Flowers!

So, it's time to start thinking about bouquets. I'm really excited about it. We're using silk flowers for centerpieces and aisle decor, so the bouquets will be one of the few places we're using live blooms. As a result, I feel obligated to put a lot of thought into it, since they'll be representing all their Oxygen-producing, photosynthesizing brethren.

Here's what I know:
I want a mix of red and white flowers.
I want to add some organic elements like berries and fiddleheads.
I want the bridesmaid bouquets to just be smaller versions of mine.
I want tulips and lily of the valley to represent my Scandinavian heritage.

Since we're getting married in Florida, the growing season is much longer, so I know I'll have a wide variety of flowers available to me. I'm not too much of a traditional rose kinda gal, so I'm leaning toward what I consider more interesting options, such as:

Anemones and Tulips:

Peonies and Ranunculus:

Gardenia and Lisianthus:

Lily of the Valley and Stephanotis:

Hypericum Berries, Fern Fiddleheads, and Dusty Miller:

These are the bouquets that I'm using as my inspiration:




We'll probably incorporate some real versions of the silk cousins featured in our pomanders and centerpieces, just to make sure everything is cohesive. Did you do real or silk flowers for your ceremony and reception?

Can I Offer You a Drink?

Of water, of course! What OOT bag would be complete without a couple bottles of water? But plain ol' bottled water without custom labels? Not on my watch! I knew that I wanted to add cute custom labels to my bottles, and debated doing them myself. After some thought, however, I decided that I need to bring in professional reinforcements on this one. Our hotel has fridges in each room, so I figure that folks might toss their bottles in there. Once the condensation starts, I knew that my little inkjet labels would melt, slide, and run into a drippy mess.

I looked at several sites that print custom labels and most of them had some pretty decent pre-designed templates. Because I have such a specific design concept, however, I really wanted to find a company that would print completely custom designs. I decided to use a company called Bottle Your Brand.

I opted to have the company apply my labels to the bottles and send the whole shebang at once. In hindsight, I should have just ordered the labels, because my order (bottles + labels) was approximately $30 before shipping. Just ordering the labels would have been under $10. With added weight of the water bottles, shipping was also more expensive, so note to self: Duh, just order the labels and spend the 20 minutes adhering them yourself, ding dong.

But, I will say, I'm very happy with the results. The labels turned out great and the cute little 8 oz. bottles will fit perfectly in our gable boxes.

I loved being able to create custom designs that corresponded perfectly with my other DIY projects... all the way down to the right font and cute little red lovebirds.

Dessert Buffet Favor Bags... Almost Done!

In my previous post, I lamented the ink depletion that brought the DIY factory to a halt this week end. Case in point? My dessert buffet favor bags. I set my printer to complete 5 pages of these little babies and then left it alone and went back into the living room to get started on another project. After all, printing high-quality on photo paper takes a long time on an ink jet printer.

After about 20 minutes, I went back to check on them... only to find 1 usable page out of 5. I had completely emptied the yellow ink cartridge and the last 4 pages were a strange dark violet color instead of brown. After a moment of brow-furrowing frustration, I tossed the unusable pages in the recycling bin and got to work on the 12 I was actually going to be able to finish.

We had already selected half-pint tin tie bags for use with the dessert buffet. I am planning on enough candy/cookies to look cool, which will be waaayyy more than the 50 of us can eat in 4 hours! I plan to have the bags as favors that folks can take with them for the road.

To decorate them, I created round labels that coordinated with the rest of my DIY projects. I printed them on photo paper to give them a glossy, professional finish.


Then I used my 2.5" paper punch from EK Success to punch out each of the labels.


I used a 3.0" scalloped circle paper punch to punch scalloped circles out of red card stock.


I adhered the round labels to the scalloped circle and then adhered the scalloped circle to the tin tie bags.


Although red card stock that I ordered is a little darker than I would have liked, I don't think anyone but me is going to notice. I'm very happy with how they turned out and I think the bags will look cute on the dessert buffet table. So, although the project is not quite done, I'm tentatively checking this one off the list!

Lip Balm Lovelies

I was a DIY machine this past week end. I doggedly plowed through project after project... until my printer ran out of ink! Ugh. With no motivation to voluntarily go out in the 95-degree heat in my un-air conditioned car, I came to a stand still.

Before said ink depletion, I finished by lip balm labels. I love only having to do 15 OOT bags, it makes doing things by hand actually feasible and not an act of mind-numbing tedium.

To make the labels, I used a string wrapped around a lip balm tube to find the circumference. Combined with the height of the lip balm label, I had my lip balm size: 2.125" X 1.675". I printed 12 on each sheet. I used laser brochure paper, which is slightly glossy and a little heavier than regular paper.

I had tried to use photo paper, which is even heavier, but the photo paper had NO interested in being cylindrical and no amount of adhesive could convince it!

I just cut out each label by hand and used a Tombo adhesive runner to adhere the labels to each tube. All in all, it only took about 1/2 hour to print, trim, and adhere all 15 labels.

Plus, these were a budget bonanza because I got the lip balms from a colleague that was giving them away as promotional items! AND, they're even tropical flavored (which I think is some sort of pineapple - coconut combo), which is perfect for a Florida OOT bag!

One more project done!

Mmmm... Cocoa

Remember the snowflake marshmallows discussed earlier? And the cocoa packaging I highlighted in an earlier post? Well, I finally finished that little project, and it went something like this:

Step 1: I printed all the labels on glossy photo paper and trimmed them to size. I busted out my trusty Xyron machine, and ran all the labels through to make them adhesive. Thank goodness for this wonderful machine, which has saved me oodles of time using glue sticks or tape runners.


Step 2: I adhered ribbon around the pillow box, making sure the ends met on the front of the box so that they will be hidden by the label.


Step 3: I adhered the label to the front of the box, hiding the ribbon ends.


That's it... a completed set of personalized cocoa packets, ready for packing into the OOT bags!

My Favorite DIY Project So Far (OOT booklets)

Also known as my OOT bag booklets. These are a labor of love, for sure. I say "are" instead of "were" because I've only finished one. They are 8 pages, front and back, and time consuming... to say the least. But boy am I pleased with how it turned out!

I printed the pages on white card stock and trimmed each page to 5.25" X 7.25." Then I mounted each page (front and back) on dark brown card stock, trimmed to 5.5" X 8.5." I cut a small piece of red card stock to wrap around the front and back of the booklet. Using a small finishing nail, I pierced 2 holes through all the pages. I used silver brads to hold the whole thing together.

Due to the thickness of the completed booklet, I wanted to add a ribbon tie to keep the booklet closed. To secure the ribbon, I attached it to both covers, between the card stock and printed pages.

The entire booklet consisted of the following pages:
Welcome Postcard Photo
Welcome Message from Bride and Groom
Description of Contents
Schedule of Events
Directions
Local Map
Things To Do
Places To Eat
Photo-sharing Information
Explanation of Local Landmarks
Crossword Puzzle
Word Search
Maze
Sudoku (2 Puzzles)

Here are some highlights:

Scanned image of a Weeki Wachee mermaid postcard

Welcome letter from us

Schedule of events

One of the Sudoku puzzles

Although it will take me a big chunk of time to finish 15 of these lovelies, I think our guests will really appreciate the personal touch. And if our guests don't notice, then at least it was a fun project to work on!

Get Marriage Right

Yesterday, we took a pre-marital workshop at Calvary Baptist Church in Knoxville. It was conducted by the husband-wife team of Knox Marriage. Although we aren't eligible for a discount on our marriage license because we're no longer residents in the state in which we'll be married, we thought it was still a good idea. Any time you learn a little more about yourself and how to communicate effectively, it seems like a good idea.

The course was called "Get Marriage Right," and it was an introduction into communication strategies and conflict resolution. Although it started out a little slowly, after the break we started going around the table to ask specific questions about challenges facing us in our marriage. Through each discussion, we were all able to learn a little more about ourselves, our families, and our vision of marriage. All in all, it was a really great class and Van and Regina were very open about holding themselves up as examples of what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. If you are planning to get married, I can't recommend counseling enough. Even though our class was only 4 hours, we all got workbooks that will take additional work to complete, allowing us to continue the conversation. And isn't that always a good thing?

Wedding Hair

I can't really figure out what to do with my hair on my wedding day. Currently, I'm growing it out to donate to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program. Since I'm soooo tired of long hair right now, I plan to cut it as soon as losing 8 inches will leave me something more than Sinead O'Connor.

That will leave me little hair for my wedding, which doesn't really bother me at all. I'm also not afraid of hair pieces, and even have a pretty good one from Toni Brattin. If I rock the shorter hair, I'm thinking I'll go with a beautiful silk flower or headband hair piece. Something like this:

If I opt for artificial length assistance, I'm thinking up-do. Perhaps something like these:

I'm not one of those lucky gals that can set perfect curls at 2:30 pm and expect them to last much later than 2:37 pm. Given that, hair extensions make perfect sense: lovely long lengths for rolling and twisting, AND they hold a stinkin' curl.

Thoughts?

Visit Florida (a.k.a. More OOT Bag Fun)

Next stop on the OOT bag express? Informational brochures. On my last trip home, I stopped at the Florida Welcome Center to collect informational brochures to place in my OOT bags. Not only did I want to highlight all the state has to offer (aside from theme parks), and I wanted to find anything highlighting the local area where we will get married. Boy did I hit the mother lode! I found information on hiking and paddling trails, state parks, and even travel tips for Florida.

I also spent some time shopping in local gift shops for cute local post cards. I found some kitschy Florida postcards with flamingos and alligators and I found cards from local attractions. Take a look at the booty:

In order to package them up for guests, I opted (for once) to take a relatively simple approach- I wrapped them like a package.

I took curling ribbon that you would commonly use to wrap gifts, and twisted it around the entire stack of brochures and postcards:

Although I had 3 rolls of curling ribbon, it was difficult to find enough to wrap all 15 stacks of brochures because I had a "helper," trying to steal and eat all the loose ribbons:

Despite all the "help," I was able to get all 15 stacks wrapped in a little under 1/2 an hour, so it was, by far the easiest OOT bag project to date.

Escort Cards

Originally, we had decided against a seating chart because we're having such a small affair (~55 people). After reading a lot of information online; however, it seems as though we should at least assign folks to a specific table. Apparently, there is a possibility of Aunt Myrtle getting her feelings hurt because no one saves her a spot at the family table, or Uncle Fred is upset that there isn't a table big enough for all his golf buddies.

I have been to weddings recently that didn't have seating charts, and there is a bit of an awkward pause while folks stand idly by tables, waiting to see who else is sitting where. Alright, I give. We'll assign folks to seats. I do think it will expedite the sitting down process, so I'm in.

Alas, here comes the eternal question of escort card design. Do we do a simple card that is solely designed to get person A to seat 1? Do we do something clever with table numbers or table names? Do we combine favors and escort cards? So many choices...

Long story, short (perhaps it's too late). I haven't decided. There are some ideas that I love:

Glittery snow? Love it. Or perhaps these charming fabric circles.

I adore the leaves on the branch, but I also like these vintage illustrations.

The wreath has obvious December application, but how do I resist these little mini books?

The undeniable appeal of moss or perhaps the clean lines of this accordion fold. All these lovely options from creative team of Martha Stewart Weddings.

I also like these clever table number (or name) ideas:

As a total word nerd, these scrabble tile frames immediately caught my eye.

This adorable approach highlights the bride and groom at the ages indicated by the table number. I *heart* this one a lot.

Constellations? Geek chic, for sure. These simple photo table numbers are also ridiculously cute.

Perhaps the leader in this race is this adorable idea that highlights the couple's favorite vacation spots.

Well, even if I don't know which direction I'm going in yet, at least I had the chance to highlight some crafty and creative brides (and the design team at MSW)!

My DIY Pomander

I've mentioned before that I am fascinated by pomanders. They are just such lovely little balls of happy that I can't resist. When envisioning my ceremony, I saw myself gliding down an aisle lined with them. I couldn't resist the urge to try to make one. How hard can it be, right? It's just clipping silk flowers and jamming them in a styrofoam ball, isn't it?

My first vision was an orb of snow white carnations, perhaps with a few pearls tucked in for some sparkle. Well, trips to JoAnn's, Michael's, A. C. Moore, and Hobby Lobby yielded exactly zero white carnations.

Hmmm... now what? Roses? Perhaps, but when they are too large, the ball looks a bit comical. Comical is NOT what I'm going for in my ethereal vision of pomanders. Do they have to be white? I guess not, let me see what I can find in the red department. So I did. I decided on mixing red and white flowers, with small pearls tucked in for a little gleam.

So I got to work, clipping the flowers off the stalks. I got a little help from my buddy:


In the end, I really like the mix of colors and I lurrrvvve the pearls. I even like the organic quality achieved by tucking in leaves here and there.

We also have seven silver lanterns that we plan to alternate: pomander, lantern, pomander, lantern... you get the idea. Pretty and festive- what more could you ask for?

Our Photog!

We've chosen our photographer and I couldn't be happier. I knew his portfolio was a good match for the photojournalistic approach I was looking for, but when we spoke on the phone, it sealed the deal and I hired him on the spot. His friendly demeanor and professionalism left me confident that he would do a wonderful job capturing our day. Oh, and his name is Jeff Morgan.

As a scrapbooker, photography is extremely important to me and I know that Jeff is going to be a great addition to Team Roder.

Take a look at some of his amazing pictures:



(All images copyright Jeff Morgan Photography)

He's pretty genius, doncha think?