Understatement of the year: I feel like I spent a lot of time planning this wedding. But the end result? A day filled not only with people that we love but details that I loved as well!
We are still waiting for our official photos from
Punam Bean, but in the meantime I'll share with you some of the projects we took on for the wedding.
Early on, I was inspired by
this tutorial on The Bride's Cafe and decided to make one similar using our CK monogram that my mom created. I was lucky enough to be substitute teaching for a couple months so I used an old teacher trick to start out the project. I printed out the CK on a sheet of 8.5x11 paper and then traced it onto a transparency sheet. I threw the sheet up on the overhead projector and then traced the projection onto a larger sheet of paper. That larger paper is what I used to create the wire frames for the monogram.
I then followed the instructions in the tutorial and wrapped both moss (I just got the fake stuff from Michael's for this project) and some seeded eucalyptus onto the frame with floral wire. To finish it off, I attached two small sedums onto each of the monograms (the photo below only shows one though...I added those on the wire last minute because they wouldn't last as long out of water).
A quick little project that we also did was our welcome bags for the hotel guests. I was shocked, but Mr. actually took the lead on assembling these. Once I brought home all the stuff to make them, he just started putting the bags together. I did have to stop him so I could stuff the bags with colorful tissue and put our monogram sticker on it (which I still have about 200 of...any ideas what to use them for?)
We filled the bags with some of our favorites: pretzels, trail mix, gum, york peppermint patties, tootsie rolls, and a couple bottles of water. I love how colorful they were! Although they were not expensive to make and we didn't make them very fancy, they were very much appreciated by all our wedding guests who stayed at the hotel.
Thank goodness for my sister and my stepmom. They came in from South Dakota before the wedding and spent a LOT of time helping me with the last minute details for the wedding. One of which were the table runners! I had a difficult time finding affordable fabric that I liked, and finally I found a natural colored linen type fabric from Ikea at something crazy like $2.50/yd. My sister, stepmom, and I tirelessly cut, steam-a-seamed, and ironed until we had 10 beautiful 10 ft table runners!
Although now I have 10 10' natural colored table runners (and fabric cut to make 2 more)...anyone need them?My favorite detail and HANDS DOWN the most time consuming (from studying and practicing calligraphy...to messing around with different inks and finally deciding that no calligraphy ink I could afford wouldn't bleed on the escort cards I had already ordered...to actually doing the calligraphy itself) was our escort cards.
I was inspired by calligraphers like
Jenna Hein and
Laura Hooper but actually using them for our wedding did not fit into our budget. So, I set to it myself, buying a book on copperplate calligraphy last summer and practicing the basics until I felt somewhat comfortable enough to start playing around with the traditional style to get something a little more whimsical. Here's the final result:
For the actual arrangement of the escort cards, I once again was inspired by
a tutorial on Bride's Cafe. The moss I used was real moss so it was a bit of a pain to keep misted and fresh until the wedding, so if you try it and use real moss (I think it made a difference to use real) I'd definitely suggest to do it as close to the wedding as will keep you sane.
I am so so so happy with how they turned out! Although it was ridiculously time consuming, it is probably my favorite detail that I created for our wedding.
{ all photos from author's personal collection }What was your favorite project from your wedding? Was it the project that took you longest to complete?
