Wedding Blog

Over Thanksgiving I (finally!) officially asked four special ladies if they would be my bridesmaids. Because we are having a small destination wedding, Mr. Kitten and I opted for a small wedding party. All of our friends will be traveling to the Cayman Islands to attend our wedding (and dropping a substantial amount of dough along the way), so we didn’t want to have 16 people adding bridal party expenses to their tabs. Because Mr. Kitten and I have quite a few siblings between the two of us, and since we are close to them and would have included them in the wedding party anyway, we decided to keep it all in the family.

Mr. Kitten is having his two brothers and my brother as groomsmen. He called them a few months ago and asked them if they would do him the honor. They all said yes, and to Mr. Kitten’s delight, each expressed interest in buying a tan suit for the wedding, as opposed to renting a tux.

I am having my cousin, two sisters, and sister-in-law as my bridesmaids. The numbers will be uneven, but one of my sisters is twelve, so she is actually a “junior bridesmaid” (and very proud of that title, having graduated from her prolific career as a flower girl). When I was back home in Houston, I took my sisters, sister-in-law, and mom (Cousin Kitten lives in North Carolina) to a “girl’s lunch” where I gave them cards asking them to be my bridesmaids. I made the cards in a flurry of finals-induced crafting procrastination.

Here is the front of the card I made for Cousin Kitten (who is my Maid of Honor):

Here is a shot of the inside, which was the same for all of the girls (except the “Maid of Honor” part):

Here is an up-close shot of the picture on the inside. The main picture is from uglydress.com, and I pasted (literally, with glue) our heads onto the picture. I am TOTALLY Photoshop illiterate, and considering the fact that my wedding was four months away and I hadn’t officially asked the girls to be my bridesmaids yet, I figured that I didn’t have time to learn how to use the Photoshop software before I started to make the card, so I had to improvise!

Another close-up of the inside. The others say “Bridesmaid” where this one says “Maid of Honor”.

Here is a shot of the back, where I put our wedding date.

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Here are the materials I used:

• 5 sheets of 8.5×11 blue textured card stock
• 1 sheet of aqua textured card stock
• 1 sheet of white textured card stock
• 2 sheets of pearly white card stock with an embossed pattern
• photo paper

• embossing ink
• embossing heat tool
• aqua embossing powder
• white embossing powder
• stamping block
• capital letter stamps
• lower case letter stamps

• paper cutter
• scissors
• corner rounder
• black photo corners
• glue stick
• bone folder

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Whew! That sounds like a lot of materials, but if you have already done some crafting projects, you probably have most of these materials. I haven’t done a craft project since the 7th grade, so I bought all my materials new at Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby has great sales, so if you wait for them, you can probably buy most of these items at a discount.

Step 1:
[If you use Photoshop, you can do this step entirely on the computer.] Print your favorite picture of ugly wedding dresses onto photo paper. Next, print out pictures of each of your bridesmaids. Cut out their faces and glue them to the printed picture. Scan the new picture and print four copies of the cut-and-pasted version on photo paper. Trim the edges of the photo paper so that there is about 1/4 inch of white space on the sides of each picture.

Step 2:
With the help of the bone folder, fold the blue card stock in half, “hamburger style”. Place a black photo corner on each of the four corners of the photo. Make sure the photo corners fit snugly. Carefully place the photo onto the center of the inside top flap of the card. When you are happy with the placement, press down on the photo corners to make sure that they are secure.

Step 3:
For the cover of the card, use the pearly white embossed paper to create a background design. I made two cards with hearts on the cover and two with rectangles (shown in the pictures). Use corner rounders to soften the edges of both the hearts and rectangles. Paste the design to the front of the card. With the aqua paper, cut a narrow rectangle large enough to stamp the bridesmaid’s name on it. Round off the edges with the corner rounder.

Step 4:
Arrange the capital letters to create a bridesmaid’s name on the stamping block. Stamp each girl’s name onto the piece of paper using embossing ink. The name will be clear and barely visible. Immediately apply the white embossing powder to the stamped area. Remove the excess powder by tapping it on a hard surface so that the stamped name is the only area with powder left on it. Use the embossing heat tool to heat the name, from the underside, until the embossing powder melts. Make sure you don’t overheat the embossing powder– heat it just enough so that it is melted and smooth, but not enough so that it is cracked and bubbly. Repeat this step for the “will you be my“, “bridesmaid“, and “[heart]” pieces on the inside of the card. Also, for the “will you be my” square, I added some white card stock for backing so that it would stand out.

Step 5:
For the back of the card, cut out a small heart from the pearly embossed paper. Following the instructions in step 4, use the number stamps and the period to emboss your wedding date onto the back of the card. Glue the heart above the date.

Step 6:
Take your girls out for coffee, lunch, or a cupcake and give them the cards, telling them how special it would be if they would stand by your side on your wedding day. We went to Sugarbaby’s, a cute cupcake bakery in Houston, for some treats.