Inspiration Board- The Wedding Party

This inspiration board is fairly self explanatory. I haven't officially chosen a bridesmaid's dress, but the one picture matches the cut and style of my dress and it comes in a purple that is almost identical to the trim of my dress. The tux is also a work in progress, the one we have pictured is a black tux with an ivory shirt and purple vest/tie. Tom said that he wanted to have at least two buttons on his jacket, but we really aren't putting a lot of planning into men's attire until March when the rental catalogs are updated for 2011. I also have the hopeful flower girl dress, the petals on the skirt are just adorable. I included green hydrangeas, which the bridesmaids will be carrying, along with a hypercum berry boutonnière, which is what the groomsmen will be wearing. The bridesmaids bouquets will also have berries in them for texture. The rose petals are silk, for ease of clean-up in lavender and ivory. I also include my inspiration for a ring bearer's pillow, I will be making something similar to this, I think. Lastly, I included green accessories and purple flip flops, for no particular reason other than inspiration and to see how everything looks. The purpose of choosing long dresses was so that my bridesmaids could wear whatever shoes they wanted, heels, flip flops, army boots, whatever. They can go crazy, I think it would make for some cute pictures.

One Year to Go

Today is a special day, a day to honor where Tom and I have come from, and to look forward with excitement to where we are going. Today is a day best described in pictures.

It hasn't always been an easy journey, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Jenny and Tom
Friends since March of 1999
Became a couple on February 15, 2009
Became engaged on February 8, 2010
Handfasted for a year-and-a-day on March 30, 2010
Become husband and wife on September 10, 2011

DIY Earrings

A couple of weeks ago I posted about making my own bridal jewelry. At the time I made a necklace and a bracelet and I made note that I would be making earrings as soon as I figured out how to make them. Well, I visited various websites, and I got some ideas, but in the end, I opted to make my own design. My inspiration was chandelier style earrings, and I think I pulled it off. I was also able to use left over supplies from my necklace and bracelet, I only needed to buy ear wires.

You will need:
Mono-filament thread
Glass pearls
Glass seed beads
Austrian crystals (eight total)
Ear wires
Scissors

What you do:
1. Cut about three inches of mono-filament thread, knot one end.
2. String on an Austrian crystal, a seed bead, a pearl, a seed bead, a pearl, a seed bead, a pearl, and another seed bead.
3. Thread through the loop on the ear wire and tie a knot.
4. Cut a four inch segment of mono-filament thread, knot one end.
5. String on an Austrian crystal, a seed bead, a pearl, a seed bead, a pearl, a seed bead, an Austrian crystal, a seed bead, a pearl, a seed bead, a pearl, and a seed bead.
6. Thread through the loop on the ear wire and tie a knot.
7. Repeat steps 1-3
8. Repeat the whole process again on the second ear wire.

And now I have a complete set of bridal jewelry!

DIY Pinwheels!

In my free time, I like to surf the web looking for unique wedding ideas to set my wedding apart from everyone else's. Everybody has been to weddings where guests shower the newly married couple in rice/birdseed/rose petals/bubbles/etc. This blog suggested handing out pinwheels and ribbon wands to guests to s pin and shower you with ribbons as you walk down the aisle. I instantly fell in love with the idea, especially because part of the joy of being on the ocean is the near constant wind. The blog happened to provide DIY instructions on making my own pinwheels, so I decided to give it a try. As with all my other projects, I had to tweak the design a little, and I should also give the disclaimer that while the pinwheels look relatively simple, they are a major pain. The first four I made took me about two hours, and I spent the better part of Labor Day making eleven more. Needless to say, I need at least thirty by this time next year, and it will probably be a while before I make the rest of them. That being said, here are the directions!

You will need:
6" squares of paper, I purchased 12" squares from a scrapbook store and cut them down into four 6" squares
Pins, the kind you use for sewing, I used 1 1/2 inch pins with pearls
A fun shaped hole punch, the original directions called for flowers, I used stars, just make sure it is little
12" dowels, 1/4" wide works well
Pencil
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun

What you do:

On the back of the square of paper, draw two straight lines diagonally across the paper from corner to corner, to form and X. With a pin, punch a hole in the center of the X, then punch a hole (again with the pin) in each corner directly under the line. This sounds a little confusing, so I marked with a Sharpie where each pinhole should go in the picture on the right. With your scissors, cut along each line until you are about 1" from the center.

Now take your pin, and put it through what ever shape you used your hole punch to make (star, flower, etc.) This decorates the pin a little and I'm pretty sure it helps protect against friction on the finished product, but I'm not a physics major. Now, with your beautified pin, start threading on each corner through the hole you already punched, working clockwise around the paper. when you are done, go through the center hole. By this point, you should have something that looks pinwheel-like.

Ta-Da!!!

Now onto the hard part. The original directions say to use the pin to poke a hole in the dowel, cover the hole with a small dot of glue, and then put the pin back in. Maybe my dowels were made from oak or something, but I had a difficult time putting the pins in. Several curse words later, my wonderful fiancé offered to help by using a hammer and a small nail to make pilot holes. The next difficulty was getting the pins to stay inside said holes. After much trial and error, what I found worked best was to put the pin in a pre-done pilot hole, squeeze a good gob of hot glue over the pin and dowel, and hold everything straight until the glue set. Once the glue hardened, I could then clean things up a bit by breaking off the excess. The important part is to sort of squish the pinwheel up towards the pinhead while gluing so that the paper doesn't touch the glue, as this would make spinning rather difficult.

Once the glue was dry, I gave each one a test drive to make sure that it spun, and added it to my collection. As much of a pain in the butt as they are to make, when they are all together in the silver bucket, they look absolutely adorable, and I'm sure my guests will like the change from the norm. I plan on making ribbon wands too, so that guests have a choice, but that will have to wait until after Christmas, when ribbons go on sale. Until next time!

DIY Flower Cones

In regards to ceremony decorations, there is not much that I can do to compete with the natural beauty of Fort Popham and the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop. So I decided to keep things simple. I have a personalized aisle runner to mark the aisle and to protect my dress from the ground, my mother is going to help me decorate a wedding arch for the ceremony to take place under, and I made flower cones to hang at the end of each row of seats for an added bit of decoration to my aisle. I opted to make flower cones because they are different from standard pew bows, and I think they add a nice touch. They are also extremely easy to make and cost effective. For eight flower cones, I purchased eight sheets of cardstock at 25 cents a sheet, and four spools of ribbon, on clearance, for 97 cents each for a grand total of just under six dollars. My inspiration for making flower cones is from this site, although I ended up making my own subtle changes.


For each flower cone, you will need:

• A sheet of cardstock
• Approximately 36" of coordinating ribbon
• Scissors
• Scissors that make a decorative edge
• Hole punch
• Hot glue

I started out by trimming my cardstock into 8"x8" squares. The cardstock that I chose is double sided, the side I have on the outside is ivory with a linen texture. Trim the top and right side with the decorative edge scissors. Next is the tricky part, roll the cardstock into a cone shape, I rolled mine with the left edge on top. I found it takes some fussing with the paper to get it to come to a point, but with patience it is possible. Once I made my cone, I ran a bead of hot glue under the overlap to hold everything in place.

The next step, once your cone is assembled, is to use your hole punch to punch five holes: one in the exact center of the front, one hole about 1/2 an inch away from the center hole on either side, and two holes on the back point. Now, take your ribbon, and run it from the inside of your cone to the outside through each of the back holes, leaving a loop for hanging. you want both ends of ribbon to be fairly even, so adjust accordingly. Now, wrap the ribbon around the outside of the cone, and go through the first hole, come back out the center hole. Repeat on the other side. This is where you can get creative. You can tie a bow in the ribbon and call it finished or go ahead an embellish it any way you want. I used a wide ribbon for my flower cones, so I opted to tie a knot and hot glue a seashell over the knot with the remaining ribbon hanging like streamers. Overall, the result is very elegant, and I like I said, easy to assemble.

My flower cones are going to be filled with green and purple hydrangeas. The white roses above were just added to the finished design so that I could get an idea how it would hang with flowers in it. I made all eight of mine in a little over an hour, minus the time it took to take an emergency trip to the craft store to buy more ribbon. I'm really pleased with how they turned out, I keep pulling them out of my wedding box to look at them, it's like I can't believe I made something that looks so elegant. The icing on the cake is that you can purchase handmade flower cones online through various crafting sites for upwards of $10 EACH. I didn't even spend a dollar each for mine, and they are custom for my wedding and theme. Until next time!

Engagement Pictures

I was really excited to get engagement pictures done, primarily because up until now, Tom and I didn't have any really nice pictures of the two of us. Tom is not a fan of having his picture taken, so I am eternally grateful that he gave us two hours of is time and about 65 pictures worth. The least I can say is that I am more than thrilled with the results. One of the benefits of having my mom take the pictures was that we got to pick the exact time that would be best without much advance notice. We wanted pictures taken both at our ceremony venue and at the beach, and when I woke up the morning after Hurricane Earl had passed to bright blue skies, I knew that Saturday was the day. Even if it was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, sure we had crowds to face, but in the end it was well worth it. At Fort Popham we played with the architecture of the fort, and took full advantage of deep window sills that I could sit in, the spiral staircases, and the archways. Tom was a little hesitant at first, like I said, he doesn't like having his picture taken. He eventually loosened up a bit, put the presence of the camera out of his head, and that's when we started getting the nicest shots; the kisses, the cuddles, at one point we even started waltzing in the old fort.

Our intention was to take the second set of shots at Popham Beach, but the holiday tourists made that rather difficult. Not a problem, we got back in the car and headed to another beach that is not as well known. We were greeted with huge waves from the remnants of Earl out to see, truly an awesome back drop for pictures. Tom and I walked along the beach and looked at the waves. Originally, we were only going to walk along the beach without getting wet, but mother nature had some other plans. By the end of the afternoon I was soaked from the waist down, but it was all in fun. We got some nice shots, and the ocean was gorgeous, as always.

I set up an album on photobucket with all our engagement pictures, if you would like to check them out, click here. That is about all that I have to say for today, I have tons of crafting projects underway, so stay tuned for more DIY posts.

Inspiration Board- My Nautical Wedding Reception

So this is probably my last inspiration board for a while, I made one for the bride (ME!) but I then decided that it would probably be best if I kept that board for myself, since it has a picture of MY dress on it... wouldn't want to be giving away fun surprises now would we? Anyways, back the the current inspiration board. Tom and I both want our reception to start out elegant with a nice cocktail hour with various hors d'oeuvres, a plated sit-down dinner, formal toasts, our first dance, etc. then the reception will digress into a dance party so we can all have some fun. My inspiration board focuses on the formal part of the reception, I want to use a Maine/nautical theme throughout, but I don't want to go overboard with it (no nautical themed clothing or sailor hats here!)  But little nautical touches here and there to bring everything together. The reception area is already decorated with sailboats, so to repeat that as centerpieces just works. Then the whole seashell thing came into being, specifically starfish and sand dollars. There is just a natural beauty to them, and being that the wedding is set on the coast of Maine, they also happen to be an easy thing to get a hold of. The top right corner features a sweetheart table, which is in lieu of a more traditional head table. I like the idea of me and Tom having a table to ourselves, even if it is just for dinner. I think that's about it. Tom and I had our engagement pictures taken yesterday. For those of you that are my friend on facebook, you've already gotten to see them. For everyone else, you'll have to wait until tomorrow's post. 

Inspiration Board- Wedding Stationary

Have I mentioned that I love making inspiration boards? The one I made yesterday made my whole ceremony suddenly come alive. It's still over a year away, but now I can see my vision really coming to life. Next up, as you can see, is wedding stationary. The two big pictures are my inspiration for my invitations, I'm going to use the picture invite as the base for my pocket folds. The pocket folds will be ivory linen, and the invitation base will be the purple square up there. As for everything else, I put up some random things that I like for inspiration. The more I look into it, the more I realize just how huge of an undertaking it is going to be to DIY all my stationary. The only exceptions picture above are the possible cookie-cutter favors (so cute!) and the napkins. Good thing I have a year to go! Bring on the paper cuts!

Inspiration Board- My Purple and Green Oceanside Ceremony

DIY Wedding Stationary, or, the beginning to the ultimate "Labor of Love"

Pocketfold invitations, NOT mine

Wedding stationary is a quintessential part of the whole wedding planning process. The invitation is traditionally the first thing that guests see in regards to your wedding and is supposed to indicate the style, tone, and formality of the ceremony and reception. This being said, wedding stationary is ridiculously expensive. About six months ago, when I was first engaged, I came across this blog and immediately fell in love with the idea of pocketfold invitations. For those of you out of the wedding-lingo loop, a pocket fold is sort of like a folder that goes around the invitation in place of the second "inner envelope" with a pocket to hold the various invitation inserts (RSVP cards, reception cards, etc.). It looks really snazzy, as illustrated in the picture to the left. With an idea in mind, I hit up various wedding invitation websites to get a price idea of just how much my snazzy pocketfold invitations would cost. My jaw hit the floor. $300 for 50 pocketfold invitations, in an ugly black, and that did not include the various inserts that go inside the pocket. I also fell in love with another invitation that utilized a picture of the couple, only $200 for 50 invitations, envelopes and various inserts not included (note sarcasm). This was when a light bulb went off over my head that I could probably make invitations that were a combination of both invitations that caught my eye for significantly cheaper. Fast forward to today. I found this website which sells a variety of different types of paper, including my pocketfolds, already assembled, for $36 for 50 of them. I played around, found all the supplies that I needed, and for around $100 and change I will be able to make my dream invitations, menus, place cards, table numbers, and put a good dent in my programs. Take that expensive engraved invitations, I knew my scrapbooking skills would come in handy someday.