DIY: Party Favors Part I

Yay! Third week in a row for my DIY posts! Doesn't seem like much, but for this Gemini who easily gets distracted by life -- it's an accomplishment... trying to be less Gemini-y and trying to finish a project here without dropping it and starting a new one...

Anywho, today I wanted to share the party favors we gave to our guests at our wedding... and this was hard to decide on... I researched a million party favors online... we definitely wanted to do a practical gift, since we knew giving our guests dove shaped crystals would only end up collecting dust -- it had to be something a bit more personal... and functional... so after mulling over heart shaped cookie cutters, bottle openers, and picture frames -- we decided to make it ourselves... since Dave and I are big music fans (and always trying to stump each other on who the artist is), we decided on making a cd with a compilation of songs that reflected us... songs that took us back to when we started dating... and songs that resonated our love for each other... we requested the songs on the cd to be played at the wedding... so when our guests listen to the cd, it would take them back to our wedding day =)

Thanks to family friend & wedding helper Charmaine, she burned 100 discs in one day... pretty awesome!  The rest of the work my husband and I did... he was such a cute helper by the way =) We made black & white CD labels with our name, an engagement picture & our wedding date on it...


we placed them into CD envelopes...


then with another set of whimsical colored paper, I cut them to fit square envelopes (from Michael's)... printed labels on white card stock... then glued everything together & had perfectly wrapped CDs to gift to our guests... (tip: make sure you print & cut everything you need prior to assembling... it just makes everything run more smoothly)


the theme of the evening was "the sweetest night"...


aren't they adorable? our guests loved them... we get calls from friends saying they were just listening to our cd =) pretty neat...


these were personal... cost effective... and a hit... but there's more, we gave two party favors... yea, we decided on two... so stay tuned for next week's DIY: Party Favors part II =) hope you enjoyed...

DIY: Table Numbers

Week two of DIY Wednesday! I'm happy to share this sweet & simple idea for table numbers... photography, of course, is a huge deal in my book -- so what better way to display table numbers than with pictures of the bride and the groom? Aside from building a relationship with your wedding photographer (which is quite vital) during your engagement session... you can use the engagement pictures for your wedding...For ours, we used 10 different images taken from our engagement session...  made all of them black and white, then photoshopped numbers onto them... I made 5x7 prints of the images while my husband carefully placed each one into the frame... teamwork =)



I cut orange card stock (the size of the frame) to leave a tiny, orange frame around the image to accent the b/w...


you can use the same frames... or be a little whimsical & use a variety of frames...


our guests loved walking around to see the different pictures on each table...


here are two of my brides that used this idea & displayed engagement pictures that I captured of them... (their guests loved it too)


after all, the day is about you two... hope you enjoyed! (Next week DIY: Party Favors =)

DIY: Escort Cards

This time last year, I was busy planning my wedding and the million details that go along with planning the happiest day of your life... I signed myself up to all the wedding websites you could think of! The Knot's wedding check list was my best friend -- even though we'd get into many fights due to the never ending list that continued even after the wedding day! I also signed up for BridalTweet to get wedding ideas & just to see what was new in the wedding community... Wednesdays were deemed "Wedding Wednesdays" and people would tweet wedding pictures, flowers, and anything wedding related they wanted to share...

To join the "Wedding Wednesday" fun, I did a couple of DIY posts on wedding projects I made for my wedding... sadly, my Gemini trait got the best of me -- and it became another unfinished project... BUT, it's never too late -- right? So, I wanted to revive this idea and simply call it "DIY Wednesday" -- to not only share wedding ideas, but any DIY projects I happen to do at home...

Earlier, I shared my DIY wedding invitations HERE:



Then my DIY unity candles HERE:



Now, here's a look at one of my favorite wedding detail we made ourselves -- Mini Quote Book Escort Cards... which were inspired by Martha Stewart Wedding ideas... and thanks to my key wedding helper {dear family friend Charmaine}, we were able to personalize & assemble these adorable books with my favorite love quotes...



I found a beautiful set of whimsical card stock paper {from Michaels} that had accents of our wedding color -- orange... so, it just had to be... I used this for all of our wedding details, which all came together perfectly...


these were quite meaningful to me, because I'm a lover of quotes & have journals of such inspiring words...


there were four different sets of quote books... and we made a little over a hundred...


of course during assembly, it seemed too ambitious & quite overwhelming... but the end product was absolutely lovely...




I hope my future brides found this helpful =) Happy Wednesday!