Cruisin' in the Fast Lane: Practice Makes Perfect!

The day before our rehearsal my mom and sister came home from a shopping extravaganza with some new snazzy dresses to wear to the rehearsal. They pulled them out to show me and they were almost IDENTICAL to the dress I was planning to wear. Cue panicked drama!

This is the dress I was going to wear. Fear not though. I've owned the dress for forever and have worn it a multitude of times pre and post wedding.

Source

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So, of couse I had to go shopping. Duh. Ryan and I spent the morning running errands and then frantically hit up the mall to find a stand in. I finally found the perfect yellow dress to wear only to spill make-up on it as I was walking out the door. Doh! So I ended up in another dress that I brought from Kansas. Drama. Drama. Drama.

We arrived at the church a little early to preview everyone's outfits for the wedding since we hadn't seen most of our bridal party in 6 months to a year.

Some Walking

Tired Bridesmaids

The rehearsal was like most we processed, recessed, processed, recessed, processed, and recessed one more time for good measure. Once we had sufficiently walked over five miles we headed down the street for a little dinner.

We arrived to a beautifully decorated restaurant (thanks to MIL) and sat down to eat some grub.

 And finally we opened some gifts!

 Photos courtesy of Bridesmaids Aida and Lynsey!

DIY Invitations Part III: Love/Hate Relationship with a Printer

IF YOU ARE A GUEST TURN AWAY NOW

UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE OUR SUPER AWESOME WEDDING INVITATIONS BEFORE YOU GET THEM IN THE MAIL!

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Alright, for all you suprise-spoilers here is our completely printed wedding invitation suite.

Printing these babies at home saved us a lot of moolah but took FOREVER and A YEAR. I kid you not, we spent the better part of two weekends hand feeding paper into our over-worked printer and we're still not quite finished with some of the inner envelopes.
How did we do it? We stalked a few wedding invitation websites and picked out a few layouts/font combinations that we liked and then played around in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher until we came up with a design we both could agree on. We then nitpicked the wording for a few more days, double and triple checked spelling, and then printed out a few dozen samples on regular computer paper.
Tip #1: Play around with your printers settings. Usually there is an advanced tab that is accessible from the print window. We ended up using an HP matte premium paper setting because there was no cardstock options, set our print quality to best, and custom set our printer paper size to fit each component of our invitation suite.

The invitations were DIY BRIDE'S brand from Michaels so some assembly was required. We printed on the white cardstock, wrapped a piece of black ribbon (included) around the invitation and secured with tape under where the cardstock would lay, finally we attached the cardstock with glue dots (included).

Tip #2: Be patient. Little-miss-grabby-hands here pulled a few paper products off the printer before they had a chance to dry and smeared the ink. Thankfully we had a quite a few extras but it was a easy mistake to avoid.

We included lines that asked when our guests will be arriving and where will they be staying on our response cards to ensure we got everyone's OOT bags to them regardless if they were staying at the hotel we have a room block at or not.

Tip #3: Wait your turn. I tried putting stacks and stacks of the card stock in the printer but inevitably the print would misfeed or grab too many and a few pieces would be ruined. To avoid this we hand-fed each piece of cardstock into the printer which took a really long time but proved to be less wasteful.
Time: Approximately 10-12 hours each day for about 4 days. Capitalize on your down time during this project (ie. when things are printing) and start assembling, applying stamps to envelopes, or any other quick project you can do.
Difficulty level: Medium. I consider myself pretty computer savvy but a few times at was at a loss for words as to why things just weren't printing correctly. My only advise is to keep messing around with it and eventually it will work.
Cost:
-Michael's BRIDE's Invitation Set included invitations, outer envelopes, large response cards (used for details insert), and response envelopes (didn't use): $40 for 40 (purchased with 40% off coupons)= $24
-Michael's BRIDE's all-purpse cards with envelopes: $15 for 40
-Stamps for response envelopes: 1 $0.44 stamp per envelope
-Printer cartridge: We didn't even use a whole cartridge so FREE.
-Test computer paper: Already had lying around so FREE.

Total cost for invitations (made 120): $24 x 3 + $15 x 3 + $0.44 x 120 = $169.80
Total per invitation: $1.42

Grand total per invitation-to-date (invitations, pocketfolds, envelope liners): $2.19

Up next: belly bands, outer envelopes, and mailing them off!!

Invitation Update

Mr. Riley and I got to talking a while ago and decided the menus at every plate was going to be overkill. The meal is plated with a duel entree served so there are no options for guests to choose but we still wanted everyone to see what they were eating. We decided to return our original invitations from Target just because they didn't match the rest of the stationary suite and use what we originally intended to use as menus as our new invitation option. We also saved a little money, which is always good! :)

DIY Card Box

I started off with a plain heavy cardboard round hat box. I then spray painted the entire top of the box and the inside of the bottom of the box with flat black paint. This took approximately two to three light coats and because I had fast drying spray paint took about 2 hours to completely set up.

I order one yard of fabric that matched the fabric of our custom table runners, table squares, and ring bearers pillows (Michael Miller; Dandy Damask in Black). I then dug out my handy dandy hot glue gun, a little stitch witchery, a ruler, and a marking pencil (all things I keep around due to my random crafting urges).

I just measured the height and circumference of the bottom piece of the hat box and cut a piece of fabric to accomodate. I left myself about 2 inches of extra fabric on all sides but you could definitely get away with just an inch. Then I used my stitch witchery to create a hem on all sides, leaving a nice creased finished edge all the way around (sorry for the blurry picture).

I then started at one end and hot glued a thin bead between the fabric and the hat box. I noticed my fabric was exactly the right size (about 3/16" too tall) so I was careful to keep the fabric even across the bottom edge, so the box would still sit evenly. Finally I made a pretty bow out of some white satin ribbon with my Bowdabra (I told you I was a craft junky) and hot glued that centered on the top of the hat box. Viola! Super easy lemon peasy... took approximately 30 min after spray painting.

I still have not decided if I am going to cut a hole somewhere in the box for guests to slip their cards into or just set the top off to the side... What do you think?

Gift Bags

My mom and I found these great reusable grocery bags at A.C. Moore last weekend. They were only $4 (for the pair) and best of all they're "green"! We will be using these for the bridal party gifts and the out of town (OOT) bags to go in the hotel rooms.

Wedding Favors

These stunning votives are Kate Aspen creations that I am OBSESSED with. We will be using these as favors for all of our guests!

Wedding Stationary

I just wanted to share with everyone some of the great buys I purchased at Michael's over the weekend. I will repost with mock-ups once we get closer to the big day but I couldn't help sharing all the great damask products out there.

These were originally supposed to be invitations but we will be using these DIY invitations as our menus at the reception. These were $39.99 for 40 count. This is a little pricey but Michael's always has coupons.

These placecards are a little hard to see but they are white with a little damask border along the left side. These are also DIY from Michael's and cost only $6.99 for 40 count. I think we will add a green bow along the crease of these placecards to jazz them up a little.

These will be the wedding programs. They are simply a black cardstock with layers of white cardstock and finished off with a little bow. They come with white bows but I think we will use our green ribbon to tie in that aspect of our color scheme. These programs came in at $39.99 for 40 count as well.

Damask Linens

These are the table runners we are getting custom made for our recepetion. They will go on the all the tables. We are also getting some table squares made for the sweetheart table and cake table. The fabric is 'Dandy Damask' in black/white by Michael Miller. The vendor, DarlingDamask, at Etsy was kind enough to even throw in two coordinating ring bearer pillows for me! She offers tons of different fabrics, colors, and prints. Love it. Enough said.

Damask Inspiration

I originally planned to do a "preppy" themed wedding with lots of navy blue, grosgrain ribbon, and subtle accents of yellow and green but when I stumbled upon the damask themed weddings those thoughts went completely out the window. I love the table runner and clean lines of this table setup.



The damask with green apple accents is what I am actually going to be using. I'm getting table runners made in this same fabric and hope it looks half as good. I'll put up another post with info about the wonderful Etsy vendor that is making them for me.




I just love these no fuss but classy looking centerpieces. They're just so yummy!!





These table loook so elegant I plan on doing something similar in the foyer and cocktail area at our reception.

Wedding Invitations

The damask wedding invitation kit is from Target. It was $24.99 for 50 count DIY Invitations, Lined Envelopes, Response Cards, Coordinating Envelopes, and Seals. I did not realize that the Response Cards included with the kit were fold-over and they were rather large just to include response card information. I am repurposing those cards to include reception, hotel accomodation, and transporation information.

I then picked up some black and white all-purpose cards made by BRIDES from Michael's. They were $14.99 for 40 count and I will use them for response cards. Viola! A complete wedding invitation set for around $0.87 a person.

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**UPDATE** Although I loved this invitation set, once I bought all the other stationary from the BRIDES collection these just seemed out of place. The BRIDES Collection paper was a slightly different shade of white and was textured while the Target paper was not. We decided to return these and use the BRIDES invitation set that we were going to repurpose as menus as the actual invitations. We will now print a few menus on cardstock and frame them. These will be arranged on the place card table and on the bars.