Pretty, Pretty Paper

Creating an invite that really set the tone but was totally us was really important to us. Since my darling Nick is a graphic designer, naturally we originally thought he'd do all of our paper products. But then we decided that it was tough for both him and I to work through the creative process together so we decided that we would give someone else a shot at designing our invitations. Randomly - we found out that one of Nick's old co-workers started her own wedding invitation business, so we decided to meet with her about a design for us. Everything was going fine for awhile, then she went a little crazy and then I had to try really hard to get us out of the "relationship." Luckily, we got away from her and decided to do it all ourselves. And I'm so glad we did.

Nick ran with my ideas and we came up with some sweet invites that I was in love with. Nick designed them at home, we got them printed at a local print shop and we got tons of compliments on them! I was really upset that I didn't have the budget for calligraphy for the envelopes - so I had to make due without them. I decided after many conversations with myself about etiquette to print the addresses on the envelope with our home printer. I found a pretty, formal, cursivey font to do them in and used some pretty black lined envelopes. My friends said they thought they were pretty and weren't upset they weren't hand-written and I trust them! :)

I'm so glad we put as much personal work into our planning as we did - it makes the day and rewards of a great invite so much sweeter.

Enjoy! :)

Out of Town Bags

While planning our wedding, we took our guests' comfort very seriously. When we originally started planning, we talked about what were the most and least important things to us and the important ones always revolved around our guests feeling welcome, taken care of and happy. One of the things that we did to accomplish that was to put out of town (OOT) bags at the hotels that our guests were staying at for the to receive at check-in. I've never personally received anything like that for going to an out-of-town wedding, but I think it's the details that count and certainly wanted to do this for our guests. We talked and thought about these throughout the whole planning period but they ended up being one of the very last things we made a final decision on and actually didn't do them until the morning of the rehearsal!

We ordered muslin bags online and used some ink and stencils to put our own design on the outside. Then we made little tags with a stamp and wrote "Welcome to Minnesota! love, Nick & Meredith" on them.

Here's what we put in ours...

• A postcard in regard to Minnesota, Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, etc. (I found these at Walgreens for super cheap!)
• Individual bag of goldfish crackers (pre-packaged)
• Individual bag of swedish fish (we got little candy bags and ties from Michaels). Swedish fish were kind of a nod to the land of Norweigen heritage that is Minnesota but also satisfied the need for something candy. :)
• Ole and Lena fortune cookies. I was so excited when I found these! Ole and Lena is a MN thing - they are two Norweigans that say funny things. I thought they were a super cute idea.
• A word find. We just made this online and it was comprised of wedding words.
• A wedding weekend information booklet. We made these in Microsoft Word - little 4x4 pages that included a timeline, hotel shuttle info, local attractions, contact numbers, etc.
• 2 water bottles - we bought water resistant labels online and printed our own design onto them and put them on each. We also used a bunch of these for the wedding party, etc.

We took these to the front desk of the hotels our guests were staying at and had them give them to each person who checked in on our list. Unfortunately, I didn't hear many comments about them but I know the desk handed them out and hopefully our guests enjoyed the welcome!

Random projects/details

We were definitely a DIY wedding couple and on a budget so we spent a lot of time walking the aisles of Michaels and crafting our living room. It was fun to really make the wedding our own by doing these little projects. Thankfully, we got a lot of compliments on these things and thought I'd share the ideas! :)

These are "share your photos with us" cards. Nick made them for us (love!) and we displayed them in martini glasses on the bars. I noticed people taking them, etc. but we had absolutely NO ONE share any photos on it! lol - not sure how to make sure people do this in a better way, but whatever. We had a few family and friends email us some pics, but no one used the site.

This was the signature drink menu we made up to put on the bars. However, we ended up not doing signature drinks because it seemed to be too much trouble with the event staff. No biggie - it wasn't a huge deal to us.

PROGRAMS!!
I loved, loved, LOVED our programs. Nick and I designed them based off of Miss Cupcake's accordian programs on WeddingBee. We made them all by ourselves (with a little help from a friend) and got a LOT of compliments on them. We printed them on normal typing paper at my office and then created the front and back parts with the cricut, cardstock and some ribbon.

These were some buttons I had made from Etsy to use at the rehearsal. The white ones are wedding party members and the black ones are their guests. It was a fun way for people to get to know each other. I'm glad I did them. :)

Popcorn bags and labels! So much fun. These are for our popcorn buffet - of course I needed to jazz up the bags that people would be putting their popcorn in so Nick designed the main label and we printed them on circle labels. The back polka dot seals were ordered from Etsy.

More DIY

A few more projects done in the last few months to share...

Customized napkins.
We didn't want to pay for the ones we found online and thought we could do a cool design on our own. Sweet. So we bought a circular stencil made of dots, an "M" for our last name and some green and black napkins that match our color scheme and a stamping away we went. We used acrylic paint for the stencil sponged onto the napkin and just a normal stamp pad for the "M." We tested the paint with a condensation-filled cup to see if it would mess up the ink and all was well!

Pomanders.
I stole a few ideas from WeddingBee and created some white tissue pomanders to hang on the ends of pews at the ceremony. Pretty easy - you just need some time to do it!

Out of Town Bags.
I have yet to fill these - but we got them all ready to be filled! I bought 50 muslin bags off of http://www.muslinbags.com/ and went to work! We used the same stamp from the napkins with a creme paint sponged on to it (with cardboard in between to prevent it soaking through!) and then a regular music note stamp with a black ink pad in the center. I also stamped a "tag" stamp onto white cardstock and cut them out and punched a hole in them to attach to the strings. We'll fill these with some fun Minnesota goodies that are still to be determined!

A dress hanger.
The photographer won't even be at the location early enough to take a picture of my dress on a hanger - but I saw all those cute ones on Etsy and decided I had to have on - even if it's just me who takes the picture of it hanging on there! I finally found a black hanger at Wal-Mart and bought some white floral wire to shape the words out of. I was pretty impressed at how easy it was to twist and turn the wire around into the shape I wanted.

The Show Must Go On

After getting used to being husand and wife, the show had to go on! There's a big wedding in May and there's lots to be done! In fact, we're way more excited about May now that the "heavy stuff" (ya know, vows and the like) is out of the way and I'm so thrilled about the big proclomation of our love and seeing all of our friends and family and starting off our new life together with everyone!

There are a lot of things on our plates right now and DIY projects have been scattered across our living room floor for months. So let's get the DIY train started!

Today...moss letters.

Nick took this job on which I was glad about because I had no clue where to start. We bought some big slabs of floral foam at Michaels, some bags of spanish moss at wal-mart (they were cheaper than anywhere else!), a glue gun and sticks, some ribbon and he went to town.

First he had to carve the foam into letters "N" for Nick and "M" for Meredith.

Then, he hot glued the moss on.

Lastly - ribbons glued to the top to hang on the wreath hooks (you can see these in the pic)!

These will hang on the outside of the church doors and hopefully not shed moss over everyone as they walk into the church. :)

Save The Dates

Have I mentioned lately how much FUN being engaged is? :)
But I have to admit...the time suck that is engagement is a true story – totally not mythical…I promise! Nonetheless – here’s a quick update on the wedding!

• We’ve set the date for May 29, 2010
• We have a church, a reception site and almost a photographer.
• We’re having a bridal party of 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen, my daughter (more on this to come) as the flower girl and no ring bearer.
• We’re having a live band (which I’m SO excited about!)
• We’re hopefully having a photobooth and a popcorn buffet (which I’m also SO excited about!)

Right now I’m trying to finish up my investigation on florists and bakers as well as start the dress process (mine and bridesmaids). There is plenty of DIY to go around – so it doesn’t hurt to get a head start on any of that, as well.

And for your DIY and paper pleasure…here are our save the dates!

Nick working hard...

Me working...hard?

The Cricut that my FSIL bought us (SO SWEET!) working really hard!

The outside - it's just a two fold card with clear tabs on all three sides keeping it together.

The final product! Nick designed the whole thing (with my help, of course) and I did the rings on the Cricut and we assembled!

Oh - and check out the monogram on the return address label.

I had originally budgeted $150 for 100 STDs...here's how it came out:

• White cardstock from Archiver's - 50 sheets at $0.49 each during a buy one get one sale = $12.25
• Green cardstock from Archiver's for embellishment - 20 sheets at $0.49 each during a buy one get one sale = $4.90
• Address labels from Office Depot - $12
• Return address labels from Office Depot - $0.67 (they were on clearance!)
• Tab stickers from Office Depot - $2.99
• Scrapbooking glue for embellishments from Office Depot - $3.99
• Cricut machine - Free (gift from FSIL while on super clearance on Black Friday)
• Printed on home inkjet - Free 
• Postage - 75 first class stamps (we hand delivered a few to our co-workers, etc) = $33

Total = $69.80

Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

I wanted to make sure and ask my bridesmaids in a creative and fun way so I made some cards for them. My bridesmaids will consist of my best friend Katherine (maid of honor), my great friend Rachel, my sister-in-law Hope and my future sister-in-law Melissa. DB is having his brother as his best man, one of his good friends and my two brothers as his groomsmen.

Here are the cards I made...
I bought 3 pieces of white (there's a little grain in it) cardstock from Archivers for $.49/each and they were buy one-get one so I paid a total of  $.74. Then I bought some fabric from JoAnn's for like $3 of the green that I love. The plan is black and white with a green accent. It's like a kiwi green so I wanted to include it on the card so that the girls could undersatnd the shade. I made a skirt out of the fabric and glued it onto the card. I drew the boddess of the dress and added a black ribbon bow from ribbon from JoAnn's that I paid $2 for. I found some cute poems online and printed those inside the cards (there are different ones for each girl to convey different relationships).

cute touch!

How fun is this?!? Super cute and easy to make. And cheap, too!

(found at Project Wedding)

Ideas?

I picked up a group of 10 empty cigar boxes for free today, thinking that I can either sell them or come up with some creative way to use them. They're not wooden - some have wooden bottoms though. They're just about all from the Dominican Republic and definitely vintage and cute looking. Any great ideas?