Since nothing about the wedding was related to a hotel, I gave guests a list of local lodging and didn’t do welcome bags or anything.

My extremely conscientious maid of honor decided to make bathroom baskets for the women and the men.

The men's restroom basket

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I got creative and added a lovely DIY wedding dress hanger to my many “custom” items for our wedding.

I loved the decorative hangers that I had seen online and thought, “how hard can it be?” Although this is not the most difficult task I have undertaken (making my veil and boutonnieres were the two most difficult), it also wasn’t the easiest. My hanger turned out pretty:

{Taken on my iPhone}

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Here’s another idea that I had with the heart stick props.  This one, you can do so much more to make it more personalized.  Since the hearts are chalk friendly, you can write anything your hearts desire.  You can use these chalkboard hearts for your photo booth, engagement session, save the dates, or just for fun!  It’s an easy DIY project to do and budget friendly.  =)

The other day while I was getting more supplies for my wedding invitations, I came across these really cute red hearts.  I thought, why not just play around with them and make something fun!  So I went back home, thought of an idea…and walaa…I made hearts on stick that can be used for engagement shoots, DIY photo booth, or you can even make a whole bunch for your guests as fun favors!

They’re super easy to make, not time consuming, and most of all…budget friendly:

I don’t know about you, but I love it when couples incorporate anything with chalkboards into their weddings.  So I decided to give it a shot and design my own frame chalkboards.  I originally designed it to be used as favors, but we shall see.  I decided to go with all different sizes of wooden frames just to see how it would turn out.  Luckily, each frame was $1 at Michaels each!  Here are the results…

Here’s the final product with my magnet felt corgi’s I made a while back.

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I just bought a pair of dyeable shoes for the wedding on Shoebuy.com. I like their website because it actually tells you the height of the heel in inches, not just “high” or  “mid”. They also offer free (ground) shipping in BOTH directions, so if they don’t fit you can exchange for the right size.

Right now they’re also doing their 20% off Winter Sale (SAVE20) and if you’re a member (as in you register at check out) you receive another 10% off. AND, here’s a link for 10$ off. 10$ off a pair of shoes at Shoebuy.com

Here’s the shoes I bought: (Touch Ups Abby)

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Early in my planning process, I decided that we weren’t going to have favors. As much as I love how personalized favors can be, I wanted ours to be “more” than just little gifts for our guests to bring home. I wanted it to mean something.

My Nonna has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. It’s in its final stages: she now doesn’t recognize anyone, isn’t able to follow or contribute to a conversation, needs help to bathe, go to the washroom, and eat. She needs round the clock care, and has been placed in a nursing home for the past three years because of this. It breaks my heart, but we can’t have my Nonna attend the wedding. She is afraid to leave the nursing home, and this wedding – all the people, the different place, the duration of it – would be too much for her.

My Nonna and I, Dec 08

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I know I’ve said before that I’m going to have a DIY type wedding. Some articles accuse DIY brides of turning their weddings into glorified arts and crafts projects, which is totally not what my wedding is!

Then when I was talking to my bridesmaid about our custom photography package, it hit me. I’m not doing a DIY wedding, I’m going to have a custom wedding! Nearly everything is going to be made for me even if it is made by me.

Image from thediybride2010.blogspot.com

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Well, We are finally finished with creating our invitations. I happen to be a graphic designer and had a very clear idea of what I wanted our invitations to be. We COULD have bought invitations, we COULD have hired a designer, and a printer and had them all put together for us. But I never found any online, in stores or catalogs that reflected our wedding concept/feel. And honestly, everything just looked the same to me. I also thought it was better to spend virtually nothing on pieces of paper that are going to just be thrown in the trash, and instead have an ice cream sundae bar at our reception!

So, I thought I would post a tutorial of sorts showing how we created our invitations

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I opted for Hydrangeas for my girls because one bunch is about the size I wanted for their bouquets and they mixed our blue and green colors nicely.

I wrapped the stem of each in yarn so they would have white bases and something for the girls to grip.

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