Planning a Wedding, pt 5- Centerpieces

For my wedding, I wanted something vintage looking, but also something that displayed our personalities and interests. After browsing around pinterest and the internet I finally came up with something that I thought would do both of those things. The items I chose were books, old bottles, and lanterns. Now, the books in my mind needed to look old, with hard covers and minimal pictures and the bottles and lanterns needed to be old. As I continued in my journey of searching for ideas, I thought it would be fun to make the table names author names instead of number and try to match the books with the author names. Here is how they turned out!

These turned out exactly as I had hoped! They were old looking, simple, and reminded me of us. They were also very simple to do! (and cheap) The books were all borrowed from friends and family, with a few exception of books we thought looked cool at thrift/antique stores which are now used for decorating at our house. We basically spent less than $5 on the books. The lanterns were a little trickier because not many people have old looking lanterns, but we did find quite a few from friends and family and only have to buy about ten ourselves. We began perusing thrift/antique stores months before the wedding and found one here and there, and just made sure to stop and look each time we were near a store. We probably spent only $30 on lanterns all together, they are actually a pretty good deal at thrift stores ranging from $2-$10. Now the bottles were lots of fun, we had friends and family with lots of old bottles and mason jars which was extremely helpful and the rest we found at thrift stores like everything else. Glass bottles were a bit more expensive, but much easier to find. I had no idea when we began looking that bottles that they could be collector's items, so we had to be careful when looking not to pick out the expensive ones. All in all, I'd say we spent another $30 on the bottles as well. Doilies were the same way, except our families had them all. So, overall we spent under $100 on our centerpieces for 24 tables! That is a bargain, I must say :)

When choosing flowers, I told the florist to just give us stems of flowers matching the bouquets, and we would arrange them ourselves. I just wanted random arrangements of flowers, nothing super fancy because I like the more freshly picked, thrown in a bottle look, than an arranged look. 

So, once all that was planned and I had collected all my items. I arranged and rearranged everything I had into the centerpieces I liked, made the table names and tied them to random objects in the centerpieces. The last thing (and most helpful) I did was to take a picture of each arrangement and place the picture in a plastic bag with all the items necessary to create that centerpiece. That way, the day before the wedding when we went to set up, everyone could help. I also made a chart indicating where each table went. We literally set up all the tables, put water and flowers in all the bottles in less than two hours. It was so fun and quick, and no one got stressed out which was the best part!!

To see how people found their seats, check out my "escort cards" here.

Planning a Wedding, pt. 4- Escort Cards

I think I am on a bit of a wedding kick right now. I found out my pictures will be in soon, and some friends posted their pictures from the wedding on Facebook, so now I have some to share. So, back to some wedding planning tips, tools, and ideas! Since I am not a big fan of the traditional, I wanted something creative and different for my escort cards. I also wanted something easy for me, since I was doing so much of my own wedding. Again, to stick with the vintage theme, I wanted something old looking. Luckily, this summer we went to visit some of Josh's family who happens to have a large, old barn that I rummaged through. I had been thinking about using old paned windows, and they had some!! They were beautiful! I loved them, so I stole them for a few months :)

This is how the turned out!! So, to get started you need your windows. These are pretty popular right now, so they might be hard to find, but I have seen them in antique shops and thrift stores around here. Once I got my windows, I chose some paper that I liked for the background. I found this at Michael's in a big book of paper, for only $10!! Now I have tons of extra to use for other crafts, and I used some for the programs, and for other crafts I've done on my blog!

Anyway, before you put the paper in, you must choose who is sitting at which table, which is possibly the most difficult part of wedding planning. Once I figured out who was going where, I typed up the table name at the top of the paper (we used author names) and then wrote all the names of guests underneath. I printed out the papers, and then arranged the lists in the window panes in a visually appealing manner. Since I didn't have numbers, they didn't need to go in any certain order, so I didn't need to print the lists on certain paper to look nice. I used tape to place them in the back of the windows, and voila, I was finished! Easy as pie (besides choosing who went where :), and there are my "escort cards." Again, an easy way to save money, but looked great too!

Speaking of saving money, we got a great deal on our guest book! Since I bought my dress at David's Bridal, they sent me a coupon code for a free guest/photo book. It turned out so cute, and all I paid for was shipping. I liked this idea because I had recently been cleaning out my room to prepare for Josh to move into it, and found old guest books for open houses and the like and had no incentive to keep them. Since this guest book has our engagement photos, we will definitely keep it, it's a two for one! And even better news, we have two more coupon codes for photo books from David's Bridal now that the wedding is over for our wedding pictures! Can't wait to use them :) Now, those are some deals!

Planning a Wedding, pt. 3-Wedding Cake Stand

This is another How To for planning your wedding! Since we had a vintage/book theme we used a lot of old stuff for our wedding. One thing that I  particularly enjoyed using was an old chandelier for our cake stand! It was so fun and easy to do!

As you can see above, it turned out really cute!! So, here is what I did! We had been flipping a house before we got married and there was a really ugly chandelier in the dining room.We took it down because it really took away from the room, and I snagged it up, knowing I could use it for something! As the wedding got closer, I realized it could be our cake stand. It worked out so well! We had cheesecake instead of a big cake, so we just put the cheesecake on top of the big part and then after we cut it, we dished out some pieces onto the smaller plates around the edge, and it looked cool! 

The first thing you need to do is find a chandelier. I see these at thrift stores and re-sale shops all the time, so start there. I got lucky since we had one at the house we were flipping. Once you pick one out, you may have to do a little surgery. Mine had tall light bulb things attached, so I had to unscrew the base and then cut these cords that went through them to the base. So, I had to do that six times, once for each of the lights. Once that was done, there was a nice little place for each of my plates to sit. The tall part with the bigger plate was the bottom of the chandelier, so I just had to cut the electric cord from there and it was ready to go. 

Once I got the chandelier the way I wanted it, I spray painted it. I first painted it with a matte black so that the gaudy goldish color wouldn't shine through. Once that was dry, I painted it again with a beige colored crackle spray paint that I found at the craft store. It gave it that old, peely paint vibe that I love. 

And that is all I did!! I just kept it in my wedding room until it was time to go set up the reception hall, and the rest is history. I added some flowers and stuff to the cake table, but overall it turned out great even alone. Here is the final result all close up!

Our Wedding Gift

Josh (my new husband) and I enjoy being frugal. We don't need the finer things in life to be happy. We believe in practicality and while we understand why people enjoy luxuries, it's just not our thing. So, when we were talking about possible wedding gift ideas for one another we decided to go the cheap route and pass on it. We figured spending more money on our honeymoon or for our new home or something like that would be more fun. Plus, what do you purchase for people who don't particularly desire extras? I don't wear jewelry or perfume, neither does he. Seemed like an easy decision.

Then one day I was perusing my Pinterest pins and stumbled across an idea to give dates to someone. Originally I saw it as giving dates as a Christmas gift and saw something else similar as a wedding gift to a young couple. So, I thought why not give each other that gift! It seemed perfect the more I thought about it because so many people had warned us to make sure to make time for one another. Warned us not to get sucked into thinking we would see more of each other just because we would finally be living together. This idea not only would be fun, but also helps us to remember to make time for each other no matter what. Although, that hasn't been a problem yet!! Plus, it was something we would spend money on anyway because what we do spend money on is experiences. So, I proposed that we make each other 6 months worth of dates each. We decided to split up the months every other month and placed our ideas, some money if needed, and some accessories for the dates in envelopes and labeled them by month. For the first year of our marriage we will have a surprise date each month that we get to open and pick a good time to go! So, each month once we open our dates I will share them with you for some inspiration!

On the first day of our honeymoon we opened up April (since our honeymoon began April 1st) and I found that we had $20 to go purchase food for a midnight or sunrise picnic of our choice. We were to go purchase whatever food we wanted and go find a fun picnic spot at our choice. We thought it could be fun on our honeymoon, but upon arriving it seemed we didn't have a great view of the sunrise because of all the trees and then we thought a midnight picnic might be a bad idea because of the bears. So, we technically haven't used this one yet, but I can't wait until we do!! I will post pictures of our date when we do!

Also, for those of you interested in this idea check out these great blogs where you can be inspired the way I was!

Find Joy In The Journey
Tip Junkie

Also, when choosing my dates, I used some sites for ideas for cool dates and just tweaked them to fit our personalities. Marie Claire, The Mom Crowd, Love Actually Blog, and Friday, We're In Love all gave me some great ideas for dates. They have so many ideas in fact, that I just might have to use this as a birthday or Christmas gift again in the future to keep on using these date ideas!!!

April Date: Snacks and hot tub at midnight on our honeymoon!
May Date: Movie, dinner, then snacks and star gazing
June Date: $20 B&N gift card, go buy a book we think looks good and read it together
July Date: Picnic in a park, card games, and a "Together List"
August Date:
September Date:
October Date:
November Date:
December Date:
January Date:
February Date:
March Date:

Planning a Wedding Pt. 1-Invitations

If you're like me, you like to save money. And I really like to save money. So, one thing I did for my wedding to save money was to make my own invitations. It is sooo much cheaper (I saved hundreds making them and printing them myself) and they turned out great! Now, the reason I made more than one style of invitation is because I used what I had. The cardstock was something that i had at home, and since it was different, I made different invitations. Lucky for me, my mother-in-law does Stampin' Up and has tons of rubber stamps and ink options, so I didn't even need to buy the cool stamps to make them pretty. In fact, the only purchase I made for these was ribbon and I guess my ink cartridge which didn't even get used up all the way. So, if you total some ribbon (I bought 4 spools) and a black ink cartridge I spend about $30 altogether. And considering just to get them printed would have cost me $200, I think that is quite the deal!! As for envelopes, I also had those and just made clear address labels with everyone's addresses which was quick and easy, and looked great. I think I spent another $15 on the address and return address labels for the invitations and RSVP cards.

So, my advice to you....look around on pinterest, theknot, wherever you want for inspiration, and then figure out how to make them yourself! It is worth the time, plus it is a great way to get your bridesmaids involved in your wedding!!

Let me know if you have questions or need inspiration!!!

Planning a Wedding Pt. 2- Programs

Well, as you may know, I am getting married in March. It, of course, is very exciting, but it also takes a lot of work. I find it ridiculous to spend vast amounts of money on things I can do myself, so I found some programs that I loved online, but didn't want to spend $4 a piece for them. So, I made them!! It definitely takes time, but since I can't pay attention to movies or hulu without doing something else at the same time, it works out well!!

So, I am going to give you some step by step instructions for making these if you are interested in them at all!

They are tri-page programs. They are simple to make ( the hardest part was figuring out the template on Word, but now I did that so I can tell you how quickly and easily!)

Well, it is pretty basic to get to this point. All I used was two types of paper to my liking, ribbon, a paper cutter, and my printer. I wanted three tiers, but you can always have more if you need it. Since this can be used for all sorts of programs, who knows what all you could do with it.

So, since the words need to be at the very bottom of your cut paper, you need to first change the size of the document. This is done by opening page layout then choosing size in that tab.  I have Microsoft Office 2007, so please keep that in mind. It should be pretty similar on all Office documents though :) So, once you click on "size" then you choose "More paper sizes," at the point you can customize your page size. I made mine 4.25 x 5.5, 4.25 x 4.5, and 4.25 x 3.5. Once I made a document for each size I just type up my information.  To make the title of the page at the bottom you must move the margin on the left side of the page. It is a blue and white bar and when your cursor is on the same line as the title then move the ruler down on the left hand side and your word will move down with it. It is super simple, but I had no idea you could do that when I started. Then I started to make the programs!

The first thing I did to put the programs together was cut the paper to the size that I wanted. I chose to make my paper 5.5 inches, 4.5 inches, and 3.5 inches. I then cut the second type of paper (the pretty kind) at 6.6ish so it would fold over the top. Once I cut each size of paper I began printing! Once it was all printed I just started putting the pages in order then used a hole punch to make holes for the ribbons to go through. Tied it pretty and then I was done!! I only had to make about 200, so it took awhile haha It was lots of fun and I caught up on some movies :) Let me know if you have questions!!