Wedding DIY

Since it's the month of August I thought it would be appropriate to blog about my wedding DIY. It's been a year already and I can't believe how fast the time has flown. It feels like just yesterday we were scrambling trying to organize and plan every little detail for this very special day. 

My wonderful Hubs decided to propose March 11, 2011. We thought about waiting till this year for our big day, but then said screw it and went for an August 19th wedding. Which only gave us five, very fast, months to plan our big day. And, I know people out there plan a wedding in less time than that and are way busier than we are, but time flies and I'm a bit of a procrastinator so five months felt like a very short amount of time. 

By mid July I thought I had everything planned and ready to go. We had the venue, dress, catering, floral and photography all figured out. Our invites had gone out and RSVP's were trickling in. Our registry was all up-to-date and we were ready to say I DO. But then one evening as I was browsing online pictures of weddings and trying to decide if we were going to have an arbor or not, I suddenly realized that we had NO DECOR. We didn't need much in the floral department because we were getting married outside. But the venue was this beautiful, private residence/vineyard with very elegant and semi-vintage style. And with all the photos I kept perusing, I knew I wanted some kind of decor. 

SO I found inspiration from the oh-so-fabulous style me pretty blog and went out to the local consignment and Goodwill shops and found pieces to throw together for our wedding and I think everything came together very nicely; very whimsy with tiny details of vintage. 

All wedding photos were shot by Erich McVey. Check out his website and blog, he is seriously an AMAZING photographer!  

I found these amazing shudders at a local consignment shop and knew they would be perfect, somehow, for our wedding. I think I made good use of them. I had my husband hinge them together. I found photos of my parents wedding and had my in-laws give me some of theres and used small clothes pins to pin them to the shudders.  

This delicious picture just makes me thirsty every time I look at it. We have a copy in our kitchen and I think Erich did a wonderful job at capturing our strawberry lemonade. 

Thirsty??

Aren't these flowers so BEAUTIFUL?? Our florist, Stephanie, from Petalos Floral Design did a incredible job with all the floral arrangements. 

The old hymnal books were also found at a consignment shop. I found the birdcages online at save-on-crafts. Totally awesome craft website BTW. And we now have our birdcages as part of our decor on our mantel at home.

All the banners were made by me and took FOREVER. Remember earlier in this post when I said I procrastinate?? Did I mention I also don't have patience? In some of the pictures of the banners you can see that the letters are lifting a bit, that is because towards the end of my project I ditched the glue (that took FOREVER to dry) and used double sticky tape, which is not as durable. 

The supplies you will need to make these DIY banners are as follows...

• Chipboard
• Chipboard letters (or you can try just using craft/scrap-booking paper to make your own)
• Glue or double sticky tape
• Scissors
• Ribbon
• Hole puncher

Take the chipboard and lay it on your paper and trace the outline of the chipboard design. Then cut out the outlines and glue or tape them onto the chipboard. Then hole punch where the holes in the chipboard are. Add your letter/design to the middle using glue or tape. String ribbon through the holes and VOILA!!

These paper cones were made from pages of the old hymnal books from above. I tore some of the pages out and using my kindergarden craft skills, I rolled them into cones. I did have to cut them a bit, more into a square shape, to get the right cone shape that I wanted. You can find a DIY example here. The example shows a more pointy top, but I cut the tops before I rolled them to be more scalloped. Then I hole punched them and added ribbon. We filled them with dissolvable confetti so our guests could shower us while we walked back up the aisle. 

This next picture is very near and dear to my heart. My stepfather passed away in 2006 so he was not able to walk me down the aisle. His sister got married a few months before we did and passed this idea on to me. My mother found a small picture keychain at Walmart and spray painted it white, then added his picture to it. She added ribbon and then I tied it around my bouquet. My aunt found her mini picture frames at Joann Fabrics. 

So focus here on the paper pom-poms hanging from the trees. I bought a TON of tissue paper and took it over to my future mother-in-law's house and we had a tissue-paper-pom-making-party. It took FOREVER to make all these tissue pom-poms. Martha Stewart has a great tutorial here if you need some help. Hers of course look perfect, but I think ours turned out okay. We used fishing line to hang them from the trees and they lined the walk way leading up to the aisle.

Wasn't our view AMAZING??

So we decided to go with unity sand for our unity ceremony. I searched a ton of websites looking for the best price on the jars and sand and they all seemed way too expensive, at least more than I was willing to spend. And if I did find a kit that was decently priced, the shipping was so expensive that it didn't end up saving any money. SO, I went to my local Craft Warehouse and put together my own kit. The jars and sand were all purchased for around $25 buckaroos, compared to $60 online.

I wanted to display some of our engagement photos (also shot by Erich McVey) so I bought some really inexpensive frames from Goodwill and spray painted them white and then added our photos and displayed them in a hutch at the venue.

These cute little birds were purchased on Etsy. Unfortunately, the user is no longer available, but aren't they cute??

This last photo was shot by the WONDERFUL photographers Erik and Robin with Paparazzi Tonight. It is one of my favorites and I highly recommend this AWESOME team for any event!!

And they lived happily ever after...

Thank you to all our friends and family who helped with this beautiful day. Much loves!

with.love

ashley

52 Reasons I Love You

This weekend was my anniversary weekend (1 year..yea!). It was full of surprises and fun! My first surprise arrived Friday at work. My hubby sent me a beautiful bouquet of lilies. For dinner that night he cooked me hamburger stroganoff with garlic bread..YUM! We finished the night with a cute movie, Despicable Me...SUPER CUTE! If you haven't already watched this movie, you totally should (kids or no kids). Then Saturday we left the house by 7am. My hubby already had my bags packed (impressed) and he drove us to our secret location.

We spent all day Saturday at the coast. It was super fun! We got breakfast at a cute little place then walked the beach. Later that night we found an amazing pizza place that served Chicago style pizza (delicious). Then Sunday we played some mini golf and explored the fabulous Tillamook Cheese Factory. 

Since it is the paper anniversary I decided to make my husband's gift. I just so happened to stumble upon a neat idea last week while browsing Pinterest. It is called 52 Reasons I love You and it even has its own website. It is super easy to make and I found almost all the supplies for it on Amazon. 



Supplies:

• scissors
• hole punch
• double sided sticky tape or glue
• deck of cards
• template (the one I purchased was from Papervine) or make your own template
• sandpaper 
• album rings
• self adhesive jewels

So I purchased a vintage style deck of cards online. Then I roughed 'em up with some sandpaper. 

Next I took my hole punch (hole puncher as I like to call it) and punched two holes on the side and then used that card (joker) as a guide for the rest of cards so that they all lined up.

Then you need a template. I used the one that is available through the 52 Reasons website and Papervine. However, if you can make your own, I would recommend that. I had some issues with the template that I downloaded *(more on that in detail at end of post). 

In the end I had to save the template to a flash drive and then I took that to my local FedEx Office and had them printed there. If you print them at home you will need photo paper. FYI-the photo paper I purchased was $13.00 and I ended up spending $4.00 at FedEx to have them printed. Plus the photo paper I bought was not the right paper for my printer. 

After you have your desired template, you need them printed. Then cut them out and either tape or glue them to the card. I used double sided sticky tape because I am a procrastinator and did not have the time or patience to use glue. I kept all my template cards in numerical order making it really easy to put together in the end. 

Once you have the template cards in place you can add jewels..or not. I used the Queen & Co. Nightfall pearls. I only added them to my first and last card. Then I strung all the cards through the album rings (I used the Kaiser scrapbook rings) and viola. I found both the album rings and self adhesive jewels at my local Craft Warehouse store. 

Unfortunately I did not take a pic of the template before I edited them or cut them up. But they can be viewed on the website. I also downloaded the recommended font. The photos above are of the finished gift for my husband. As you can see, the template size is a little too big.

with love, 

ashley

*And here's my little rant on why I recommend using your own template. Online you can purchase the original template. Which is what I did. It seemed easy to just download it. Once you purchase it, they send you an email with the link to download it. Instructions are included in the download which tell you to unzip the file first and then edit the template. I had no idea what it meant to unzip a file so I watched a youtube video. However, I found out later that the file was already unzipped. 

I also did not have microsoft works or powerpoint so the editing program I had was the basic text edit that comes with the Mac. So I couldn't edit the size of the template boxes and adding text and printing the template ended up being a big headache. Every time I tried printing the template there was an error and the program would close and then I had to edit them all over again. In the end I had to save the template to my computer after adding text. Then I had to add them to a flash drive. I then took it down to my local FedEx Office and had them print out the edited template from my flash drive. 

SO...if you are awesome with a computer and/or you have editing programs that you are familiar with then the said template will probably work great for you. Otherwise, just make your own. 

with (extra) love, 

ashley