Weddingbee Blog

There are so many things to manage when you are planning a wedding. After you’ve nailed down all the big things like venues and vendors, you have a million little details to take care of.  And if you’re like me, you were involved in every little detail whether it mattered or not.  I styled and DIY’ed my own wedding, as many of you are doing.  It meant I had to search for ideas, find the best deals, and craft everything on my own.  But, being a type-A, detail-oriented kinda gal, you can imagine how much FUN I had doing all of this…at first.  Do you know what I’m talking about? I’d be super excited when I was inspired with a new idea, but as I started getting into the thick of the project, I’d want to hurry up and finish it. And of course, you never have one project at a time whilst wedding planning. There are always seventy things going on at once. There were many times where I felt like abandoning projects, but let me encourage you—if you are in the thick of wedding planning, hang in there! It’ll all be worth it in the end!

So after I nailed down my vision, a vintage-juxtaposed-with-modern, simple, school-themed reception (hmm when do I have “too much” theme going on?), I began looking for vintage-y decor and designing my own paper goods. Everything had a simple, clean look.

So, let me show and explain all of our reception details. Ready?

This was our guest sign-in table. I made these programs on my computer and printed them out on my printer. Fancy, I know.

Instead of a regular guestbook, I made an address-book box (from a recipe-card box) for people to make their own address cards. This has come in so handy for the holidays! We have EVERYONE’S complete info now!

This was for our candy bar, which was open for the last two hours of the reception. People filled these glassine bags with candy, and I printed little labels for them to seal up their bags.

Here are some shots of the tables before dinner service began. The flowers were DIY. Mr. Lace and I chose which flowers we wanted to use from the Flower Mart and sat down to make a mock-up with Mr. Lace’s aunt. These consisted of three mason jars—a small, medium, and large—and various white and green flowers. We added votives with tealights, too.

I made up little pop-quiz cards. Our emcees were awesome and ran a little pop-quiz game for our guests. The winners took home the centerpieces. The table letters went better with our school names than numbers would have. I spray painted chipboard with chalkboard paint and wrote letters with white paint markers.

I also made these little “Fun and Adventure” books. Inside, guests were able to fill out a little suggestion for something to do together in our married lives (where to go for dessert, dinner, vacation, etc.) and to stick in their photobooth photos.

Since Mr. Lace and I were at the head table, I made this little sign for us.

Cocktails were going to be upstairs. Here were our escort cards. At first, I didn’t want to do escort cards to save myself some time, but because we had three different entree options, each guest had to have something indicating their meal choice.

So, I went from no escort cards to 220 escort cards. You’d think I’d make it easy on myself, but no. I printed each name, cut it on my paper cutter, glued it onto the kraft paper, punched a decorative edge on the bottom, and stapled a specified ribbon for the three meal choices. Easy peasy!

A quick sign with directions, since I’m a teacher. Can you read it?

Last but not least, here are the favor bags I made for the kiddos attending our wedding. Inside, there was an activity book I made, Mad Libs, pencil, and box of crayons.

In the end, it was worth all the trouble of finding decor, making signs, and crafting all the different details of the reception. It was actually kind of fun for me even though it took a lot of time and caused me a lot of stress. For those of you in the midst of crafting and styling your event, hang in there; it’ll all be worth it in the end when you get to see the photos of all your hard work! This is NOT to say I didn’t abandon projects that I didn’t absolutely love. I definitely wanted to do too many things and had to cut many unnecessary projects out.

What are the time- and effort-consuming projects that are driving you nuts?

Missed something?

• We go to the happiest place on Earth.
• I get all dolled up.
• Mr. Lace and I get a peep of each other.
• We had awesome music.
• We took photos.
• We get married!
• We write. We fight. We say our vows.
• Big surprise…I cry.
• We are photo crazed.
• Say cheese!