The Little Details - II

Here is round 2 or our wedding projects!

Our programs were inspired by Cyd's cute little booklet programs (I even had the same corner punch from when we did our save the dates! Hope that's not too weird, Cyd...). I loved how mini they were so I made little 4.25"x 5.5" booklets for our programs, printed all here at home on our printer.



Slicing and dicing...



Folding...



The finished product!

Another project I broke out the paper cutter for was our table numbers. I had some left over envelope lining paper so i used that as the background and then glue-sticked (glue-stuck?) the numbers on.



My sister, and MOH, Caroline, needs to open up her own Etsy shop. She did such a wonderful job with the bridesmaids' jewelry: aqua pearl bracelet for herself, blue drop earrings and a blue lariat necklace for the other two bridesmaids. Pardon the beautiful blue printed paper towel in the background...



And some stalker photos from facebook to go with it...

Julie's lariat necklace:



Megan's earrings:



No good action photos of Caroline's bracelet, but it certainly looked cute on her.

{ all photos from author's private collection }

Speaking of how ridiculously talented my sister is, I wanted to include one of the photos that she took from the wedding as well.



Can you believe she is only 18? Starting school in Minnesota this fall for art education and photography. She actually is booked for her first wedding next year. Can't wait to see how those turn out.

The last photo of hers I'll share is one of my favorite from the end of the night...a very happy, teary-eyed bride, and four-legged best friend.



Was anyone else lucky enough to have a family member or close friend offer up their talents in order to help out in a big way for their wedding?

The Little Details

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?

We did!

…and now we’re heading north for our honeymoon! But before we leave, I wanted to share the sneak peek Punam sent to us:

{photo by Punam Bean}

We spread the festivities out all weekend and are now thoroughly exhausted! Time for some rest and relaxation with my husband. Can’t wait to share more when we get back!

A Fourth of July Riddle

Here's a good one for ya:

What's red, blue, and white all over?

The answer?

Hopefully not me on my wedding day!!!

With 8 days left until the wedding, I've been working very hard to get rid of the cuts, bruises, and marks I get from my daily klutzy life. I have my 3x daily routine:

Neosporin for any cuts or scrapes



Mederma for the marks left by said cuts and scrapes (and the huge burn mark on my left hand from the oven in December)



Arnica gel for bruises



Lots of stuff, right?? Just to make sure I'm not all black and blue and completely cut up. Should be enough to keep our photographer from spending even more hours photoshopping, right? Well, I'll share with you the letter I wrote yesterday.

Dear Mr. Poison Ivy,

Seriously?

-Me

Um, has anyone else been smart enough to do yardwork in a yard full of poison ivy 2 weeks before your wedding? Sigh. Yes, with 8 days to go, I now have a few beautiful spots on my left forearm and all over the back of my neck (thank goodness I'm not doing an up-do!). So now I add to the list:

Ivarest wash (for the shower)



Ivy-Dry



My stepmom says Ivy it's the best, so I'll let you know after the wedding how things went. Keep your fingers crossed!

{ images via drugstore.com; ivydry.com }

Dear Mr. Zit,

Wherever you're vacationing, I hope you're enjoying it! Please feel free to remain there for the next 9 days...I'll cover your bar tab!

Thanks,
me

Do you have any favorite remedies for poison ivy? Did you have any major skin issues right before your wedding?? If so, how did you deal with it?

It's not you, it's me

I have difficulty committing sometimes. I take a long time making my final decision, especially in something as serious and important as this! I mean, it's not like it's something that will only last a moment and then be over...maybe I rushed into things?

I wasn't having second thoughts until I saw my other options. Although I thought my decision was the right one, it turns out there are other fish in the sea. Sigh.

This story is about my new fish, Eavan.

At the time, I had already made my choice and committed to Sheila for our wedding day:



{ via Amazon }

I was happy with my decision. Very excited in fact, talk about party shoes!!! Way fun. I couldn't wait to spend the whole night with her. Or so I thought...

We were shopping for bridesmaids shoes and decided on these beauties for all the girls:



{ via Aldo }

They look so cute on and all the girls are very excited to wear them again after the wedding. I read somewhere that nude shoes make your legs look longer, total plus!! As I said though, I take a while to finally commit to things so I still wanted to walk around a bit to see if there was anything else we liked. Unfortunately, the shoes I found next were not to be for the bridesmaids.



{ via Zappos }

Meet Eavan. She had style, she had flair, she was there (as in, at the outlet on sale...and um, please tell me someone gets this reference)! Although I felt so glamorous when I put them on, they were still way more than what I wanted to spend...especially when I found a pair of shoes that I already liked. I just couldn't see spending that much money, even if they were already significantly reduced.

Oh, but "I'll give you 30% off" says the woman. Excuse me...What??? Quick mental math and I realized that made them only $10 more than the pink ones. Yes please!! I'm sorry Sheila, but I'm going to have to go with Eavan. Sold.

While I'm not big on bling, I'm excited to have a little more glam on my wedding day. I like to keep things pretty simple, clean, and low on the bling factor, but I think these give just the right amount to balance out with everything else I'm wearing that day. I'm happy I found these shoes and while I'm sure I would have still loved the original ones and been just as happy, I'm ridiculously excited that I'll be wearing the new ones!

Did you change your mind on anything you were going to wear less than a month before your wedding day?

Another Postcard Giveaway

***Update!***
Congratulations Mo! I sent an email to the email address you have listed on your blog...let me know if you don't get it? Yay! Hope you can put the postcards to good use!!


We've done practically every piece of our wedding invitation suite and other printables for our wedding through printing company UPrinting. I feel so lucky to be able to host giveaways and for the month of June, they have once again given me the opportunity to give away 100 of their fabulous postcards from their printing services. Here are the details:

100 4x6 Postcards
14pt Cardstock Gloss
4 Color Both Sides Printing
Limited to US residents; 18 years old and above

To enter, please leave a comment below with how you will use them. Leave a separate comment for an extra entry if you are already a follower or if you become a follower. Giveaway closes at midnight on June 24th!! Winner announced June 25th.

As a sidenote, even if you don't win and you need postcards printed cheap, check out UPrinting!

*This is a sponsored post.

Invitations!

Our invitations are officially out and RSVPs have already started coming in! My mom, bridesmaid Julie, and I created the whole thing by ourselves so it was definitely a labor of love. Here's a look at the final package!



Note to other brides: if designing and printing invitations yourself, do NOT print the RSVP cards first. When it was taking longer than expected to finish up some designs...well, let's just say I was a wee bit stressed out that we'd give guests enough time to RSVP by the time we finally sent them out. Add onto that my Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator pooping out on me and I was one high-strung chica. BUT, thanks to some late nights getting things together and a long assembly party with my mom and bridesmaid Megan we were able to get them out the door.



{ photos from author's personal collection }

It's neat looking back at all the thoughts, ideas, and inspiration that went into our invitations and as I look at them again, I know I wouldn't change a thing! What I'm most shocked about though is how close they are to our original idea. I had expected to change my mind every couple weeks!

Did your final invitations turn out like you had originally envisioned? Or did you change your ideas several times before the version that finally went out the door?