Table Tent Cards...Done!

Whew! Time is winding down until the Stiletto festivities, so every D-I-Y must get D-O-N-E. Fortunately, I've been able to spend the past two weekends hunkered down in our condo getting some projects started and finished.

Remember when I shared the pictures Mr. S took for our table numbers? Well, I've finally been able to get the project completed!

We had 5x7" prints made of the pictures (and ordered 2 copies of each just in case we had any problems and needed a backup!). I mounted them on white cardstock and created tent cards.


Because I was using 8.5 x 11" cardstock with 5x7" pictures, the cardstock wasn't long enough to make a tent card with what was there. So, I cut strips of cardstock 2.5 x 7" and used those for the bottom - if you look you can see the patch!


I'd been putting off finishing this project, but once I sat down and got it started, it flew by! I do have to admit that I was feeling a bit down about doing the tent cards instead of black frames, which I thought would look nicer (but which I didn't really want to spend the money on), but I love the final result! I think frames would have distracted from the pictures.

Did a simple DIY project turn out better than you expected?

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Leave Your Message...After the Picture!

We went through a million ideas for our guest book - from an adorable "wish tree" to a typewriter tell-all to everything in between. We finally settled on the Polaroid guest book. It incorporates Mr. S's love of photography and it's an interactive element with our guests.

Since we knew we wanted to do one of these:

Source

We went on Amazon and got one of these (and later picked up a second at a garage sale for $5, and it works!):

Source

We then bought plenty of packs of these from Amazon (our high end was 120 guests, so we bought 6 packs or 60 exposures. We used one pack to test out the cameras and bought another to replace it, and now our guests count is hovering closer to 100, so we'll have plenty to spare!):

Source

Later, I searched high and low for perfect place to put the pictures. We finally settled on this album from Jenni Bick - I had a hard time finding an album with black pages that was the right size with the right amount of pages. We paid around $40 for the 14 1/4" x 11 3/4" album, but now it's on sale for $20, argh! There's an array of collors (we chose the green, in the second picture) and you can even have a message embossed on the front for an extra fee (we didn't).

Source

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This weekend I picked up some great white gel pens from The Paper Source for our guests to leave their messages. I bought some white photo corners and using a Polaroid picture, Mr. S and I adhered the corners to each page, so guests can slip their pictures in.

We'll include a sign by the book that says something along these lines (I know I stole this from somewhere - thanks if it was from you!):

Please find your picture,
place it in the guest book,
and leave us with your words of
wit, wisdom and well wishes
to help us commemorate our wedding!

Word to the wise - a Polaroid guest book is a significant investment between the camera and film, unless you're lucky enough to have all of that on hand. In retrospect, we may have done something different and put that money elsewhere, but we know it will be a cute keepsake in the end.

So buying things, I can do. But when it came down to the logistics of it all, I was flabbergasted! When do we do what, and how will we make sure our guests will jump on board?! I finally settled on this:

• During the cocktail hour (when we'll be taking pictures) two of our ushers will take the cameras and snap pictures of our guests. We could even have them give the guests a little card to remind them to look for their picture later.
• The ushers and our coordinator will help make sure the pictures make their way upstairs to the guest book table outside of the ballroom (or, we could put the guest book in the cocktail hour room and move it up at the end)
• Our coordinator will encourage folks to find their picture on the table, place it in the guest book and write a message
  

Hopefully having all of the pictures taken at one time when everyone is congregated together will be easiest. That will only leave out the wedding party who may have to do theirs after the cocktail hour (if we make it back too late). Then, it's just as easy as encouraging people to circle back, find their pictures and sign!

How have you managed the logistics of unique guests books? Do you have any suggestions for me so make sure it runs smoothly?

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Grab Your Name and Find Your Number...

In the early dark ages of my wedding planning, I found and fell in love with my great cake topper. Remember? I also developed the escort cards that will nestle into bed of wheat grass at the reception, as you might recall.

However, one topic I haven't touched on are my table numbers. How are my cake toppers involved in this topic, you ask? Well, I decided that I couldn't just have my cute little cake topper have such a short life. The mini Stilettos needed their time in the limelight. So, when I ordered my topper, I asked Goose Grease to not attach our mini me's to the round base - we needed to be able to move them around for a little photo shoot (we'll glue them onto the base ourselves before the wedding).

Oh yes, you heard me correctly. We let our wooden selves work if for the camera, and through this are able to share bits and pieces of ourselves and our life together to our wedding guests.

These are the final pictures we're getting developed, which Mr. S added numbers to using Adobe Illustrator.

#1
We wanted to have our pup Charlie in one shot. We assumed this would be quite tricky as he can be rather, err, rambunctious, but as soon as we set the toppers onto the floor, Charlie started posing for the camera. I kid you not. You would have thought we had sat him down beforehand and explained what was going to happen, with him nodding his head in agreement. Charlie, apparently, is an old pro when it comes to photo shoots.


#2
Linus, on the other hand, decided to give us some love and affection. Every single time, it was I who was about to topple over. At least we know how he really feels!


#3
I like to think that Mr. S and I were on the forefront of the Wii revolution. We had ours within days of it coming out - a friend of ours bought it and decided he didn't want it, so Mr. S bought it off of him. I gave him such a hard time about the purchase, but in retrospect we are lucky we got it when we did - these babies were difficult to get your hands on for quite some time!


#4
I devour books like it was my job. I've already started in on one of the books I bought for the honeymoon (oops!). I can never get books that are long enough to last me more than a week or two. Yes, I have a bit of a literary addiction.


#5
We've been engaged for 18 months. The ring had to make it into these at some point, didn't it? I like that it seems Mr. S is in the midst of the proposal!


#6
We've recently become Scrabble addicts, thanks to our downstairs neighbors. They even gifted us an extra Travel Scrabble set that they had, so we will definitely be taking it on our honeymoon. Yes, we're cool like that.


#7
We buy a lot of bananas. If you ever came to our house, you'd see a bowl on our kitchen island filled with bananas at all stage of ripeness (I prefer them when they still have a hint of green to them, yum!). I think we buy something like 15 bananas a week. I'm sure people at the grocery store assume we have triplets at home.


#8
I bake. In another life, I had/have a baking blog, but that's on hiatus until the wedding planning craziness subsides. You know, when I'm an old married lady. Oh yah, and when I'm not concerned about holding back on the calories because the knowledge of wearing a certain white dress in front of my loved ones is looming before me. Just sayin'.


#9
Here's our other sweetheart, Basil. I love that she looks like a giant here, because she's really our most petite pet (and yes, if you're counting, we have 3 pets).


#10
Mr. S is a fine art and wedding photographer. Over the past few years, photography has crept into every aspect of our lives, and has brought forth so many great friends and experiences!


#11
If you've been following my story at all, you know that the word "gym" is a verb in our household (ie - Are we gyming today?"). Working out/being healthy for us isn't solely for the wedding, but it definitely helps as we're getting closer to the big day.


#12
We like a glass of wine now and then. Our neighbors who introduced us to Scrabble also introduced us to this sparkling shiraz - The Black Chook. It's from Australia and is so incredibly tasty. I highly recommend!


#13
Mr. S loves to cook. I do not (remember? I got my own number above for baking!). Fortunately, he keeps us both fed. A few weeks ago he was really into making risotto with sweet peas and spicy pork andouille sausage. Mouth watering yet?


#14
We get coffee as much as is humanly possible. I normally stick with lattes, but when I was in Italy last summer I fell in love with just getting a shot of espresso - straightforward and to the point. I love that we're sailing away in our own little espresso cups.


#15
I can't say that our lives are dramatically influenced by eggs, but doesn't this make for a cute picture? The one thing I have to say about eggs is that Mr. S may handle the cooking, but every time I ask him to hard boil some eggs I have to remind him 18 times how to do it. It lets me feel a little superior in the kitchen!


Unfortunately, we may only end having 13 guest tables at our reception because of the way our head count is going. So, all of these might not be needed. If we put one at the head table (which I hadn't planned on doing) the espresso picture will make the cut! We'll see.

So I'm sure you're thinking to yourself "This is all well and good, Miss S, but what are you doing with all of these snap shots?" Stay tuned and I'll show you how these autobiographical table numbers will be displayed!

Are you incorporating anything about yourselves into the table numbers?

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DIY Menus...Or What I Spent My Saturday Night Doing

I randomly decided I "needed" menus and proceeded to invent what seems to be the most time-consuming method for creating said menus. And, considering the fact that I think I just wanted menus because I thought my photographer would take cute pictures of them, I probably could have just made one and pretended after the fact that they were at each place setting.

Rest assured, I'm not that jaded about them and I know they will look cute on the tables, but I did spend the better part of my Saturday working on these and I'm only 1/3 of the way done.

The principle behind the menus is very simple (which is why it seemed like such a good idea at the time!) - I took green card stock and cut each piece into thirds horizontally, so that each piece was 2.83" x 11". I then scored each piece into quarters for ease of folding. This, my friends, was the easy part...and the part of the process that I did over a month ago and left until now (crunch time!) to finish.

I laid out our menu items in Microsoft Publisher, each item in a 3" x 2" rectangle. I then printed the menu "innards" onto white cardstock and used my handy paper cutter to cut each rectangle.

Salad and entree:

Dessert and celebration message:

Each rectangle was taped onto the green card stock, strategically placed so that the heart-shaped hole punch I used would not go through the white card stock. I'm sure there is a much handier, craftier way than double-sided tape to attach the white cardstock. I know that Glue Dots are great but I didn't have anything like that on hand this weekend and, to be honest, I don't want to spend any money on this project! The down side to saving money, however, is the time consuming process of taping everything!

The skinny black and white stripe ribbon that I love so much is perfect for tying these closed, and my handy scallop punch strikes again for the menu cover!

Could I have done something easier or not have menus at all? Of course. Do I regret not testing out putting a few of these together before a cut and scored all of the card stock, leaving me no room for changing my mind? Definitely. But the end product is super cute...now only 90 of these to go!

Have you decided to make menus, and if so, what do they look like?

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Card Box...Complete!

Remember when I had this great DIY idea for a vintage suitcase card box? Yahhhh...my first attempt turned out so badly I couldn't stand to snap a picture of it before it landed in the trash. So, I went with my backup plan.

When I was planning my candy buffet, I picked up this black cake stand, which happened to come in a great box. I'm not using the cake stand anymore, but it's been sitting around my kitchen in that box. It only made sense to stop trying to think of something new and go with what works - a hat box turned card box.


Mr. S cut a slot out of the center with a box cutter, then I took some extra damask fabric I had on hand to cover the top. I didn't have big enough of a piece of fabric to cover the whole top, so I used two separate pieces.

I hot glued it in place on the top, then...


I flipped it over and gathered pieces, pulling the fabric tight, and glued it in place. I didn't have the patience to try and get it smooth, so instead I pulled it so that it looked gathered around the side.


To cover up some not-so-nice edges around the slot, I glued some ribbon in place and tucked it into the underside of the lid.


The finished box! It's simple and a little rough around the edges...but I finished it in less than an hour using materials I already had in the house.


I'm glad I ended up going with a classic idea rather than trying to reinvent the wheel for my card box - one more completed project is incredibly helpful at this stage of the game!

What are you using for the card box at your reception?

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Semi-DIY Bouquet Vases

Yes, the main decor element on the head table at my wedding will be a combination of cheap IKEA vases and tape...and yes, I'm quite proud of this!

My plan has always been to have the bouquets pull double duty and enhance the head table, but I didn't want to just put them in boring, clear vases and call it a day. I thought about silver julep cups - Save On Crafts has quite the selection -but it was more of a financial investment than I wanted to make. Plus, they don't really go with anything else we're doing. They're very elegant and for any other affair I'd be head over heals for them, but there isn't an ounce of silver anything at the wedding...excluding eating utensils, of course.

On a recent trip to IKEA, I purchased a 9-inch tall square vase for my bouquet...

Source: IKEA

and five 6-inch tall square vases for the bridesmaid bouquets...

Source: IKEA

One thing to note - if you're considering these vases, they have a thick base, so subtract an inch to determine how much room you'll actually have in them. Since the larger vase was only $5.99 and the smaller vases were $2.49 each, I couldn't pass these up and honestly just wanted to be done with it.

I've been unsuccessful in getting ribbon to stay put on vases, and had considered covered these with fabric or fun paper, when I found Etsy seller Nothing Elegant. She had this whole assortment of Japenese masking tape that comes in fabulous patterns and colors. But, the tape shipped from Korea. Hmm. In fact, I had a hard time finding it sold in the United States, except for this Web site Happy Tape. But, to get a black and white design from Happy Tape, I would have had to buy a set and probably spend around $30.

Taking a chance, I ordered this tape from Nothing Elegant (please note: in checking her shop, she has almost nothing for sale at this time; I'm hoping this is just for the short term because she had a fabulous assortment of tape!), and spent about $15.00 (including shipping). Aren't these stripes fabulous?!

Source: Etsy

Much to my surprise, I received the tape faster than I often receive items shipped from within the US...and the tape is absolutely fabulous!

I immediately took one of the shorter vases and started playing around with arranging the tape. I love that if I mess up, I can easily pull it off and start over. What do you think of the first attempt?

Since we still have a couple of months to go, I'm going to hold off on decorating the rest of the vases. I think these are going to look fabulous on the head table, and I won't sit there worrying about some ribbon or paper just popping off in the middle of dinner...decorating with tape was the best idea EVER!

What unique products are you integrating into your decor?

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Gettin' Low, Gettin' Low...Arrangements

As I recently posted, we've gone through some centerpiece adjustments and will have lovely branch centerpieces for 8 of our receptions tables. We're left with 6 or 7 tables (depending on the number of guests) to outfit with "low" arrangements.

Since my original plan was to have a single stem on each of the 15 tables, I had already been budgeting around $9/table for this, or $135 total. Now that 8 of the tables are otherwise taken care of, that $135 can go toward just 7 tables. That gives me around $19/table to play around with.

I still want to use one of these small Crate & Barrel vases on each of those tables for the low arrangements (I mean, I have them, I may as well use them...):

Source: Crate & Barrel

When I was recently looking around for some green floral inspiration, I happened across these two low arrangements on With This Ring.

This first arrangement is pretty and definitely green(!!) but I don't know if it's as vibrant as I'd like.

Source: With This Ring

However, I'm swooning over this second arrangement (and it's a bathroom arrangement, of all things!). It's vibrant and fresh, which is what we've been trying to achieve overall. These kermit pompon mums have been growing on me a lot, too...might be cute to incorporate in other places as well?!

Source: With This Ring

I'd love it if the bridesmaid bouquets had this "fresh" feel as well to them. No, no, I'm not planning on changing any flowers - I still want hydrangeas (which this arrangement has), dahlias and ranunculus in all of the bouquets, but I'm liking how these mums "pop." Maybe they could be added in?

I'll be sitting down with my florist in about two weeks - I plan on showing her this inspiration picture and seeing what my $20 an arrangement can buy me! I'm so excited to share with her all of my inspiration so far regarding all of the flowers for the wedding and hear what suggestions she may have.

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Centerpieces: Revisited and Redefined

Way back when I posted about the different centerpiece items I'd purchased from Crate & Barrel. If you link over, you'll see the cute little tealight holders, vases, and black chargers. In my mind it was going to be simple, chic, and budget friendly! I'd pick a great bloom to go in each vase, wrap ribbon around the vases and place everything on damask table squares.

I finally compiled everything a month or two ago to see my vision come to life. Here she is:

It could be worse...but could be better, to say the least. Please disregard the yellow gerber daisy, I had picked up whatever flowers they had at Whole Foods. The picture frame is a placeholder for whatever we're using for our table numbers. There was just no "wow" to it. It's fine, gets the job done...but Mr. S and I wanted to see what else we could do without throwing a ton of money at the centerpieces. I'd spent about $225 for enough tealight holders, vases, chargers and fabric to outfit 15 tables.

Oh and if you're wondering - Momma Stiletto is kindly making the table squares for us! Doesn't the first one look great? I love the fabric we ended up choosing, and I'm hoping to take the squares after the wedding and turning them into a keepsake such as pillows or something of the like.

Anyway, Mr. S and I got to researching different options that we thought we could pull off with minimal investment. The general rule seems to be taller = expensive, so we wanted to get some height on the tables. One centerpiece-of-the-moment seems to be branches. So we went into full force research mode finding good DIY's for branch centerpieces and pricing them out. Word to the wise - branches can be very expensive!

I came across an online store called Nettleton Hollow, which has branches that are reasonably affordable. Better yet, they have a blog with great DIY advice for their projects (quite smart, if you ask me!). On their blog I found this fabulous DIY for flowering birch branches combined with dried grass.

I decided to go for it and bought all of the supplies they suggested, and enough to decorate 8 of our tables. I've got one done and I LOVE it!

If you're thinking about doing this yourself, here's a breakdown of what I bought, what I did, and links to the products. Of course, that blog post I mentioned gives a great DIY as well!

Natural Birch Branches: $16.50/bundle

Fountain Grass: $12.50/bundle

I used 18" tall square glass vases: $6.45 each (I found square to be cheaper than cylinder vases and had to bit the bullet and pay the somewhat hefty shipping!)

Small white silk flowers: bought 4 bunches from Jo-Ann Fabrics on sale for $1.00 a bunch, cut them off of the stem

They suggest using 6 of the birch branches and a half of a bundle of fountain grass per arrangement, as I did above. Each bundle of birch branches has approximately 25 branches. So I bought 4 bundles of fountain grass and two bundles of birch branches. I think the biggest cost saver of this project is using the fountain grass to give your arrangement some more volume rather than using the more costly birch branches.

So, including shipping I spent right around $100 for the branches and grass (I was amazed at how reasonable their shipping was!). The 8 vases were $75 including shipping, and around $4.00 on little silk flowers. So, $180 total or around $22.50 per table. Amazing! The only downer was the vases - they seem to have some paint spilled in them and smell a bit like paint. Wha?! It wasn't worth contacting the company about but I probably wouldn't order anything else from them.

After purchasing all of the items, just use a hot glue gun to glue a few flowers on the branches - I think less is definitely more with the flowers, but that's just my opinion!

I love that this gives us some height, some of our green is pulled through via the fountain grass and brings some drama to the tables that we were otherwise lacking. Of course, we still have 6 or 7 more tables to "outfit" with centerpieces! Since I have all of those short vases from Crate and Barrel, and I had been budgeting for a bloom at each table that now won't be needed for 8 of the tables, I have a plan brewing that I'll share with you soon!

Did you decide that your centerpieces needed a little extra "oomph" from what you were originally planning?

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Coming Up Daisies: Escort Cards

Way, way back in the dark ages...you know, in March of 2008 when I furiously started planning this wedding, I fell in love with escort cards tucked neatly in beds of wheatgrass. And really, what's not to love? It's bold, vibrant, matches our color scheme...and if we get really ambitious we can make healthy smoothies with it the next day!

I didn't, however, want to use the standard folded escort cards. I wanted paper flowers.

Source: Brooklyn Bride

For the past year (yes, year!) I have searched high and low for the perfect way to fulfill my vision. I've always loved origami, so I tried any and every folded flower I could find instructions for (beyond the basic lily...far too easy, and I wanted to show off some mad origami skillz). But every option I found either wouldn't have set well in the wheatgrass, would be difficult to attach a leaf to, or just simply involved far too many steps for me to make 60+ flowers.

Another roadblock with orgami was the paper. Most of the prints I found just didn't fit in with our color scheme, and I didn't want to use a non-origami paper as origami paper is really the most convenient to fold with and it's already in perfect squares.

I finally gave up the origami dream and trolled the Internet searching for a better solution. I came across a papercrafting blog called Scrappy Habits that has a great tutorial for incredibly cute paper flowers.

Source: Scrappy Habits

I immediately bought the supplies I needed from JoAnn Fabric - black and white cardstock, teeny green brads and a 2-inch scalloped circle cutter. I decided to use black cardstock as the base for all of the flowers, and then for the top piece, half are plain white cardstock and half are cut from pages from a book of love poems by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I like how the poems look as flowers, and that if guests look closely they'll find snippets of loving words.


It only took me about an hour to use the handy little scallop cutter to punch all of these out. Then, another evening Mr. S helped me cut, fold the petals and put them together with the green brads. But...of course we don't know seating assignments yet! The greatest part of this project is that we could pre-make all of the flowers that we need, and then when we have the seating assignments, make the leaves with the guests' names and attach them.


For the leaves, I created a teardrop leaf shape in Microsoft Publisher. To ease the process, I just outlined them with a green dot pattern, so I can just cut around the pattern and not have it look too sloppy (I hope!). On each one I'll print the names and seating assignments in a very light grey and then trace over them with a felt tip pen, like I did here. I used a typewriter font to match the font we're using on our invitations and in other places (sorry for the blurry picture, this is what happens when Mr. S is off shooting weddings...I'm left to my own devices with the camera!).


Our box full of flowers is complete and just waiting for leaves! I'm so glad to have knocked out this project so early in the game, and I'm excited to see all of these blooms scattered across the trays of wheatgrass.

I'll leave you with a snippet from the Pablo Neruda poem "Not Only the Fire":

Ah my life,
it is not only the fire that burns between us
but all of life,
the simple story,
the simple love
of a woman and a man
like everyone.
Did you do anything special with your escort cards?

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Burn, Baby, Burn

Among my many wedding panics, a couple of months ago I started fretting about all of the tea lights that were going to be on the reception tables. Wouldn't the room look awful if all of them weren't twinkling? Especially since we bought all of these pretty "bubble" tea lights from Crate & Barrel. Not nearly so cute if they're not lit up! I'd heard that most tea lights burn for around 4 hours on average...not ideal for my 6 hour reception.

I started researching tea lights like crazy and did find some web sites that had "super tea lights" that lasted for 8 or 10 hours. But they didn't come cheap, and I struggled to find the ones that come in the clear cups (vs silver).

Of course, I ended up doing what I always do and checked out Etsy. I started finding different sellers with soy tea lights and learned that not only do they burn cleaner (better for the environment!) they also burn longer. I saw somewhere in the ballpark of 7 or 8 hours (depending on conditions - sheltered from a lot of breezes and burning all in one sitting are optimal).

Etsy seller Worthy Soy Candles had an amazing deal on these tea lights, and I snagged 75 unscented white soy tea lights (in clear cups!) for $32.85 - that includes shipping. This was much cheaper than I'd been pricing out other places. But...once they arrived, I had to put them to the test!

Fortunately, they threw in a free tea light with my purchase so I didn't have to use one from the wedding stash. My free candle was purple and lavendar scented, yum! But, unfortunately, I had to leave in the middle of the "experiment" so I had to burn this candle in two sittings.

First Burn

Start: 3:40 pm


Stop: 6:25 pm

Time elapsed: 2 hours, 45 minutes


Second Burn

Start: 3:55 pm


Stop: 7:15 pm

Time Elapsed: 3 hours, 20 minutes

Total time candle burned: 6 hours, 5 minutes

Knowing that my tea lights will last for my 6 hour reception: priceless

To what lengths have you gone to ensure your decor really goes the distance?

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