There are many details to my upcoming wedding that are non-traditional. The biggest one would have to be the wedding party. But before I dive right in, I need to share a little back story…

Derek has always been the girl’s best guy friend, and I have always been the guy’s best girl friend. Of course we have best friends of the same sex, but we also have some very best friends of the opposite sex as well. (Maybe that’s why we go together so well!)

When it came to choosing our wedding party, we came across a road block. Derek could have his groomsmen and I could have my bridesmaids, but then what would we do with our other friends? Sure I could ask my guy friends to be ushers, but where would that leave Derek’s girl friends? They can’t all do the guestbook or hand out programs.

Then we came up with the perfect plan… why not include everyone?!

So standing by my side will be my four best girl friends and my four best guy friends. And standing beside Derek will be the same. That way nobody gets left out and we have ALL our closest friends by our side on our big day.

Now that we have all that out of the way… I will now tell you how we asked them to be a part of our wedding party. Most of our wedding party live (or is it lives? I’m confusing myself)  in other states, so asking them face to face or hosting a get-together wasn’t going to work for us. And since Derek and I both work in the news business, we decided to put our resources to good use. We made DVD messages for each person, asking them to be a part of our wedding (and explaining the guy/girl situation I talked about above).

In case you haven’t already noticed, I’m a little crafty and couldn’t just send a plain old DVD. I had to jazz them up a bit (and i used our wedding colors).

We then sorted them all out and sent the “will you be…?’s” to our friends and waited for them to call!

I love that not only was this a unique way to ask them to be a part of our wedding party, but it’s a personalized message they can each keep and re-watch. Some of them were silly, filled with inside jokes, while others tugged at the heart-strings (and yes, I cried in some. I’m a crier).

So do you want to see a snippet of the video clip?

will you be intro

How are you brides-to-be asking friends to be in your wedding party? And do any of you have brides-men or grooms-maids? hahaha

PLEASE check out how cute these are!

The best part is that they’re suuuuuuper easy to make! Ready? You’re going to need (1) napkins in whatever color, (2) pipe cleaners, and (3) scissors:

I would reccommend using 3-ply napkins because they’re a bit sturdier and you can actually pull apart the plys to make a fluffier flower (: You can also use the smaller beverage napkins or larger dinner napkins as long as they’re square.  When you’ve got all of that, unfold one napkin and lay it flat like so:

Then, stack 3 more napkins on top of it, making sure they’re all lined up. You will now have a stack of 4 napkins:

Take your stack of napkins and fold it into a fan shape. Use the ruffily edge as a guide for thickness!

Oh hey and now you can see my bird’s habitat hair (:

So anyway, then you should have a fan:

Take one pipe cleaner and twist it around the middle of the napkin fan to create a bow shape:

And then take your scissors and round off both of the edges to make them into little semi-circles:

so it looks like this (do not worry AT ALL if it’s not absolutely perfect!):

Fan the bow out a bit,

And starting with the top layer on one side, pull each napkin in towards the center of the bow:

Continue with each layer (obviously 4 total):

When you’re done with one half, start on the other!

And ta-da! How fantastic is this! I absolutely adore them (:

We’re planning on using them to decorate the pews with, along with setting some on the guest book table, escort card table, etc. The pink color is a LITTLE bright for what we were looking for, but I’m going to take advantage of the heatwave that is currently taking over the midwest and see if putting them out in the sunshine for a bit will fade the color a bit (I’ll let you know how that goes).

Oh and also, for larger napkins, I found that actually using 5 napkins works better than 4, by the way. Here’s what the size difference looks like:

What do you think? Do you love them? I just think they’re so cute. We found packs of 50 beverage napkins at Hobby Lobby for $1.99 (or dinner ones for $2.99), and since you can get about 12 flowers out of a pack, that makes them only $.17 a flower! Yay!

How are your DIY projects coming? Anyone else attempting paper flowers? I hope everything is going perfectly!

XO,

I made my own “Save the Dates” (and Derek helped) and I am SO thrilled with how they turned out!  I am also thrilled with how much they didn’t cost us! (Besides the hours of intensive labor) the 150+ cards we made cost close to $50. That’s all! And more then likely I will re-use all the left-overs from the project.

Making these took a while, and this post may take a while, but if you are looking for an idea to make your own Save the Dates, it will be worth it (I hope)!

I started with my inspiration piece from Martha Stewart

But it was lacking. I needed to have pictures and more color and more “us” so I came up with my own design. I printed out a template on each side of a standard card. That way I got two Save the Dates from one card (which in turn saved money!)

Then I had to make the tin envelopes to hold the actual date. I inlisted the help of my crafting secret weapon… my Cricut!

(see how exciting folding paper can be?! haha)

I even stored them all in my pretty Pyrex!

I have to take a minute to give a big shout out to my future husband for helping me. During this whole process he realized he’s a “cutting guy” because he enjoyed that part the most.

I then used the Cricut to cut out all the numbers for the date

And I gathered up some paper flowers I had on hand

And I used twine and a needle to string them all together

Ladies (and gentlemen) THIS is the most time consuming part. I suggest putting in some seasons of your favorite show, finding a comfy spot and just keep your head down and keep going.

Then it was time to add the magnets (sorry I don’t have a picture) and put them all together!

We loaded them all into their envelopes…

And now these pretties are hanging on the refrigerators of our friends and family members!

What route are you taking with Save the Dates? Are you making things easier on yourself by ordering them or are you tackling the DIY?

Good morning, everyone!

So you might recall I had my first centerpiece trial a few weeks ago. The end result looked like this:

The problem is, I used fake flowers! I really want to use real flowers for my reception because (a) they’re actually more cost-effective than using the silk ones I purchased at $3-5/stem, and (b) I just think real flowers are much much prettier (:

So I went to the store to pick up a few items:

I already had the candle sticks from last week, but I bought some flower foam ($1.12, Hobby Lobby), feathers ($1.09, Hobby Lobby), and 4 carnations, 4 roses, and 1 hydrangea ($10.71, Horrocks Market).

I started with the hydrangea. First, I cut a small chunk of the flower foam and stuck it in the candlestick (along with some water!) (although I didn’t take a picture with water) (sorry):

Then I cut individual sprigs off of the hydrangea. I know that they don’t survive a very long time without the rest of the bunch, and I learned thanks to an awesome comment on my last post that they need PLENTY of water, so this totally might not work for the amount of time I need it to (I’ll let you know).

I stuck each piece into the side of the foam like so:

And then added another sprig:

And after 3 it looked like this! Totally cute:

I also bought some pink carnations–TOTALLY budget-friendly. I know that they kind of have a had reputation for being “cheap,” but I think they look quite nice when they are tightly together and they’re also my grandma’s favorite flower (:

First, I put some feathers in to add a little somethin’ somethin’:

Then, I cut the carnations very short:

And squeezed them in with a bit of water! And ta-da!

The roses were easy-peasy: just cut the stem and plop them on candle sticks. And here is my end result:

Obviously they are not the “rightest” colors–I’m still looking for everything to be a dusty pink. However, the nice lady at the flower market told me that it shouldn’t be a problem to order these flowers in the correct color in bulk. So they’re ALMOST right! What do you think??

ALSO, I bopped around a few Goodwills in the area and found a couple of these guys:

I got 8 different candlesticks (and 1 candelabra!) for $9! Not bad I don’t think (: So, I added some black spray paint (same can from last time):

Continued my painting operation (my neighbors thought I was so bizarre taking pictures of everything I was doing haha):

And I ended up with 8 cool new candlesticks:

I added the silk flowers to make them look cute, and here’s my final result!

I am exceedingly happy with how these are turning out! And can I just say I love this candelabra?! I hope I can find more!

So how are your centerpieces going? Anyone else working with candlestick flowers? Any other cool ideas? I wish you nothing but the best luck with all of your DIY projects!

Have fantastic weeks!

XO,