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!