DIY Jewelery Ups and Downs...

So I have these gorgeous pearls that my parents got me for a graduation/birthday present and I love love love them so I wanted to make my girls something that would sort of match to wear on the big day.  I found awesome instructions and I think they're going to look great...only problem is the cost! Why oh why is everything in Canada so expensive!?! I hit up my local Michael's to see what they had and even on sale, strands of freshwater potato pearls were $4 for 12"...just for the pearls alone it costs $24 and then each 'jewelry making accessory' was $5 on top of that...throw in the proper tool for the job and I was out $85 for a project that was supposed to be budget friendly.  I took everything home and after sleeping on it, decided that I didn't even like how the pearls looked (some looked like popcorn kernels or were really bumpy...) so I returned it all and am back at square one.  I think I'm going to get white glass pearls instead which seem to be much more uniform in shape (actually round) and significantly cheaper.  I found some on ebay that I can get a 32" strand for $1.99.  I ordered 4 so we'll see how they look when they arrive.  I think I'm going to try to find an online source for all the other materials as well...hopefully I'll get around to doing all the jewelry in the next week or so.  Wish me luck!

DIY Easles

Ryan and I are planning to make some DIY art to display on the guestbook table at the reception so we've been looking at easles to put it on and hadn't found any that we liked or were willing to pay the amount they asked for.  We hadn't really talked about DIYing them, but when I came home from work yesterday, much to my surprise there was an easel DIY taking place in the back yard! Ryan built a small one (17" legs) out of some scrap wood in the shed and it turned out awesome.  So awesome in fact that we headed to Rona and picked up supplies to make more! So now thanks to my awesome hubby-to-be we have 3 matching easels, 2 little and one big (5.5' legs) to display our art and the cork board that I'm covering with fabric to display the escort cards.  Here's one of the little ones with part of my gift table banner on it as a size gauge (the squares are 3" high).  We're going to stain them all to match the wood on the card box, hopefully we got the right colour!  The supplies to make all 3 came in around $45.  I'll put up a detailed list of materials with instructions on the DIY page.  These were really easy once we got the hang of it!

DIY Table Banners

I finished the banners, well 2 out of 3, for the cake table, registry table and gift table the other night and I think they turned out super cute!  I'll post instructions on the DIY page but here is the final product :) 

There's also going to be one that says 'Love Is A Gift' for the gift table but I ran out of tiny clothespins and have to get more.  I started off trying to make the little squares out of brown fabric which just got super frustrating because they weren't hanging like I wanted them too, the clothespins were too heavy and just tipped over and the green paint I used looked a little too bright on the fabric so I gave up on that and went with felt which I am much much more happy with :)

Next up I think I'm going to try my hand at making necklaces for my girls.  I found this picture on another bride's blog (http://bunnybride0108.blogspot.com/2007/07/diy-pearlribbon-necklace.html) and really like it so I'm thinking of doing it with white pearls and green ribbon since my jewellery for the day of is all pearls (graduation/birthday presents from my parents <3).  Only thing I'm not sure of yet is how to make pearl earrings to match but I'm sure I'll figure that one out!

Our Guestbook has been shipped!!

I'm so excited to see it all done up!  I'll post pictures when it comes in :) On another awesome note we finally hired a DJ which just leaves flowers, rings and the all important cake on our list of big purchases...oh and the honeymoon although that's still up in the air pending permanent employment but we're hoping to go to Disney in Florida for a week which I am so excited about.  Even if we can't go right after the wedding I think its still our top pick.

I'm a little nervous about the whole DJ hiring thing since we haven't met him yet (we live 2 hours away from our ceremony/reception location) but he had lots of great reviews and was more than willing to offer up references.  He also just seems like a really decent person from all of our emails back and forth and his price was right.  We were a little hesitant about even hiring a DJ for the wedding since we aren't big dancers ourselves and at the last wedding we went to hardly anyone danced so hopefully this isn't a big waste of money!  At least we decided not to go with a professional decorator for the reception venue.  As my mom so kindly pointed out, the venue is gorgeous as it is, why do you need a tulle backdrop? (which I wasn't really in love with, just thought it was the right thing to have), also I just really couldn't justify spending $1200 to decorate one room for one day.  I'm still kind of hooked on chair covers though, only because the chairs are black, round backed, banquet style chairs that are really not all that pretty looking and I'm going to have my sister make brown runners for the tables (which I'm sure we can do for less than the $12 a piece that the decorator wanted just to rent them...).  Tonight I'm going to start on the banner decorations for the cake, gift and registry tables and I'm really hoping they turn out as cute as they are in my head! Pics and instructions will be posted as soon as they're done!

Finally chose some flowers!

Choosing flowers has been the most difficult part of planning so far! Especially after I discovered that the flower that I really wanted doesn't actually exist in real life...damn you green gerbera daisies! I love daisies though so I was trying to figure out how to still incorporate them somehow (I think we're going to put them on the cake) when I came across the coolest flowers made of sola and palm wood on save-on-crafts.com. These are seriously cool but I couldn't figure out what might go with them either! I don't have avery good imagination when it comes to putting things like that together in my mind so there I was still stumped and growing more and more frustrated by the prices I was seeing for fresh flowers! I decided to forego the green flower thing altogether and finally found these amazing chocolate brown preserved roses that I think I will pair with white gerberas (which DO exist! yay!) and leave the green for the ribbon. Wish me luck, I can't wait to see how I do on this DIY!

Invitation Addresses

We got our invites and other stationary (with the exception of the ceremony programs which I totally forgot about and will now be making myself...) all printed up a couple of months ago from Vistaprint (fantastic company btw, so cheap and they have sales all the time!) and as we're approaching the 4 month mark in just a few hours I figured it was high time to get some addresses! Never again will I doubt the awesomeness of 411, that site saved me tons of time trying to get ahold of people to get their addresses! I've got 9 more to go before we start addressing the invites.  Now that I'm not looking forward to, although I bought a pretty gold pen that I'm very excited to use which will make it slightly less painful I hope :) I got return address stickers from Vistaprint too (for free!) that will also make life easier.  The invites were the first thing we got with our 'wedding colour green' so I'm trying to base all future green purchases off that, which is not easy let me tell you! I never would have imagined that there were so many shades of light green!  Pic of the invite below!

DIY Guestbook and Card Box

I was having a real difficulty trying to figure out what to do for our guestbook.  I knew I didn't want the traditional boring book of just pages for people to sign, but Ryan didn't really like the idea of having people sign a photo mat or plate or something of that sort so I had to come up with some sort of compromise that was more personalized yet traditional at the same time.  I found a post on The Knot where someone mentioned that they were using blurb.com to make a photobook of their wedding so I checked out the site and was completely hooked! If you haven't tried it yet, its a must to check out.  I was able to make a 20 page guestbook, hardcover with pictures from our relationship for $32.49.  Its 7"x7" and I guess you can really only write on half the pages, but we're only inviting 100 people and a good number of that is families where every person isn't going to sign.  You can check it out here http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2292446.  My best friend and MOH did our engagement piccies for us that I used for the front/back covers and last page in the book.  I'm so pleased with how it turned out and can't wait for it to arrive!

My first 'real' DIY project was our card box for the reception.  I got the inspiration from the Road to the Aisle blog.  We changed the design up a bit due to the frames that we bought but its awesome and I love it :) took all afternoon/evening yesterday but once I started I just wanted it to be done!!  Illustrated directions to follow!  My next project is going to be a cute banner for the cake table inspired by this one (it says love is sweet in full size) that I found on The Knot's DIY board.

I'm being really flipfloppy between whether or not I like the look of tulle everywhere at the reception and lately I'm leaning towards no so I'm trying to figure out other ways to decorate and this sign just looks so cute.  I think I'll do mine with fabric though.  I'll post pictures of mine as soon as its done later this week!

My First Post!!

Every time I try to start a blog I end up forgetting about it and not writing for months on end but that will not happen this time!! Mostly because in just a few short months (4 months and 2 days, not that I'm keeping track or anything...) I'm getting married! and the sole purpose of this blog is to talk about all the ups and downs of planning our wedding without all the people around me getting tired of hearing about cakes and flowers and card boxes and chair covers and decorations and and and...you get the picture.  So I'm going to use this as my venting place for all things wedding related and hopefully someone will find some use in what I say.  I'm trying really hard to get in touch with my crafty side and possibly save some money on decorations.  Even if we don't save too much money at least we'll have some awesomely personal touches for the reception!

It seems like there's still soooo much to do before the big day!  It doesn't help of course that we both just graduated, and as of right now I'm the only one working...we didn't really anticipate it being so difficult for Ryan to find a job and my job is a contract only lasting til the end of September so keep your fingers crossed that we find something permanent soon!!  That being said, there are some things that just can't wait! We've got the ceremony and reception venues booked along with all the food and drink for the night...that was our first big commitment, back in January.  I've also got my dress! Yay!! and all the bridesmaids dresses are in, photographer booked and the stag and doe is in planning mode...still on the list of things to do: DJ, cake, flowers and countless other little things that I'm really hoping I don't forget! The guestbook and card box are all completed, my first 2 DIY projects :) but I'll cover those in my next post since I noticed this one was getting a little long! So I'll end for now and finish that one later!