I picked a cute little project to ask my best girl’s “Will You Be My Bridesmaid?” and they all said yes! I found some ideas on Pinterest (of course) and found custom cards on Etsy and rolled with it!

I am definitely artistic and I love painting, but when it comes to crafts ehhhh, not so crafty! I was the sister in my sorority that did all the social banners, homecoming banners, greek week banners and literally would not let ANYONE help me because I knew they would mess it up. When it came to big/lil sister stuff, I got by with what I could using the help of puffy paint!

So, I went to Michael’s (OMG that store is so disorganized!) and got all the materials after running around the store 8 times. Morning Glory Bear was ready to kill me! I made little red bridesmaid dresses out of felt, decorated them and hot glued them together into refrigerator magnets! They are red and yellow hopefully like the actual dresses they will be wearing! My little project wasn’t the best but I knew they would appreciate the time I took to put it together.

I had the custom cards made by Practically Perfect Design on Etsy! She was super fast in getting them to me and I loved them so much I forgot to take pictures! D’oh! I was just so excited and it was so hard to contain the little “secret” because no one knew who officially was in my bridal party yet. Once the girls got them, I had them take pictures for me, so here is the final product!

As you know, I had a lot of DIY projects so now I want to show them off! Remember me talking about making my veil?

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One things that we saved a big chunk of money on was flowers. I made all of our wedding flowers in advance with silk flowers to not only save money but also reduce stress (and they don’t wilt!). We were pleased with how all of the flowers came out.

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I was looking at pinterest yesterday and came across a neat idea called the Date Can.  Basically, this is something to do for a shower but I’m thinking about doing it for the wedding.

The idea is this, you think of, or in my case google “date ideas,” and make a list of all the unique or fun ones.  Print them out, you can even do this on fun paper, and then cut the dates out and put all of them in a can.  Your guests can then pick a date that they can take their significant other on.  What I’m planning on doing as well is giving this as a “wedding gift” to a friend of mine.  Don’t worry, I’m not just going to show up with a tin can with paper in it and gift it to her   You see, my friend is a big gamer, not in the online gaming kind of way but she is always thinking up fun games for people to play when they come over for dinner so I thought that along with some swag and a gift card for her wedding I would also attach an envelope to a bottle of champagne, which would have a tag of its own that said “Live, Love and be…Bubbly!”,  that says the following:

” 12 fun dates for 2012!  Reach in when you’re feeling spontaneous.  Take a photo of your date for your memory book!”

Naturally, I will also get a fun photo album and stick a tag on it that says “memory book.”

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As our guest list grew so did the number of children.  You see, Mr. Pom is a few years older than I am and hence has been to many weddings.  It also seems to me that a lot of people from upstate New York seem to have at least three children.  We’re not discouraging people from bringing their children but it seems like parents themselves are saying “no way, this will be a childless weekend!”  Phew

None the less, we didn’t know how many kids might attend, and while I was still in my first month of engagement bliss I was spending hours on weddings sites and came across gals who created fun activity books for the mini guests.  Since it took me forever to put something together, I wanted to share my version of the kids activity book with you.  I hope you find it helpful!

An activity book just for you!

Are you ready for this?  This has to be my all time ultimate DIY project that I’ve done.

This past weekend, I worked on reupholstering this large makeup/suitcase I got from the flea market.  Since inside was pretty yucky, I knew I had to do something with it if I wanted to use it for the cards for my wedding.  The vinyl and cloth was coming apart, but the exterior and its functions was still in good shape.  Overall, it wasn’t too hard of a task, just a little time consuming.  It took me about 4 hours from start to finish.

In my last post, I shared about using home grown wheat and corn in our centerpieces. The rest of the centerpieces were also a DIY project…one that was certainly a group effort.

At first, I wanted to use tin cans as vases for flowers – no big enough. So I turned to wine bottles…but after collecting about 30 of them there was one in particular that caught my eye – cobalt blue wine bottles! At the time, I was not yet 21 – so I had to turn to friends and family for some help. I told them of my plan and before I knew it empty wine bottles were being given to me left and right.

small aqua accent vases

I knew I was in trouble when at a family Christmas gathering someone pulled out a jumbo bottle and it was that same beautiful cobalt blue…I had to get my hands of some of those! Lucky for me lots of stores were running sales on such bottles. What’s more, I’m told the wine was not only cheap, but it was good too! Before I knew it I had more jumbo cobalt bottles than I did regular sized. This was due in large part to the fact the Poppy Aunt called me one day saying she had a box for me. Low and behold it contained 20 empty jumbo wine bottles complements of her neighborhood!

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Poppy Dude and I will be setting out a mailbox for guests to “deliver” their cards at the reception. This was our solution to keeping the cards contained and safe – after hearing a horror story from Poppy Dude’s mom.

Long story short – at a family friends wedding they left the cards out on the table all night to find that someone had stolen them. One of the guests who had purchased a gift card called the store where they purchased it and they caught someone trying to use the card…turns out it was the DJ.

Anyway, Poppy Dudes’ mom was concerned that we have a receptacle and plan for the cards that evening. We didn’t really like the look of a card box (that really didn’t fit with the feel of our wedding). So we opted for a chocolate brown mailbox. Of course I had to DIY something on it. Using our decorative element from our wedding stationary, burlap scrapbook paper, and  my soon-to-be last name…tada!

you've got mail!

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Designing my own wedding invites was something that I always planned on doing. And I truly enjoyed doing it! I sort of new what I was looking for before I ever started, which in some ways made it easier (like choosing fonts) but in others more difficult (like finding the perfect decorative element). Here’s the finished product…

After doing the invitations I was on a roll, so I continued with the theme of western fonts and the same decorative element and created a whole wedding stationery including response cards, direction/accommodation cards, wrap around address labels,  thank you notes, rehearsal invites, reserved tables…the list goes on! (Ceremony programs are still to come)

When it came time to print everything I decided to do my research. At the local print shop I asked them about my paper choices – they could special order the type of paper I wanted (recycled brown kraft paper) and envelopes and do the the printing for $$$. I also asked for a quote if they just did the printing and it came out to $$.  I had already looked and priced paper online and knew it was much cheaper that the paper the printer was proposing we use. So being the frugal bride that I am I went ahead and ordered the paper and envelopes online and dropped them off at the printer’s when they arrived. By doing this I saved $200 and got exactly what I was looking for!

I’d love to hear from the Garden…did you DIY your invitations? Are you pleased with the results?

We set off to the reception hall the day before the wedding to decorate. Fully armed with candles, glassware, beads, tulle, ribbon and chair covers that we had borrowed from my cousin because the thought of my guests entering a beautiful hall and seeing ugly metal folding chairs almost made me cry. But the other thought of paying almost $400 for chair covers or $600 to rent chairs also nearly made me cry. So the borrowed covers in a different shade allowed me to rest comfortably.

When we arrived and walked into the hall, you could have mopped me off the floor. Lined up nearly at 150 place settings were beautiful, white, plastic chairs.

After I stopped jumping up and down about chairs, we got straight down to DIY decorating business… DIY=”do it yourself” not “do with an army of completely competent help.” Every time I would start doing something someone would say, “Hey Lilac? What should this look like?”

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