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I’ve noticed that, in my ever expanding search for wedding decor inspiration, I keep finding things we MUST have.
Like…we MUST have lanterns. MUST have puff balls. MUST have paper heart garlands. MUST have a ribbon chandelier. MUST have mason jars. MUST have stripy straws.
While I imagine these all going together quite nicely in some magical way, our venue really isn’t that big. I can see it quickly starting to look like a bridezilla threw up a rustic chic sandwich.
I also really wish I had an appropriate picture for this.
And then, looking through my pictures for the billionth time, I started to see a recurring theme. It was sort of stripy.. but really more like…
Image via A Lowcountry Wedding | Photo by W Scott Chester
…ribbons!
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Last Christmas Mr. Honey bought me one of those flip-a-day calendars—365 days of cat tips, advice and quotes. There was one recently that said this: “If you plan on having your cat play a role in your wedding, make sure you take her to the site so that she becomes familiar with the space”. HA, yeah right. If you have ever travelled in a car with your cat, you know that they don’t do well under stress. Needless to say, our kitties won’t be with us on our wedding day. As you may or may not remember, our doggy Zeus, will be. We just bought a handsome new leash and his tie should be in any day. I first told you about all four of our furbabies a long time ago, but in light of this post, I will just say again that in addition to Zeus, our three kitties are super dooper special to us. They make us smile and laugh a thousand times a day. Since they can’t be there physically, I wanted to represent them in some way. Enter the adorable phenomenon that is custom cake toppers. Normally couples have themselves customized, but I skipped us and went straight for our pets.
I searched the holy grail of custom toppers, Etsy, and fell in love with too many shops. Most of them came with a high price tag to match, but I finally stumbled upon IttyBittyWoodShoppe and commissioned a topper of just animals for $40. I sent the owner pictures and placed my order. They arrived last week and I put some finishing touches on it and am ready to share!
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I’m an antique/vintage junkie. I like old furniture, old books, and old houses. I like when things feel used and loved, and I like to wonder about the story of the object’s previous owner. Old junk just gives me the warm fuzzies.
The very first piece of furniture I ever purchased on my own was a worn out farmhouse dresser. Its doors had been painted a bright green that I loved, and the rest of the white paint was chipping and yellowed. I fell in love and brought it home (broken handle and all). My dad and Mr. Opossum had to move it up the stairs and into my bedroom. Both of them asked me, at separate times, why I had brought home this nasty old dresser. They were even more appalled when they found out I payed money for it. Ha. I guess it’s something that men just don’t get.
People that do get “it,” however, are wedding bloggers and designers! I feel like I see vintage and rustic wedding inspiration everywhere I turn lately. It’s one of those things that happens to be super trendy right now.
Either way, trendy or not, this love for old stuff has worked its way into the design of our wedding. My mom, my sister, and I went antiquing last weekend to see if we could find anything unique that we might be able to use. I came back with only a few items, but lots of great ideas!
Personal photo
I realize there is a lot going on in this photo, but the thing I was trying to focus on was that awesome old window hanging from the ceiling. I happen to already have an old window in my possession, and I think this chandelier-like idea could be the perfect focal point to hang over our cake table.
The other night, we were at dinner with Mr. Dalmatian’s coworkers discussing marketing (this is what happens when you attend the office holiday party of a start-up company) when one of them commented that if you put a bird on something, girls will buy it. This made me laugh because as I thought about my personal experience and quickly realized: It’s funny because it’s true. This point seems particularly poignant when it comes to weddings. I am quite confident that I am not the only bride who is drawn to anything with a these feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic, egg-laying, vertebrate animal (definition of bird via Wikipedia.com). Perhaps it is because we ourselves feel like little lovebirds.
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| Image via LilyBelleEvents.blogspot.com |
Perhaps it is because birds look so dapper in bowties.
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Where we will actually be standing for our ceremony is pretty bland, aside from the surrounding scenery of a frozen lake and *hopefully* snow covered landscape, so this is where my dreams of a handmade arch came into play. For our wedding arch, we wanted something natural and rustic, to complement the outdoor winter setting. Aspen trees are plentiful in our part of Colorado, and to us, are the perfect winter tree. The white bark is beautiful all by itself, even without the foliage to complement it.
Every year we go out into the National Forest surrounding Durango, hand-pick, and then chop down our Christmas tree. It’s a tradition I’ve participated in with my family for years and years, and now that I have Mr. Honey by my side, it makes the tradition even more special. This year, in addition to the Ponderosa Pine we would be chopping down, we added Aspen trees to list. We bought a permit for $22 which allowed us to cut 20 Aspens down. This not only provided enough trunks to hand build our arch, but we helped thin out our forests, too. Yay for preventing forest fires!
My dad happens to be the most handy, creative man I know. He can build anything, fix anything, and tends to go big when doing so. I left this project in my dad’s very capable hands, after showing him a couple pictures of what I was envisioning, similar to this:
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| Image via Elizabeth Anne Designs/Photo by Apertura Photo |
I know that flowers tend to just die after the wedding (which totally stinks) and that a lot of people consider them a waste of money…but flowers are one of my favorite things about weddings, and they are something I’m willing to put a little bit of money into. I mean, when else are you going to have an excuse to carry around a gorgeous bouquet all day!?
The florist I’m meeting with was highly recommended to me by a friend, and I can’t wait to see what kind of work he’ll be able to do for me on our very limited budget. Luckily, my favorite centerpieces include lots of greenery and filler, so that should help us stay within budget and still have gorgeous flowers!
Because the venue has very dark stained wood paneling and nice, neutral beige walls, we have decided to stick with a very natural color palate for the flowers and the wedding.
Here is some of the inspiration I showed the florist…
I love the shape of this arrangement.
Image via Style Me Pretty / Photo by Gia Canali
I’m hoping our centerpieces will have the fullness and texture of this centerpiece…minus the pink! I promised Mr. Opossum we would not have a super girly wedding.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
Guess who’s back? OK, it’s just for one holiday post, but I loved coming back for the randomizer series and wanted to drop back in and share one of my recent projects.
I have been intrigued by polymer clay ever since we ordered our cake toppers from Etsy seller Mud Cards. Keren did such an amazing job on the first topper, that we had her make a second one as well.
Since our engagement in 2009, I’ve tried to get a different ornament each holiday season to remember that year by. With Christmas around the corner, I started to think about what our ornament for this year would be. Being our first newlywed Christmas, I wanted this ornament to be special and DIY it.
But what should I make?
I threw around a couple of ideas, before I circled back to my original (and favorite) idea, a replica of our wedding cake! After a quick stop at Michael’s, who was having a sale on clay (originally $2.29, on sale 4 for $5), it was time to get started.
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Sheesh—I can’t believe it’s been over two weeks since my last post. So much for coming back “regularly,” huh? Sorry about that. As it turns out, returning from one’s honeymoon right as the holiday season is getting into full swing is perhaps even more crazy-making than wedding planning.
During this time each year, Mr. FW and I typically make a special shopping trip to buy a few new ornaments for our tree, but this year when we looked around at a house full of wedding decorations and honeymoon souvenirs, we just couldn’t imagine trying to cram more stuff into our space. So, what did we do? We re-purposed.
You remember our string balls, right?
Well, after putting in some hard time as our lovely wedding centerpieces (and I can’t wait to show you just how lovely they were!!), some of these lucky balls are once again bringing a little cheer to our lives…
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Before we started wedding planning, I had two speeds when it came to DIY projects: full speed or full stop. I almost never chipped away at a project slowly. I did it all or I didn’t do it. When it came to making our table numbers, I went full speed and got them done…three different times.
I mentioned my first project when I talked about my table number inspiration pictures. I made clay plaques to use as numbers and I didn’t like them. The second round was with IKEA Tolsby frames, which seem to have become a staple of wedding DIYers. I liked the frames, but they didn’t really go with our wedding’s style. Finally, I decided to use this Style Me Pretty picture as inspiration for my third and final attempt at table numbers:
From Style Me Pretty / Photo by Shannon Lee Images
I’ve been going to weddings for ten years and I have never seen table numbers handled in a creative way. This might be why I love seeing pictures of interesting ways to present the numbers on wedding blogs. I knew that I’d be making our table numbers pretty soon into our planning. I just had to find a favorite idea among all the inspirations pictures on my Pinterest boards.
From Elizabeth Anne Designs / Photo by Punam Bean
Mr. Mink, who seems to notice more details than the average groom-to-be, couldn’t fathom what I meant when I talked about our table numbers. I think he was also used to just seeing a simple number on a metal stick. As with all of my DIY projects, he was encouraging and was on board once he saw some pictures.
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Lately I have been trying to catch up on the smaller details. Mainly my Google, Pinterest, and Etsy searches have been dedicated to one thing—card holders. To any “normal” person this may seem a little boring and possibly crazy. But to all of us engaged ladies, I think you can understand my obsession.
What would be the perfect object to house any cards that might show up at the wedding? There are many options: box, bird cage, mailbox. Or how about Mrs. Earrings’ beautiful vintage suitcase card holder. I love all of these, and so my obsessive searching began.
I still came up empty handed, though. You know when you obsess over something too much then all of a sudden you just give up and stop caring? Yeah, that’s what happened to me. I decided to let my brain have a rest and just forget about it.
Well, good things do come to those who wait.
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One of my favorite new wedding trends: overhead decorations. There is something whimsical and celebratory about Chinese lanterns, chandeliers, fabric, or even umbrellas creating a new ceiling for a wedding venue.
I’m not sure I can pull anything like this off at our wedding, but I sure am going to try!
These simple, colorful paper lanterns take this venue from a party to a unique wedding reception.
Image via Real Simple / Photo by Debra McClinton
I love this unique idea from Duet Weddings. They stripped the traditional wedding tent so that the guests could experience the trees overhead, but still used the tent structure to hang draped curtains and beautiful rustic chandeliers.
The more I looked at blogs like Style Me Pretty and Ruffled…the more I was set on having a vintage-themed wedding and vintage-themed tablescapes. I literally think I spent a good 15 hours Googling various combinations of “vintage wedding table” and poring through images. As I showed you all previously, we had narrowed down our “extra centerpiece items” to two choices: vintage books or vintage teapots/china. Which did we choose? Drumroll, please!
Image via Business Insider
We went with the vintage teapots/china.
I have a confession…I love flowers at weddings. I love that they add a scent (our strongest sensory memory, by the way!) and color to the decor palate. I know that they only last a few days and they tend to be expensive, but I can’t help it. I think they are beautiful.
On the other hand, there are some non-floral centerpieces out there that I think are incredibly creative and chic. Some of these options are so romantic and beautiful they just might be enough to sway me in the “non- floral” direction.
This first one is all about setting a mood. It’s simple but still creates a unique touch with all the romantic candlelight.
Photo by Bliss Photography / designed by NLC Productions and La Fete / Image via Style Me Pretty
The second is all about texture. This idea uses a stump and tapered candles wrapped in a variety of twine to create interest in a natural looking centerpiece (that isn’t made of flowers)!
I have seen some pretty amazing card boxes here on Weddingbee and around the internet. Mine probably isn’t one of them, however it’s not too bad on the eyes and will serve its purpose just fine. We bought a printed cardboard box and just had to fold it into shape and tie a bow around it. It’s substantially larger than what we had imagined, but it’s OK because newlyweds are supposed to be optimistic, right?
Total cost of project: $3
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