The newest Mrs. Vail :)

Well there were a number of times throughout my life, and even during the last 10 months of planning that I never thought this day would come, but I am absolutely thrilled to say that I am now officially the newest Mrs. Vail :) Our wedding was on Saturday and went off without a single thing going wrong.  Ryan and I were so relaxed and so happy that the day had finally come.  All of the planning and crafting we'd done finally all came together and everything looked spectacular, just the way we'd imagined.  As someone who recently had their wedding day, my best piece of advice to brides-to-be is to be organized! Lots of people giggled at my lists and schedules when I was making them, but honestly, that's what kept me sane and ensured that we had everything (including people!) where we needed it, when we needed it to be there. Not that you can't be too organized...there's no need to have lists for your lists for your lists and schedules down to the second, but one good 'don't forget this' list, a schedule for the day, and (if you're doing your own decorating) a list of what needs to be put where in your ceremony/reception space helped immensely.  So, that being said, just relax and try to enjoy your day! It really does go by in a flash.  Here are a few piccies of the finished product and us on our wedding day.  Its been a blast doing all of my crafts and sharing instructions with everyone, I don't know what I'll do with my time now! Thanks to everyone who checked out my posts! <3

More Bouquets

Upon examining my guitar pick bouquet I decided 2 things...1) I really like it and want to keep it and 2) if I tossed it at the reception it would either smash to pieces or take someone's eye out.  So I decided to make a little bouquet up for the sole purpose of tossing that would not smash to pieces or take someone's eye out.  Luckily for me, one of my shower gifts came with a little bunch of silk green and white gerbera's attached so I repurposed them into my toss bouquet with a bit of ribbon I had lying around.  I think it came out pretty cute and much safer than the guitar pick one lol.

I also was told after my shower that it was traditional to use the bows and ribbons off the gifts as a 'bouquet' for the ceremony rehearsal.  I'd never seen this before, we always just made the bride-to-be a silly hat out of them attached to a paper plate.  Well they made me my paper plate ribbon hat and then I decided to also use the ribbons to make a rehearsal bouquet and I must say I am quite proud of the result!  Its been a very bouquet-y day today...I think now that all of my projects are winding down I may be going into crafty withdrawal...good thing my cousin is getting married a month after we are so I can help his fiancee out!

FLOWERS ARE FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhh I can't believe they're done!!! and I'm really happy with how they turned out :) Small and simple yet modern and cute.  I couldn't find any bouquet holders so I devised my own out of stuff around the house...namely toilet paper and paper towel rolls and the inside tube from a roll of aluminum foil...can't even tell the difference after you wrap them in ribbon! =D I just bought a block of floral foam for the inner cores of the handles.  I got the brown brick of dry floral foam from Walmart, it was less than half the price of the exact same brick at Michaels.  Full instructions on the Guitar Pick Flowers DIY page! I really hope these help someone else out since I couldn't for the life of me find instructions anywhere when I started out!

Decorations for Guest Book Table

I posted these on The Knot and had someone ask for the template but I can't for the life of my figure out how to post a file on here so here's what I did: :)

I used Microsoft Publisher and created a new custom sized document that was 12"x12".  Then I used word art to make the "HE" or "SHE" in the back ground and filled the page with it.  Then I typed in our things we love about each other into a text box that was the same size as the page (keep everything within the little blue lines at the edges so it all prints properly) separated with the dot, which I copied from the character map.  On my computer (vista) its under Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map.  I just made the text and background opposite colours on the two documents.  Then I got them printed and made into 'plak-its' at Staples.  Make sure to check them when you pick them up though because I just realized that the SHE sign is about a 1/4 inch smaller than the HE which makes the text go right to the edge of it.

Counting the days...

The days before the wedding are getting less and less and I'm trying not to panic that I won't have everything done in time! I just finally started on the flowers last night and thank goodness they're turning out better than I hoped so I think this is the last decision I have to make! We'll see about that lol.  I also finished my last hanger last night (mine of course) so that's another thing checked off.  Last week I ordered my bridesmaids gifts which came in really quick from http://www.flirtyaprons.ca/.  All my girls love to cook and the aprons on this site are adorable, I even ordered one for myself and one for my mom for her birthday. So in all, they're getting the aprons, jewelry for the day and hangers for their dresses.  I'm still debating what to get for my FG and RB, I'm thinking about making them fleece tie blankets and Ryan still has to decide what he's getting for his groomsmen.  So I guess there are a few decisions left to make! 

I updated the DIY page today with instructions for the corsages, RB pillow and personalized hangers.  I've been getting a bit lazy so there aren't pictures for each step but I think if you look at the final picture you should be able to figure it out :) Those projects weren't overly difficult.  I'm going to update the instructions tonight with a how-to for the guitar pick flowers I'm making for the bouquets and boutonnieres.  I finished 9 flowers last night and they came out good enough that I'll try really hard to remember to take step by step pics!  Piccies of the ones I did last night below :) They still need their stems wrapped and I have to figure out how I'm going to actually make them come together in a bouquet but I've gotta get them finished first!

So we finally picked a honeymoon...

With just 48 days to go, Ryan and I finally decided on a honeymoon destination yesterday!!! We're going to be spending 5 nights and 6 days at the Nantasket Beach Resort in Hull, Massachusetts about 45 mins away from Boston.  I've been to Boston before but Ryan hasn't and I'm super excited to go back :) We already booked our tickets to go see the Blue Man Group while we're there!  There are tons of things that I want to do and see, the whole city is just so rich in history and although I'm a proud Canadian, the American Revolution fascinates me.  I think I'll have to keep reminding myself that we need some 'alone time' too!

DIY update

I just finished up a couple more DIYs so I thought I'd post some pics cause I think they're pretty :) DIY instructions for the corsages to come once I do my last one and remember to take step by step pics!

Corsages for our moms/grandma/reader:

My Ring Bearer Pillow:

Taking a relax day

Its been nuts lately so I decided to take a relax day today and update my DIY instructions with my latest completed project, the wand I made for my flower girl to carry down the aisle.  It was surprisingly easy and Ryan says it doesn't even look like something I made but more like something you'd buy in the store which made me even more proud of it :) There are a couple more pics of it on the DIY page, but I wanted to share one here too since I love it so much.

We met with our DJ yesterday and he is awesome.  He was so receptive to the requests we had and seems just like a genuinely nice guy.  His website is www.djalpha.ca in case anyone is looking for a DJ in London, ON.
Everything seems to be finally coming together.  We're having our contract signing meeting with our cake decorator next weekend which I am excited about.  We met with her originally about a month ago and her cake was DIVINE!  This is the inspiration for our design, although we're going to make it 3 tiers and with green fondant gerberas at the sides where the swag switches directions and our cake topper is a football groom with the bride tackling him

My mom and I were super busy yesterday making all of the adult favours for the reception.  We made 40 jars of mint chocolate chip jelly bean jelly and 48 jars of apple jelly bean jelly which both turned out great!

The recipe for the jelly can be found at http://www.bernardin.ca/pages/recipe_page/51.php?pid=319 and I made the custom labels at http://www.stickeryou.com.

Its only 2 months today until the wedding so I'm starting to get extremely excited and equally extremely nervous about everything getting done!  I really need to bite the bullet and set up an appointment to get my dress altered.  Not that it needs much done, its just a matter of getting the appointment set up!  Wish me luck and pray that I don't lose my mind in the next 2 months!

The last 2 weeks...it appears I've been slacking...in reality I've just been busy!

Well my beads finally arrived, and they are awesome! I can't believe the deal I got on them, especially compared to the $5 strands at Michaels for half the beads!  I ordered the rest of my supplies from The Beading Room, an online beading store from Nova Scotia and they got here super quick so I started on the necklaces for the girls (which took no time at all, I was done in an hour or so) and the earrings, which were substantially more frustrating, hence why I haven't finished them yet...they're on a time out! I did manage to get 2 done and they stayed pretty long enough for me to take one picture before one of them fell apart.  I think I need a way to hold the pearl while I try to hook the loop through the stud...we'll see how those turn out, but I love the necklaces :) That's all 5 piled together btw, not a massively huge one!  The necklaces and earrings will be part of the gift for my girls but I'm a little stuck on what else to give them.  Two of them in particular have been incredibly awesome so I want to do something special for them.  If you have any suggestions please leave me a comment!



I am massively happy with my table numbers as well, although I'm thinking they could use some sprucing up a bit...thoughts?  They're just a little plain but I don't know if adding stickers or something would be too childish.  Also, you can't see it but the frames are double-sided so there will be a picture of the two of us on the other side, for our guests to gaze at fondly of course!

We have all of the ingredients now that we need to do all of the adult favours for the reception so that's going to be our next big project...Jelly Bean Jelly!  The recipe is from the Bernardin Website and we're packaging it in 125ml mason jars with custom stickers on the top from StickerYou that have a green daisy and have our names/wedding date and the jelly flavour.  We'll be making half of them apple flavour and half of them mint chocolate chip flavour, both tinted a different shade of green.  The flavours were the hardest thing to find, but I used Golda's Kitchen which is just an awesome store, they have everything, including the flower mould I used for the crayons.  Once these are done, I'll post a DIY with pics and the recipe.  Thats all for now I think, sorry bout the long post!!

DIY Crayons

In all of my searches for DIY things and what to do with kids at the wedding I kept coming across these awesome DIY crayons that people have made so I decided to do my own.  I found a cute silicone daisy mould at Golda's Kitchen and grabbed 2 64 packs of crayons at walmart and voila, 24 awesome multi colour crayons that I'm going to package them up in sets of 3 with some cute 'from the mr. and mrs' brown and green ribbon and put with colouring books at the kids seats for the reception. They are super cute if I do say so myself :) Instructions are posted on the DIY page.

Rings!

We ordered our rings last night!!  This was by far, the absolute easiest of all of our wedding purchases so far.  We both knew that we wanted just classic 14k yellow gold bands so we walked into People's yesterday and had them ordered in less than 20 minutes! Talk about stress free, the woman was very helpful.  I got a 2mm one so it would match the width of my engagement ring and not make the two of them together too wide.  I've read about some women who only wear their engagement ring on special occasions but I love my ring and couldn't imagine leaving it at home everyday...I think my finger would feel naked.  Ryan's ring is 5mm and I cannot wait to slip it on his finger in 95 days!!

On some more awesome notes...(yesterday was an awesome wedding related day!) the sales manager from the hotel we're having the reception at called to set up a menu tasting (woo!) so we get awesome dinner next weekend, and I also found out yesterday that the date for my bridal shower and bachelorette party have been set!! The shower will be in just a few weeks (18 days!) before my cousins all go back to school and I'm so excited for it :)  On the other hand, my bachelorette is scheduled for October 8th so my sister will be back home from school for Thanksgiving.  I'm told its going to be an all day thing, and that my MOH and one of my bridesmaids will be helping me pick out 'something skimpy' for my wedding night...no other details have been divulged so needless to say I'm a bit nervous about that one! I'm sure it will be a blast though.

I'm going to try to get through all the rest of the invitations tonight and must remember to buy stamps so I can send them all out before Friday.  We're moving into our new place on Saturday and I can't wait to have more time to focus on wedding things!! Eek!

Phew!

It was a busy last couple of week's so I didn't get much time to post let alone do any DIY stuff...we were incredibly busy planning/having our stag and doe and working on finding jobs and a place of our own to live...craziness let me tell you.  We're currently living with Ryan's mom, which is nice, we really appreciate her letting us stay but we definitely need our own space!  Ryan started a new job last week, not a forever type job, but its going to allow us to move out on our own again which is awesome!!! We're moving this weekend and I can't wait!!  The stag and doe was on Saturday and was an awesome success! It was so great to see family and friends that I haven't seen in awhile and a great opportunity for some of Ryan's family to meet mine.  All in all we made a good amount of money that will promptly be put towards our plans! First item on the to-do list is wedding bands so we'll be going out tomorrow in search of those.  Currently I'm working on addressing the invitations, which I've been putting off and putting off and putting off....but it has to be done, we are getting married in just 96 days!

I had an extremely unsuccessful shoe shopping trip the other day, I hate my gigantic feet.  Every time I'd find a pair I like, they either wouldn't come in my size (a whopping 11) or wouldn't be flat (Ryan's already 3 inches shorter than me), or didn't come in a wide width...damn wide feet.  But I've still got time thank god...may end up just going with green chucks haha.

I'm not sure if I mentioned before, but my cousin is doing our centerpieces as part of a project for one of her classes at school which is so totally ok with me lol.  We're doing 3 different size mason jars with a green silk gerbera and water in it and a floating candle.  Next to these, we're doing the table numbers in little frames from IKEA.  99 cents for a two sided frame, doesn't get better than that!  We'll put one of our engagement pics on one side and the table number on the other.  I have some ideas for table numbers (brown scrapbook paper with a green painted wooden letter?) but I might let Ryan have a go at designing them.

I finally found some nice glass pearls on ebay to use to make the jewelry for my girls, ordered them on the 13th of July and they're not here yet which is a little worrisome but I'm hoping they're just stuck at customs somewhere since they're coming from the states.  I think that's all I needed to get off my chest tonight lol I'm hoping that once we're in our own place I'll have more time for some DIY and finalizing plans!

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!