Weddingbee Blog

Hive, it’s the end.

The end of Wizard wedding crafting.

There were two major DIYs left on our to-do list: programs and wine-cork place cards. (I know I said we weren’t going to do either of those, but after that bout of apathy wore off, we decided to do them after all. And I’m glad we did.) We had to wait until the very end to do these, though, because obviously we needed to finalize things like ceremony order, processional songs, and reception table seating. Once we figured all that out, it was all systems go for our last two DIYs.

First, the place cards. We ended up buying a kit of print-your-own place cards from Michaels, and printed them using the same font from our invitations (which is called Windsong, in case anyone is wondering). The cards were intended to be tent cards, but we just cut off the back part of the “tent” so that we just had flat place cards. Mr. Wiz’s dad sanded the bottoms off our corks with a belt sander, and cut a slit for the cards in the tops of them using a small saw, and that was that.

I’ll show you our photographer’s and videographer’s place cards as examples, because theirs won’t need any blurring of names:

Next, a minor DIY: some signs for around the reception to tell guests some random bits of information. These we simply printed out on ivory resumé paper and framed in gold frames from the thrift store.

First, the cupcake sign, because we are putting our cupcakes at the end of our dinner buffet for ease of logistics, and we want to make sure guests feel comfortable taking their cupcakes before we cut our cake.

Next, the bar sign. Our venue closes the bar for an hour during dinner, so that the bartenders (who are also our venue owners and coordinators) can work on other tasks during that time.

And the guestbook photo mat sign, which I hinted at making before.

And finally, my favorite, and the very last wedding project I’ll ever do: programs.

I designed these myself, as usual, using Adobe InDesign. There’s not much I can tell you about these that wouldn’t be explained better in pictures, so I’ll just let you have a look-see:

Front cover, and please ignore our messy kitchen in the background. Embarrassing.

Inside

On the left we have a list of the bridal party and a list of close family members who have passed away. In the middle we have an explanation of our self-uniting ceremony, and on the right we have the order of events in the ceremony.

And the back side

On the left is a “thank you” note to thank our guests for supporting us and for coming to the wedding, and a John Lennon quote (or Robert Browning, depending on who you talk to, but we know it from the John Lennon song so that’s who we credited). On the middle-back are the lyrics to “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce, which is an incredibly simple, romantic song. We were going to include this as a reading in our ceremony, but in the end we decided to nix all readings because we couldn’t think of anyone fitting to read them. We had an empty panel on our programs, so I thought it would be the perfect place to still be able to include those words.

To fold these programs, my dad lent us his fancy-pants (and ancient) tri-folding machine.

You stick the paper in the “IN” slot, and the machine pulls the paper from your hand and spits it out the other slot all tri-folded. Except that mostly the machine did this:

After wasting about 10 programs, we decided to stop with the machine and just do them by hand. I now have blisters on my thumbs from making all those creases, but it was well worth it.

We purchased a program basket in our wedding colors and made a sign using the same paisley print paper from our invitations:

I’m not positive those ribbons are going to stay.

And that, hive, was really and truly the end. No more wedding crafts for us. The only things left on our to-do list are logistical things like “purchase beer for reception,” “gather up extension cords,” “pack the car,” that sort of thing. Oh, and I have that small task of making 74 more cupcakes in the next week and finding freezer space for them all…y’know, no biggie.

What were your last wedding crafts? How did you feel when you finished them?

*All photos in this post are personal.