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The little figurines that will top our cake belong squarely in the Things Only Miss Dragon Cares About column. But I want Mr. Dragon to think they’re awesome. And I want him to be willing to display them post-wedding, which means they really have to be awesome.
My first thought was finding a topper that had something to do with motorcycles. Remember our proposal story? It’d be perfect…except bike toppers seem to cater to the badass Harley crowd, and we’re really more big ol’ Honda people. We’re still badass, though, don’t worry. I scoured the web, but there are no miniature brides and grooms riding miniature Gold Wings out there, and a custom job would cost far too much moolah to really be worthwhile.
I considered those cute little clothespin people that look just like the bride and groom, but I didn’t think it was unique enough to knock Mr. Dragon’s socks off. I thought about something featuring cats, because we have three of ‘em. I even thought about a bride and groom moose couple, because Mr. Dragon calls me moose instead of dear. (I’ve since become accustomed to being compared to a giant beastly woodland creature.) I thought about a lot of things…and then the best topper idea yet lodged itself in my brain.
I dig this idea so much that I want to make it a surprise for my groom, so…
If all you knew about me was that one of my favorite stores is Hobby Lobby and one of my favorite websites to browse is Etsy, you might think I was a pretty crafty woman…FALSE.
As much as I love to look at homemade art, furniture, decor, etc., I suck at actually making anything. But when it comes to putting together elements of our wedding I really want to try and break my streak of being craft challenged. Thanks to a million wedding magazines and blogs, I have come up with a list of DIY projects for our wedding I am pretty sure I can do. (With some help here and there.)
1. Our Love Story Chalkboard Timeline. I am obsessed with this thing. I love the idea of paying homage to all the important dates throughout our 10-year history. Plus, what is more fun than a chalkboard in a pretty frame?
Image via Delightfully Engaged / Photo by Ashley Photographer
2. Photo Display. Our venue has a really gorgeous 100-year-old clothesline that I knew would be perfect for a photo display. It will have to be lightweight, so I am planning on making something along the lines of this:
I made it out to the city recently, to stock up on cat food, good bagels, hummus, and blessed Starbucks. There were three main highlights of the trip:
Personal photos unless indicated
Hallelujah! I bought in bulk just in case I can’t stock up quickly in the future.
You might be wondering what this has to do with ampersands. Well, I bought these too:
If you recall my very own Mason jar manifesto, you’ll remember that instead of fancy glasses we’re having Mason jars at the wedding. Specifically, we’re providing Mason jars that our guests can choose and label themselves.
I’ve been pondering how to tell our guests that the jars are for drinking. While cleaning the house I found a silver picture frame I bought for under five dollars a long time ago at a thrift store. It wasn’t playing host to anything particularly special, just some pretty patterned scrapbook paper. It’s a three-windowed frame and is quite fun and sparkly, so it got the wheels in my head turning.
All photos personal
Ta-da! It’s not perfect, but I like it. Lining up those three windows was a huge pain in the butt, though.
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
Our guest-table tablescapes have gone through many, many iterations before we finally decided on something. Our venue rental includes a pretty extensive variety of linens for no extra cost, so we started there.
I happen to have a serious love affair with champagne pintuck fabric. Unfortunately, our venue considers pintuck fabric to be an “upgrade” and thus charges extra for it. Twenty-five dollars per piece extra for tablecloths, to be exact. No thanks. Solid linens are included in our venue-rental price, so we decided to go with solid sage green tablecloths:
This swatch looks a little darker than it actually is. / Image via Linen Showroom
And we’ll compromise by getting champagne pintuck napkins, which are only a dollar apiece extra. (So yes, I’ll be paying up to $115 for napkins if everyone attends, but that is how much I love champagne pintuck.)
I’ve always loved the idea of naming our tables after something unique to us and musicals seemed like the perfect fit. But in doing so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too cheesy. When we first talked about musical table numbers I thought it had cheesy potential written all over it. To help make it fit with the vintage feel our our venue, we decided to stick with musicals from the 20s, 30s and 40s. While I love me some Wicked and Avenue Q, those musicals are a little to modern.
We then had the brilliant idea of choosing a song from each musical and putting a quote from the song on our table numbers. We took this even one step further by making a playlist with each table’s song to play during dinner. To be honest, most people probably won’t notice, but we will! And we had such a fun time choosing the musicals, songs, and versions of the songs to add to our playlist. Here are some of my favorites:
“I’m talking in my sleep about you… I love you a bushel and a peck you bet your pretty neck I do!“
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I ordered this glorious shiny, silky, silver yarn with just a bit of stretch to it…and promptly tossed it in the “wedding stuff” bin and ignored it until I jump-started my wedding crafting again.
Image from Etsy seller bjweib
I had purchased it mainly for making yarn-wrapped jars for our centerpieces, a concept I blogged about earlier. It turned out that my silver yarn is awesome for that purpose because the stretch to the material really keeps it on the jars tightly. I also picked up some funky yellow ombre yarn, which I like just because it’s fun.
Why am I showing you my kitchen table?
Photos personal unless indicated
Because it’s empty and clean, which means I FINALLY got back to some wedding crafting!
Waaay back in September, I was in the city, which naturally meant a trip to Walmart, the only big-box store around. I was itching to buy something wedding related, so I grabbed two 25-yard rolls of yellow offray ribbon. I didn’t really know what to do with it until I saw this picture that has since showed up on many an inspiration board:
As in, it’s sucking away all of my time. You may have noticed several images from Pinterest on this here blog. It’s no surprise, really — my first wedding pin went up pretty much as soon as I got home from our bike trip, ring on finger.
The problem is that my wedding board is getting larger and larger and larger… and I’m not really doing anything with the things I’m pinning. I’ve made a few Pinterest-inspired projects, yes, namely the yarn jars, and the origami hearts that have yet to find a purpose.
I thought I’d round up some of my favourite pins and explain how I will use them in my planning process, instead of just admiring them as pretty pretty pictures.
[Image from Ruffled / Photo by Eric Lundgren]
At this point, we have been engaged for fifteen months. I have been touting the fact that we have had a long engagement so I am able to have so much time do everything. So what do I decide to do two months before the wedding?
Oh ya know, change almost all of my projects. Nothing like a little procrastination and excitement to get my booty moving.
Why the sudden switcheroo? Well, I blame the damn linens.
You see, our wedding package comes with upgraded lamour colored linens. Lamour is a beautiful luxurious fabric. I am ecstatic that we are able to have this option because it is really going to add a nice touch to the tables.
We decided to do simple white lamour table cloths. Now, why would I choose white when I could choose any other color?
Because apparently I am obsessively crazy about color…or so I have come to learn.
Read more…
Hive, I am a total copycat. I ganked this idea from many bees before me. I feel like Weddingbee exists to share—these were shared, and I went OOH! Gimme! (Yes, my inner monologue is a five-year-old.) But from the first time I saw them, in a post by Miss Gazelle, I knew I needed them. What am I talking about?
Why, Moo mini cards, of course!
These teeny little cards are printed with a single line of text or graphic on one side and an assortment of images on the other. Far more creative bees have discussed their use—as placecards, in save the dates, for trivia or picture-uploading details. Once we had chosen a save-the-date design, I quickly figured out how we could include them and they shot to the top of my “to-buy” list.
But I own my graphic-design suckage, and put the entire thing into the hands of my trusty graphic-design artist, Audrey. I gave her the information I wanted on one side, uploaded a gaggle of our favorite engagement pictures (more on those soon, though you’ll get a sneak peek of several now), and told her to choose the pictures best suited to the design parameters and to make them cute. She did just that—I swear the girl’s a saint! I placed the order and then the cutest little box filled with the cutest little cards arrived in the mail…look!
We Audrey chose nine images for the picture side, so we got a set of eleven-ish of each of these.
or, Misadventures in Wedding Crafting
or, Holy Sh*t, I’m A Dumbass
It all started when I saw the wooden letters that Mrs. Poodle posted as inspiration.
Image via We Met In A Bar / Photo by Studio 7
I loved the idea, but I thought, hey, why not make those say “Mr & Mrs” instead? It’s the first time we’ll ever get to be called Mr. and Mrs., so might as well flaunt it, right? I thought they’d make for a cute photo-op if they sat in front of us on the head table. (Y’know, the Mr. and Mrs. with a sign that says “Mr & Mrs”?)
So I went hunting for letters, and found a plethora of different styles. The ones I liked the best didn’t stand up on their own. (Of course! Why would anything be easy?) So I brainstormed and thought I’d mount them on pretty paper in a picture frame instead. I bought my supplies and set to work, thinking this would be a quick and straightforward project.
I’ve had guestbooks on the brain for a while, and I knew I wanted something that would become a keepsake after the day, not just sit in a box and gather dust for 50 years. Maybe I’m weird in this, but signing a “traditional” guestbook, where guests just sign their names on the next available line, has always reminded me of signing a funeral register.
NO FUN ALLOWED / Photo via Carter Funeral Home
Not exactly a vibe I want at the wedding. Plus, why would we just want to read our guests’ names line by line? We wouldn’t, is the answer. If we want a list of who was there we can keep a copy of our finalized guest list. No, I wanted a guestbook with a bit more personality and meaning than that.
I actually got my idea for the guestbook in December of 2010, way before we were even engaged. (That happened a lot.) We were at Mr. Wizard’s cousin’s wedding, and they had a giant photo mat for everyone to sign. I thought it was the cutest idea—guests could write messages, draw little pictures, and whatever else, and then the couple could hang it with a wedding photo in their home to always have their guests’ well wishes there on display. I loved it! Much better than writing your name on a line in a book.
As an unengaged lady I often found myself saying things like “Oh, I wouldn’t do that in my wedding. That’s so unnecessary!” I’ve since realized that’s a) really judge-y and b) easy to say when you aren’t the one tasked with the whole wedding thing.
A Practical Wedding (reading stories from real life brides on this site often serves to talk me down from wedding-related ledges) talks about how you don’t have to buy “all the things.” I know that, intellectually, but then I go and buy this doodad or that pretty yarn or this necklace and that bracelet because, somehow, it is so important.
Case in point: Dad Dragon and P. Dragon have taken on the task of bottling wine for the wedding. Dad offered and we accepted, because it’s far easier for them to do it down in Southern Ontario and travel with it for an hour than it is for us to sort it out from way up here. He emailed last week to let me know the process had started.
“Do you want custom [Mr. and Miss Dragon] labels?” he asked. “I could source them out if you’d like.”
One of the things that I’ve always dreamed of having at my wedding is icicle lights on the non-guest tables: head table, buffet table, cake table, etc.
Photo and event design by Designs by Lisa
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