

I'm so excited... it looks amazing and it's going to look really great after everyone signs it.  I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the middle squares.  We may print our monogram on some fabric iron on paper and put that in the middle... I think that would look great!  Luckily I have a few months to make the decision.  So, here is the finished guestbook... please excuse the folds... it's huge and hard to lay out.

Welcome Knotties... Part 3!!!

Do It Yourself!!!


Part of our major focus has been our budget.  We are trying to save as much money as we can by doing things ourselves, which also lets us personalize things more than the standard decorations that our banquette hall offers. You'll see a LONG list on the left sidebar of stuff that we are doing ourselves.  Here's a quick summary of our long list...

Bouquetes - this is something that I'm not really doing by myself.  I'm kind of a freak about flowers... I love them, but I don't love how they wilt and how you just can't be sure that you're going to get the exact color that you're looking for.  Since I'm so far away, I've decided that I'm going to use silk flowers instead of real because 1. I can't afford a florist on my budget... there are too many other things that I want to spend our money on, and 2. The silk flowers don't cause NEARLY as much stress.  So, I found a great lady who creates beautiful silk bouquetes at an antique shop nearby.  I bought the flowers for my bouquete and she's getting the ones for the bridesmaids.  I'm sure they will be beautiful.

Boutineers - our boutineers are going to be herbs.  We are going to make these the day or two before the wedding.  They should be pretty easy... just some herbs and some ribbon and a pin and they'll be done!

Invitations - We have a few different invitations to create... rehearsal dinner, bridal brunch, and obviously the wedding invitation.  We started out with a Target invitation kit, and although they were really cool, they were brown and I could not find out a way to incorporate our colors into it the way I wanted to.  So we switched to an invitation that's ALL do it yourself.  We bought the purple petal fold envelopes, we bought and cut lime green and the ivory cardstock and eventually we will be printing the invites and put them together.  They are going to be AMAZING when they're done!!!

Card Box - the card box is a bird cage that my mom's had for years.  We are going to spray paint it, put some ribbon on it and TAH DAH, it will be a card box!

Centerpieces - our centerpieces are teapots because that's how J proposed.  They are all different and we bought each of them for less than $5 and we are putting hydrangeas in them.  We only have a few more teapots until we get to the 40 we need and then we just have to put them all together.

Escort Card Display - We have 2 easels, 4 foam boards, 2 rolls of wrapping paper and lots of rolls of ribbon to make this... hopefully we will have this done in December!

Favors - we are making our own teabags... which are really teabags inside a big teabag.  We have to print the little tags for the ends of the string, buy and cut the string and put them together, but they should be very easy to make!

Groom's Cake - J and I both LOVE Rice Krispies and when I saw a picture of a grooms' cake made of them on The Knot, I knew that I wanted to do it!  We have our pans and we may test (at least the first couple of layers) the cake at Christmas time.  This is going to be a really cool!!!

Guest Book - This is probably one of the crazier things that we are doing.  Both J and I have quilts that we just love.  His mom is a big quilter and so is my Grandma.  I have always loved quilts and once I saw a quilt that a friend from high school did for her baby shower, I was hooked.  So, instead of the traditional guestbook, we will have a queen sized quilt for all of our guests to sign!!!

Monogram - this is the first project that we completed!  We did this ourselves and printed it and put it inside the front of our wedding binder.  Then, I found a place where you could make your own stickers and NOW, we have 1,000 stickers with our monogram on them!  I don't know if we'll use it anywhere else, but I think we will have plenty of chances to use our 1,000 stickers.

Out of Towner Packets - I contact the Ft Wayne Visitors Bureau and they were really nice and told me that they would be happy to give me any information and brochures about the city that I'd like, as well as a list of restaurants in the area of our hotel and a bunch of coupons to give to our guests.  These should be a really easy project that will hopefully make our guests feel welcome in Ft Wayne!

Photo Share Cards - J and I both have families full of shutterbugs, so we are hoping that we can get people to share their pictures with us and with the other guests.  We have created a Snapfish group page and we are going to try to either put the info inside the escort cards, or make business cards with the information.

Pomanders - these are going to be a HUGE HUGE HUGE project.  We are planning to make 40 pomanders, 20 green and 20 purple, that we are going to hang on the aisle chairs at the ceremony to add some color to the space.  We are currently cutting a BILLION circles out of fabric and eventually we will get around to putting them on the styrofoam balls.  Part of me is COMPLETELY overwhelmed by this and the other part of me is SO excited because they are going to be amazing!!!

Programs - these are going to be simple.  We are printing them on pretty, light purple paper and folding them in half and handing them out!  They are already designed and once we finalize all of our details, they will be ready to print.

Ring Bearer Pillow - This project was my first adventure in sewing machines.  J's mom taught me how to use a sewing machine last summer (and now I really want one) and I made the inside of our ring bearer pillow.  J's mom covered it with satin and is putting some purple and green ribbon on it, and it's going to look great!

Save the Dates - we didn't do these completely by ourselves.  A friend of mine from work who's also getting married found a website for these and I loved them!  SO we picked our layout and our colors and had them printed.  They are awesome and they gave us extras and envelopes and we just labeled, stamped and sent them out!

Table Numbers - we have not decided how these are going to be done, but they are going to be incorporated into the centerpieces.  More to come later...

Veil - again, I didn't really do this myself, but it is homemade.  One of the student workers in my department is a fantastic seamstress and she made it for me.  It's exactly what I wanted and the less than $30 I spent on the whole thing sure beats what I would have paid at a bridal store!!!

So, that's my complete list... it's a long one and I have a long way to go in less than 8 months, so I guess it's about time I get to work... wish me luck and you can keep up with my progress on the left sidebar where I'll post the finished products!

A DIY Update

I was contacted by Gottlieb and Sons about writing a post that could be featured on their new Facebook page.  They are a jewelry company who prides themselves on customized pieces for brides.  They were interested in my blog because of the DIY projects and the element of personalization they add to a wedding.

So, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity for me to highlight some of the DIY projects that I have planned, completed and in the works!  There's a full list of projects to the left where finished projects will be linked as they are completed, and if it looks overwhelming... it kind of is.

Semi-DIY
There are some things on my DIY list that would probably be better described as "homemade" because I'm not making them myself.  These include:
The Guest Book
The Veil
and The Ring Bearer Pillow (Pictures to come Later)

My Favorite DIYs

The Centerpieces

We've been to every thrift store and Goodwill in town and we have 35 of the 40 teapots that we need for our centerpieces.  We chose this for centerpieces because this is how J proposed to me.  I have collected teapots for the past 3 years, since I finished grad school and got my first real job.  So, on December 29, 2009 I received a cute little tea set with a ring tied in the lid and the words "Will You Marry Me" around the rim.

So, now we have searched high and low for teapots under $5, which we have been very successful finding!  I think we are averaging about $3 a teapot right now and we are using different shapes, sizes and colors!  Here are a couple of examples that my mom made up

The Favors

We chose a favor to follow three themes... DIY, tea and budget friendly!  I found this idea in my Martha Stewart Wedding magazine and LOVED it.  It's creative and they will cost less than $1 each to make!

Martha's are a little cuter than my first attempt, but I think once I get the hang of it, they will be fine.  I am really excited that we get to include our monogram stickers on the back of the teabag tag!

The Invitations

I knew that we wanted our invitations to be DIY because there are SO many options on invitation kits at Target and Michael's and stores like that.  We started with Target invitations that looked like this

We got them really early because we were afraid they would go away, and then decided that we did not need the RSVP card (we are requesting it by email/phone) so it made the pocket that we liked so much, obsolete.  I was also having a hard time incorporating our colors in to the invitation design and overall, I was settling for them.  SO, we took all of them back and started over.

We found some AWESOME petal fold envelopes and some really pretty ivory card stock that has a pearl sheen to it.  We are going to print on the ivory, mount it on lime green, and we will have all of our colors incorporated in a simple but pretty invitation!

The Pomanders

I have been tossing this idea around for a while.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to make pomanders because I didn't know where I'd use them or what I wanted to make them out of.  When I went back to Indiana a couple of weeks ago, I looked at the ceremony courtyard again and was reminded about how much white there is there.  I need a pop of color in the form of something that was easy to put in the space.  So I decided that pomanders were the way to go.  

I decided that tissue paper, while fairly easy, would probably not store or travel well and I was concerned about how they would stand up to the humid Indiana summer.  I also considered silk flowers, but let's be serious... that's expensive... I would need a lot of silk flowers to cover the styrofoam ball and we're trying to keep our decorating budget low.

So I found a "how to" for fabric pomanders here and thought that they could be a great, inexpensive option.  So, we went and got half a yard of fabric, which was just the right amount to make one pomander, and we tried it out.  The first attempt was not so good, but I quickly learned how to make the "flower" look out of the fabric and I think these are going to AMAZING!

I haven't added the string yet, but you get the idea.  I'm really excited about these and I'll have more updates once I finish it completed.  All I have to say about these pomanders is THANK GOODNESS I have 8 months to finish them... it takes a good amount of time to cut out all those circles!!!

I hope you've enjoyed by DIY update, and that 

you'll keep up with my DIY list on the left sidebar as the next 8 months goes by... eventually there will be completed pictures of everything!

I would love to know what DIY projects you are doing or you did for your wedding... you can never have too many ideas!

The Guestbook Quilt

OK, not only did we purchase the fabric, J's mom cut it into squares and we layed it out.  Talk about progress... I'm OFFICIALLY crossing it off my list now that it's out of my hands and into the hands of the future MIL.  I thought I would share the "finished product" with you...