Glue Gun Burns and Triumph

I wouldn't exactly call myself cheap... but you might.

We are not going to be putting any florals in our church.

Told you. 

We attend a GORGEOUS church that really doesn't need any other decorations!

The extremely talented Brian Mullins who took this photo can be found here!

So instead of a bunch of flowers, we are making colorfully tied programs (more on those later) and poms!

What is a pom? Well, in this case it's a Styrofoam ball, hot glue, crepe paper and some ribbon. 

I used this tutorial. 

Basically, you take a Styrofoam ball, and glue the crepe paper roses to it. 

She warns that you will burn yourself.
HA! Understatement of the century.
My fingers were so raw after this project it hurt to type at work. 

My advice, work quickly and in groups as to spread out the burnt fingers!
I also recommend that you wrinkle the crepe paper. The more I crunched it, the better the rose came out!

7 roses in, starting to take shape!

The only thing I did differently (it was a great tutorial!) is I pushed my thumb into the ball to create a "pool" before filling it with glue, then sticking in the rose. 

I wanted to make sure they didn't fall apart a week before the wedding!

I also wrapped my ribbon around a bobby pin, hot glued it, and then stuck it deep into the pom. 

In the end they turned out like this!
 

The Finished Product!

They will be used to reserve the front 2 rows on each side for our wedding party and immediate family. 

What's the worst glue gun burn/ crafting injury you've ever inflicted upon yourself?

Paper, Ink and Glue, and A Picture or Two

Now that most of the invitations have reached their final destinations, I can reveal them!

In worked with the lovely people at CardsandPockets.com to not only select the perfect paper, but to size the pdf files so that they would print properly. They were absolutely wonderful to work with! All of the paper came pre-cut which simplified the process.
 

Yay! The supplies are here!

 

I started with my pocketfold, my mat and a bottle of Elmer's Rubber Cement. 

 Once those were firmly attached, I printed and placed my main invitation in the same fashion.

Then I printed the other cards. On the back of each RSVP card I wrote the guests name in invisible ink, that way we could figure out who it came from if the name was not filled out. We stamped the red return envelope with a personalized stamp we ordered online. BEST INVESTMENT YET! We had the stamp made without a last name so we can continue to use it for years! Once everything was ready to go, we got to stuffin'!

uh, not quite.

 Let's try that again...
 

Much better!

This pocketfolds did not have a closure built in so my lovely Bridesmaid LR and my mom were kind enough to help me tie ALL the bows!
 

Best bows EVER!

My FMIL was so nice and addressed all the envelopes. We stuffed the envelopes, stamped the back with our super stamp and took them to the post office.

We had planned on having them weighed and then stamped with the postage but they worked out to a neat $0.64. Josh took them in by himself, and he had a hard choice - the dolphin or the wedding cake.
After much debate, according to him, he went with the cake - but it was close.
Gotta love him!

We have already received 7 RSVPs back in less than 2 business days! I haven't had the opportunity to bust out the black light yet, but I am a little hopeful someone will forget and I will get to use it.

Did anyone else handcraft their invitations or another key element of the wedding?
Were you proud of your accomplishment?

The Colors Duke, the colors!

Picking out wedding colors it like painting a room, you are certain you have found just the right color and then you find yourself staring like a deer in the headlights at the massive wall of options.

Oh Martha, please help me!

There are just SO many options it is difficult to narrow down. I thought I knew what I wanted - midnight blue and lapis with silver and white accents - until we found our venue, The Royal. They Royal was a bakery back when the state fairgrounds still housed a military base. It has high tin ceilings, black chandeliers, brick accents and RED walls. The carpet is a compilation of red, green, black and tan in a hotel lobby-esque design. Midnight blue and lapis, not going to work here....

Enter the NCSU colors - red, white and black! The campus is COVERED in bricks so that detail even makes sense. My fiance and I religiously root for NC State any chance we get but the last thing I, who attended UNC-G, wanted was a Wolfpack wedding. I know, I am the crazy one, right?

After finally conceding that it is our best option for our venue (which I am totally in love with), I started looking in to themes.  Nothing big, just something to help me tie it all together. Perfect pair, Cut out for each other, Love, blah blah boring. We weren't at the beach, mountains, a historic monument - nor do I have an overwhelming affinity to anything girly. I was stuck. Again. Awesome.

Then like a lightning bolt it hit me -

DAMASK!

It was simple, yet elegant. Timeless, yet trendy! Score!

With my new found theme I hit the web running. I picked up these for the tables which will look fantastic offset with black linens:

And This for our guest book (we are replacing it with a red ribbon):

Our Cake will even be damask (more on that later)! Things were chugging right along until I got to damask invites. I managed to find a few I liked, but they we deemed “ok” (which is Josh code for no way) or “too girly” (read as - over my dead body!).

I finally gave up and began designing my own invitations…..

Which I will talk about next time!

How hard was it for you to pick out your wedding colors and/or theme?

Starting is the hardest part…

Somewhere between the decisions, the To Do lists, the countdown reminders, the contracts, we tend to lose sight of what’s important.

I.                     Am.           Getting.        Married.

Seriously.

And to my best friend at that! Woohoo!!

Ok, now that we’ve let that sink in, if you’re like me, a wall of panic hit you immediately. You hop on the internet and come across TheKnot, Weddingbee, StyleMePretty, OffbeatBride and Martha Stewart Weddings. So many women with B-E-A-U-tiful weddings! How on earth was I going to be able to pull this off?

I have to admit I was lost at first. Finding your “bridal style” comes easy to some, and I was not one of those people. I love tattoos and loud music, but I have a soft spot for pearls and cardigans. Oh, this was NOT going to be easy. I researched and researched and then I researched some more. Let me tell you, my poor computer got a workout! Google Search and I, BFFs.

And then one day, it all kinda started falling in place.

I went to a bridal show and found my photographer. I listened to a friend’s recommendation and fell in love with my venue. A quick meeting with an old friend and I had my caterer! It seemed that the less I fought to have someone else’s “perfect” wedding the more the big stuff fell in place. I was swimming along fine until I hit wall #2.

The Details.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to hand craft as many of the details of our wedding as I could- Not only to save money, but to inject as much of our personalities as I could. I have been working on a number of details for our big day, which I will slowly be revealing here online along with tutorials.

What was your first thought when you started to plan your wedding? Were you overwhelmed like me or did everything come together relatively easily?