Weddingbee Blog

About six months ago, I saw a photo of a wedding project where the bride and groom had used their engagement photos in aisle endcaps. I loved this idea for many reasons: Since we hadn’t done save the dates or engagement announcements, we really hadn’t gotten a chance to use our e-photos, and I’m kind of obsessed with them. I also knew we weren’t going to have much of a budget for our ceremony decor, so flowers were out of the picture. With a garden wedding, flora probably won’t be missed, but I did want something to fancy things up.

Hive, I searched and searched for that original inspiration pic so I could show it to you. Apparently I hadn’t saved it on my hard drive, printed it out, or bookmarked it. I Googled every combination and searched every wedding site I frequented. So I’m now convinced the whole idea came to me in a dream. Which is fine.

Materials

• Two colors of card stock in our wedding colors (gray for the main piece, and pink for the border piece)
• Our engagement photos
• A Fiskars lace border punch
• Zip Dry paper glue
• Pink ribbon
• X-acto knife
• Cutting mat
• Fiskars personal paper cutter (my buddy)

Step 1

First I had to cut all our engagement photos to the same size. Since some were vertical and some horizontal, I just placed a horizontal shot over a vertical one, moved it so it framed the section well - no cut off heads, etc. - and made little marks. I did the same vice versa, and then cut them all to size with my X-acto knife, cutting mat, and a T-square. My personal paper cutter’s blade is starting to dull, and I wasn’t sure I could swiftly cut through the photo paper, so I didn’t leave much up to chance.

Step 2

Then I placed an e-pic over the gray paper and marked off 1″ on all sides to give it a decent border. I used my small paper cutter here. I did the same thing with the pink paper, marking about 1 cm on all sides so there would be just a hint showing.

Step 3

I punched a lace border around the edges of the gray paper with the lace border punch - it was kind of tricky to get the corners just right, but even if they’re not perfect, it’s barely noticeable in the context of a lace pattern.

Step 4

Then I just basically eyeballed a location for two little slits in the gray paper, where one end of the ribbons would be secured. I stuck one end of each ribbon in each slit, and secured with a little bit of Zip Dry. I wanted to be able to leave the other ends loose to tie however loose or tight they’d need to be to stay on the chairs, rather than relying on one continuous ribbon piece that would simply hang, and might blow off if there was any wind.

Step 5

Finally, I glued the pink piece down with Zip Dry, and glued the photo on top of that.

Et voila!

I’m really excited about how these turned out - pleasantly, they’re better than they were in my mind.

And while I was at it, I whipped out the card box sign, also. Since we’re using a bird cage, I built the ribbon here to act the same way as the aisle endcaps, so it could be tied around one of the bird cage spokes, etc.

Sorry about the crappy picture - I’m impatient and apparently can’t wait until the next day, when there’s decent light.

Did you take on a lot of paper projects? How are you handling your ceremony decor? Are you using your engagement photos in any decorative way during the ceremony or reception?

*All personal photos