a few wedding diy projects

As always, too much time has passed since my last post. I haven't even finished my list of posts I wanted to write about the wedding and 5 months have gone by and there's now a little guy brewing in my belly! Needless to say, I have no doubts that this blog is going to take a turn in preparation for, and the aftermath of, his arrival. But in the meantime, I'm going to try and play catch up on all the things I want to remember about our wedding.

I intended to do a post per project, but it seems pointless now. So instead, here are pictures of a number of things I diy'd for the wedding. (All photos were taken by our awesome photographer: Roya Jade Photography):

 All of the burlap signs throughout the venue I made with loads of burlap, baker's twine, stencils and white paint. I originally tried to follow a tutorial I found on pinterest to run the burlap through my inkjet printer. Did NOT work, and I am amazed I didn't ruin my printer forever. So stencil and paint it was. The timeline I designed on photoshop and had printed at Staples. I mounted it on foam board and placed it in an open back frame from Hobby Lobby.

The ceremony programs opened accordion style. This was the content (though it's hard to read):

 

This is how the programs were set up at the entrance of the ceremony space. I got the "C" and "N" letters from Hobby Lobby, and the Ampersand from Etsy. (It's amazing how anal I was about finding the just-right ampersand). I also got the turquoise luggage from Etsy.

This display was near the door to enter Salvage One, on the route to the designated ceremony space. On the smaller left table is the guest book; the hanging tags are the place cards; the albums are profiles of our Bridal Party; and the birdcage, bought from West Elm, held all the cards we received.

Close-up of place cards that I printed on kraft business cards, then hand stamped the numbers on. Also attached, behind the name/number was a card with the phone number for a local taxi cab company (safety first).

Close up of Guest Book table. All the small signs were displayed in cheap Ikea pedestal frames.

I made the Guest Book out of an old Rolodex purchased on Etsy, along with a variety of scrapbook paper. (It was super annoying to cut the paper to fit the Rolodex properly-- I'm happy with how it turned out, but would probably never replicate the project again!!!)

The dinner tables were decorated in a variety of configurations, similar to the one shown above. I crazily did have a calculation for how many flower arrangements and candles (and what corresponding mason jar size) went on each table. The venue uses whatever they have in stock at the time to furnish the room, which was a huge selling point for us. Since they sell such quality pieces, we knew we wouldn't have to do table cloths, chair covers, etc; we could just rely on the furniture's natural beauty. The challenge was that the tables came in all shapes and sizes (so doing table assignments was a real treat)- anywhere from 4 top to 12 top.

When we got engaged, I set my mom out on a mission to collect as many mason jars as she could get her hands on. For nearly two years, she scoured the Chicagoland area garage sales, and managed to save us a TON of money on mason jars. Though they clearly aren't the biggest expense when it comes to weddings, it was a huge help! So once the wedding drew near and we had our final numbers, the layout took form, along with the table sizes, so I came up with a master list of what size (and how many) mason jars went on each table...and also what went in them (flowers or candles). It goes without saying, I'm nuts. But it seemed to be helpful on the day of the wedding when it was pure chaos and my awesome bridesmaids were able to follow the map and set things out for me. I can only imagine what they thought when I handed over that map to them, haha. I digress.

So yeah, the tables were decorated with mason jars filled with flowers (more on that later) or candles, a menu card (more on that later), and some vintage flash cards purchased from Two-Sided in Chicago (with help and thanks to Maggie) as well as on Etsy. (I was also crazy about making sure that the flash cards only had words that were applicable to dinner or group gatherings).

We didn't go expensive on the flowers. Just used some ranunculas (the most expensive of the bunch), yarrow, queen anne's lace (which my mom suggested we could get for free on the side of the road heading up to Wisconsin, but we do have some self control, haha), and craspedia. We only used real craspedia for the bouquets. For the table arrangements, if you look closely, you'll see they are actually made of felting wool. A couple of my serious awesome bridesmaids helped me make a bunch of these (with a tutorial found on pinterest), saving us a few hundred dollars on the flowers!