This is it, people! The last wedding post before we move on with the rest of hand making our lives together! I know it's been a lot of information, but hey, a wedding is a big project, and I hope the pictures, DIY's, and piles of suggestions have been helpful to your event, sanity, and wallet.
With all the work done, and the day itself wrapped up nicely, it's time to get down to the real numbers to show that not only can a large celebration be had at a relatively low price, but it can be the best day ever, with no need to break the bank. When I tell people I did my whole wedding for two thousand dollars, they immediately assume I had a small, intimate affair. When I tell them I was hosting almost 200 people, they assume that what I mean when I say it cost so little, is that it cost that much-- not counting the food-- or not counting the dress-- or not counting the ceremony, or the reception, or the location... because surely the universe cannot create such bounty from so tiny a seed packet! When I assure them that all costs were included, the people who know my finally let it sink in, then regale me with a litany of how much their weddings cost them-- a speech that never fails to depress me! The people I assure of my costs who don't know me, purse their puckery lips and end the conversation pretty quickly-- a sign, I'm pretty sure, that they simply think I'm lying. So! Without further delay, I present to you... the budget...
Start to Finish Budget
The $2,000 Wedding
Invitations: $200
Gifts: $ 250
Venue Rental: $89
Dress: $200
Veil: $25
Photos: $200
Cake: $150
Food: $400
Grooms Clothing: $150
Flowers: $6
Tablecloths: $50
Sheets: $10
Decorations (paper, ribbon): $30
Bridesmaids/ Groomsmen: $150/ $250
Lanterns: $25
Harpist: $200
Tableware: $75
If you're doing the math, remember to discount the $400 spent on the brides maide's and grooms men's clothing. They went with tradition on this and paid for their own apparel, I just included their price to illustrate the fact that while you're saving money, your wedding party can to, so long as you don't drag them into the nearest bridal store, force them into your favorite childhood fairy tale costume, and then demand they pull out their check books to pay for it.
Still adding things up with me? Then you've probably come to our grand total, $2,060. I know what you're thinking, this is $60 over budget. First I'd like to say that if in planning a huge event, you go $60 over budget, I still call that a job well done! Second, you might recall from the bridal clothing section that a certain thread conscious groom got himself a during-ceremony outfit, as well as a post-ceremony outfit, and it was that post ensemble that cost $60, so if it isn't counted (and I don't think it should be since it was unnecessary and is now a weekly part of his wardrobe), they the grand total does in fact come to exactly $2,000-- the perfect price tag promised and delivered!
Now, if you're asking yourself whether I've perhaps fudged the numbers here, left something out, or otherwise bent my budget in some way, let me assure you that this list covers everything from sparkly dress to chicken and dumplings. If you're saying to yourself that this must be a fluke and that this much fun cannot normally be had for this amount of money, let me assure again that it has been done and can be again. My spending what I predicted I would was not a coincidence, it was the result of my sitting down beforehand and writing out just what I intended to spend on each needed thing, then going out and hunting and negotiating until the prices I found matched the ones I already had in my head. Where gaps were left by a lack of cash flow, I filled them in with creativity and hand made goods, and in the end, this made for such a fun, fantastical, lovely day, I wouldn't change any of it for the world, even if I had an unlimited cash flow. The work was worth it, and the creativity and joy of creation I got to participate in along the way added greatly to my overall experience, as well as not dipping into my savings account. Have faith that the universe can provide you with just as much bountiful fun in the sun, and with just as small a seed packet. It worked for me and it will work for you-- this is what the handmade life is all about! Now go think of something to celebrate, gather up your scrap fabric and glue, and create the very day you've always wanted to live!
The phrase Labor of Love has always been one that resonates with me, and reasonably so, given my grandparents-instilled puritan work ethic combined with my natural love of... LOVE! Never has the phrase fit more perfectly into an actual activity than in today's DIY project.
I have to admit that for all my wedding posts here, I'm not terribly informed about weddings in general. I have had the pleasure of attending many celebrations of birth, marriage, earth cycles, and even death (a celebration of a life lived), in a great range of subcultures, and it is from these that I drew inspiration for my own marriage ceremony. When starting down the path of planning for such a big event, I did, as I have mentioned, some research on good old traditional American weddings, of which I have only limited experience, and one practice I found mention of that really resonated with me was the exchange of private gifts between the bride and groom. Is this a common part of most weddings? If so, what are the usual gifts exchanged between the joining couple? I'd love some answers on this one, I'm really curious!
For Josh and I, our gift giving was probably pretty predictable. I am a painter... Josh got a painting! Josh is a musician... he wrote me a song! Still, obvious choices aside, being able to devote precious time beforehand working on this extra special home made gift for the man I was joining my life with was a real treat for me-- both as an excited gift-giver, and a happy crafter.
I wanted to give Josh something that spoke of our love for each other, our commitment to a long path together as equal partners, and our shared vision of a life both rooted in the tradition of our elders and liberated by our growing faith in both spirit and ourselves to live the life we were meant to live. Oh, and I didn't want to be that self absorbed cheese-ball who presented her partner with a giant painting of he and myself. That would be embarrassing in the long run! So, after careful consideration, I decided to paint him what I had not the time, skills, or patience to sew him. I gave him a life size barn quilt.
What is a barn quilt, you may ask? Why, it's a giant painting of a life-like quilt, hung out on the sides of barns throughout the midwest for no other reason than to look pretty-- like laundry on the line on a breezy, sunny day. If you're not familiar, I encourage you to do an image search, or if you're in the midwest, take a barn quilt driving tour-- yes, that's a real thing!
And why a barn quilt, you may still be wondering? Because I can never get far from my time with the Amish. Brief though it was (just under a year), it haunts me, and there isn't a day that I am not reminded by some smell or sound of shift of light, of what I left behind. The richness of that experience is still so ever-present, so nearly tactile for me, that it always gives me great pleasure to integrate some of the old culture into my own life. At an Amish wedding, long tables are set with full place settings, baskets of fruit and homemade candies, and cakes you want to dive into. The ech, a corner where the wedding party sits, is the most decorated thing you'll ever see in an Amish house, spilling over with personalized treats for the couple and helpers. There is always singing, there is always silent prayer, there is always the bustle of skirts and hats and laughter and eating, and there is always a quilt. Wedding ring pattern, made at a frolic by those who love the new couple, ready to keep them warm at night. I nearly coveted that quilt, not just to snuggle under but to have as a symbol of all that I love-- my partner, my community, and the value of hand worked art. Without a gaggle of women to stitch with, I painted Josh the double ring pattern, and our "Amish" wedding quilt hangs on the outside wall of our house, facing the backyard where barbeque's and croquet parties abound, appearing to forever sway in the breeze. The fact that it doubled as a great decoration at our wedding where he was surprised by it at the entrance, was the cherry on top!
DIY Wedding Barn Quilt
Step 1: Select your wood from your local hardware store, being sure to choose something light but not (light wood bends easily). I chose a large piece of pine, a quarter inch thick and 4x5 feet. I'd have liked to have gone larger, but this was the storage limit of my Honda CRV, so take that into consideration when you're picking wood for any project! Added to this I bought 5 strips of thin wood to frame my piece, measuring 1x2 inches and about 7 feet in length. It's very important to frame a wood painting this large, or the moisture of the paint WILL bow your finished project, which will make you very sad. I know, since I learned this lesson at my first solo gallery show, watching my paintings curl up on the walls! Be sure to have the hardware store cut the wood to the measurements you need for framing, so that you don't have to deal with that when you go home.
Step 2: At home and ready to work, first frame up your wood. You should have your strips cut so that you can lay 4 pieces out on the back side around the outside edges. Run plenty of wood glue around the edges of your painting, lay the strips out the way they will apply to your piece, then put the large piece of wood, glue side down, on top of the strips. This will form a tiny little table top, with the wood strips on bottom, and big piece on top, glue sandwiched in the middle. Now with appropriately sized nails, drive nails into your large piece of wood all the way around the edges, really cementing the frame to the front. Repeat this step with the extra wood you had cut that will go in the center of the piece, forming either a cross or an X that touches the wood frame on all sides. Glue this wood into place, and nail it down as well. This creates a sold piece that will hang sturdily outside through all weather for years to come!
Step 3: Prep your wood with water proof paint. If you're using acrylic, which I recommend, just skip back to the hardware store and pick up a plain white bucket of weatherproof paint. Coat the entire painting in this, front and back, to make sure your wood won't buckle in the future.
Step 4: Finally! Time for the fun part! Once your weatherproof base coat is dry, you can start sketching and planning your very own barn quilt. Use your trusty computer to search images of quilt patterns (if you're not going with the ring pattern), to find the one that suits you best. The greatest part about this project, other than the time saved in stitching, is that since you're the painter, you can use any fabric color and pattern you want-- the patch design world is your oyster! Use a simple pencil and eraser to sketch out your quilt shape and patch pattern, then use any acrylic paint, even the cheap-y kind in the little squeezy tubes, to create your image.
Step 5: Once you've painted your barn quilt to your liking, and mine took 2 weeks of work so don't expect this to be a quick project, it's time for another layer of weather proofing. There are clear coat outdoor paints made for acrylics that you can use, though they are a little pricey and hard to find, requiring a few phone calls ahead of time, and about $30 for a pint of gloss, which is all you'll need. You can use this covering, which is what I did for this project, or go the much cheaper and easier route of using the more common outdoor clear coat, intended for oil paints. I've used the oil kind for many projects over acrylic, so I don't think it's the travesty that the paint people lead you to believe it is, but you do run the risk of a little yellowing with these, and I suppose it's possible that they don't adhere as well to the acrylic paint, though again, using them hasn't failed me so far. Put several coats of this clear gloss on your painting, alternating between front and back and letting layers fully dry between each one. If this project is a wedding surprise for your partner, you'll want to have borrowed a neighbors garage for a few weeks! And that's it, you're done, and you have a present that is brimming with love and loveliness, that will wow your guests, not to mention your groom!
DIY Songwriting for Your Wedding Day
I have to say I'm a little jealous that Josh got such an easy job compaired to mine, but I guess when I consider that he has to play his music all night in smokey bars while I stay and home and make pretty things, it turns out it all comes out in the wash-- a metaphore for life, I'm sure! The song Josh wrote for me (and only sang privately at our wedding) was the first one he'd ever written on his own, and it turned out to be a big hit for his band, and to be the first of many he wrote after that-- turns out after the first try that songwriting is his thing! These are his song writing instructions for those of you inclined toward melody...
Step 1: Go to the woods with paper and pencil, and bring a guitar if you're feeling extra inspired.
Step 2: Jot down some themes for your song, phrases or words that come to mind, and what you'd like your song to say. Now soak up the scenery and let these ideas roll around in your head for a while.
Step 3: Think about how pretty and fun your partner is (this one is an editor's note, but surely that was part of the process :)...)...
Step 4: Write down what you want to say, then shift the words around to form rhymes and lyrical flow. By now some small tune should be bouncing around the in the back of your mind, so bring it into the forground, set it to the lyrics, and voila! Love song accomplished!
I have posted a link to the song Josh wrote me here, but since I really don't trust my own tech-y ability, you can also see and hear it for yourself by going to www.youtube.com, and searching for Bhuddas Groove Shoes, Ready to Grow. Enjoy!
If every beloved guest at our event warranted a handmade picnic bag of seedy-chimey-birdhousey-goodness, what then for the guests who put in all their elbow grease to help us make the whole day happen? On such a tiny budget and with much of it already accounted for, how could we give an extra thank you to our many helpers to let them know that we truly acknowledged and appreciated their friendship and work, beyond our effusive verbal gestures of gratitude!
Our answer? Giant versions of our smaller gift bags! We loved the picnic grab bags so much we really felt no need to depart from the theme, and didn't want to deprive our helpers of the delights found in the regular guest bags, so we just turbo charged their version of this fun take home gift. Rather than the cozy little birdhouses used for the first project, our 20 helpers (brides maids, bride grooms, close family, stuff loaners and carriers...) received full fledged bird mansions ready to house any burgioning bird family in need of a good new home. The raw wood houses were only $5 a piece on sale at a big box craft store (Michael's), and came in such a fun variety of shapes we had a hard time choosing our 20. We ended up with birdhouses shaped like barns, churches, outhouses, salloons, and even pirate ships, and everyone had fun comparing their prize when the bags were handed out. We gave larger envelopes of wildflower seeds, enough to start a lovely garden by a porch or in a window box, with the same pretty stamps and bigger paper bag envalopes. A large and more verbose thank you note went into each one, as well as a wind chime, because hey, who doesn't love a wind chime? To house all this bounty, we made 20 re-usable fabric bags, one for each recipient to use for shopping or schlepping to their hearts content for years to come. Overall each bag cost about $8, and went home with our helpers lending them the feeling of love, appreciation, and abundance that we wanted to impart.
Since you've already made your smaller gift bags, you don't need any pointers on stamps and seeds and gift collecting, so we'll just straight to making the re-usable bag, a great gift wrapper for any event-- it looks expensive and thoughtful (the thoughtful part is true) but costs you just about nothing!
DIY Reusable Fabric Bag
Step 1: Starting with the fabric, I once again turned to my trusty, dollar-a-yard, bought by the bold muslin. Yes this is the least expensive option available to me, but I'd use it anyway. It's just so crisp and simple, I find it to be my favorite base for anything I make. To that I added a piece of calico fabric bought for a dollar a yard at Wal-Mart. I don't normally recommend buying anything at that particular store, but dollar fabric is dollar fabric. I picked out several different calico patterns just to have a fun variety, then laid out all the fabric I had and cut rectangles measuring about 2 feet by 3 feet.
Step 2: Before going any further into sewing, I took my 20 muslin squares and laid them out on flattened cardboard. Using the tree stencil I'd used for my brides maid dresses (see previous posts), I stenciled a big tree onto each piece along with a bird sitting next to it and waited for the paint to dry. The tree was a bit of a pain since it was so big and detailed, so even though I really liked the end results, I might pick a simpler stencil if I do this project again.
Step 3: Once the paint had REALLY dried, I lined up each of my muslin pieces with each of my calico pieces. I paired them so that when the muslin piece and calico piece were put together, each ones printed side was facing outward, with each ones non printed side touching each other in the middle.
Step 4: Folding the newly paired muslin-calico rectangles in half, I put the tree to the inside and the calico to the outside. Then, each pairing went to the sewing machine, where I ran a stitch down each short side. Turned right-side-out, each stitched piece was now a stenciled muslin bag with a calico liner inside. If you prefer a rounded bottom rather than a squared on, you can simply stitch down the sides and then curve into the bottom while sewing to get that effect. Picture your stitch line looking like a big capital D at the bottom of your bag, rather than a simple rectangle shape.
Step 5: Now make a simple fold to the inside with the fabric at the top of your bag, to hem the top edge and finish the look. You can double fold this if you like, but it's durable enough with a single fold and I like the raw edge, so that is your own style choice. If you single fold, fold in about 2 inches and then stitch the fabric down. If you double fold, fold about 1 inch and then another inch, so that you don't lose too much of the bag's height.
Step 6: Whip up some straps! I used the muslin and calico scraps for this, cutting strips as long as I could get, about 3 inches wide in length. With my trusty strap scraps in hand, I folded each one in half length-wise, then folded the two open edges in again, creating a closed tube. I stitched these closed by running a stitch down my folded open edge first, then down the other edge for continuity. If folding and stitching fabric as you go is playing it a little fast and loose for you, you can iron the creases in for an easier stitching experience-- I just don't have that kind of patience!
Step 7: Once your strap strips have been stitched up, go ahead and cut them into the lengths you'd like for your bag, I cut mine around a yard each, but you can go as short or long as you like. Find the middle of the top edge of your bag, and put in a pin on each side. Then find the middle point between that pin and the side seam on each side, and put a pin there, removing the original pin in the middle. This marks for you where your straps should be sewn. Now grab your bags and straps, stitch them together, and voila! You have handmade gift bags for the masses, you look like the loving and fabulously crafty hostess that you are, and you have plenty of cash left in your pocket for whatever fun you still want to have!
Step 8: Stuff those awesome bags full of great stuff and then wait with baited breath for the fun job of handing them out!
One thing I know for sure is that everybody likes a present! Being new to the world of traditional weddings when I began planning mine, I was shocked to learn that it is a tradition to give each of one's guests a little take-home memento of the day. I was even more shocked when I looked up the commercially available wedding guests gifts selections, and learned that they range in average cost from $2 to $10 EACH, and the $2 gifts are so lame they practically scream out "put me in the landfill as soon as you get home!" With over 100 guests coming and a diminishing budget to keep in mind, I had to immediately cross the over priced baubles off my list.
Still, I really love giving gifts in general. I like whole idea behind it, the give and take nature of the universe being reflected in gift exchange, the spirit of sharing and bounty that gift giving implies, and I enjoy the act of handing out something that makes the receiver smile. Also, I did ask a lot of my guests, from making them hike all over a hilly park, to making them sit on the ground in their pretty clothes, to asking some of them to bring food as well as a wedding gift (all facets that everyone loved, but that might feel a little tiring overall), so I felt extra attached to making sure that when they left for home at the end of the day, they departed feeling as full of energy and cool stuff as they had when they showed up that morning. My obvious solution? Hand made take-home gifts, of course!
For our large body of attending friends and family, I came up with a guest-grab-bag that was filled with a delightful collection of lasting and useful memorabilia that reflected the day itself and the ideals Josh and I share for the kind of world we want to live in. It was sort of a "green" wedding gift for our "green" wedding, though I found that purchasing things with that particular buzz word attached can cost you even more cash, which makes no sense at all to me. I even managed to package them up in such a way that they were adorable to look at, tempting to grab extras on the way out, and even served as added decoration at the reception by virtue of their multitude and cuteness!
Because I had a crew of about 20 friends and family members who really did contribute heavily to making the day happen, mostly with their time and muscle power for set-up on the day of the event, and with their afore-mentioned food donations, I made 20 extra special gift bags for them. While the regular guest bags were small paper creations with tiny birdhouses and other gifts inside, the upgraded versions for the work crew were large hand-made muslin bags to be re-used later for shopping, and were filled with larger versions of their smaller cousins-- giant birdhouses and more verbose cards, for example.
These two projects took a little time, but overall they weren't too hard, were fun to make and assemble, and were a big hit at the party! Not only did my friends love them (I still see their birdhouses displayed and even inhabited when I visit), the whole sha-bang cost me about $200 rather than the $500 I could have spent, and out-cooled anything I could have purchased from a store by THIS much-- (I'm holding my arms apart as wide as they will go here). Ready to make some fabulous take-home wedding gifts for your awesome and deserving guests? Let's do it!
DIY Gift Bags for Guests Who've Been Naughty or Nice
Step 1: First, do a little shopping at your favorite dollar bins, whether those are found in a craft shop, a Dollar General, or a fabric store. Find some item that costs a dollar but manages not to look cheap, and that also reflects you as a couple or some theme of your event. Our wedding was in the spring, so I considered cute little garden trowels, pre-seeded tiny plant pots, etc. But I've seen plenty of items in these bins that I think would fit the bill nicely depending on you and your scene-- slinky's, picture frames, travel games, etc... I went with these tiny wooden birdhouses that were so adorable and detailed I felt like I was ripping off the store buying out their entire inventory. I also found some small wind chimes at only .50 cents a piece, so I bought 100 of those to go with my 100 birdhouses. I should add here that while I had closer to 200 guests, many of them were couples or families, so I estimated that 100 was plenty to send home one per household, and that worked out fine with a couple of left over bags I got to keep myself at the end. I later mailed these to people who wanted to come but couldn't, so the number was perfect. Buying your main gift before you start the rest of your project is important since it would really be a bummer to make a bunch of beautiful gift bags and then discover that what you want to give won't fit inside them!
Step 2: Now that you have your primary gifts rounded up, it's time to do the real work. Go to your nearest seller of brown paper bags, the kind your mom (if she was anything like mine) put your lunch in when you were a kid and you wished she'd just give you money for the hot lunch like all the other kids. I found mine at Target, but I'm hoping they're easily available at any grocery store, since they're so handy for so many things. Buy a pack that supplies as many as you need. I bought a pack of 100, which cost me one whole dollar.
Next, round up:
a bottle of white acrylic paint, an additional accent paint color of your choice, and a paintbrush
a big bundle of sticks from the nearest tree
a hot glue gun
a black Sharpie marker
a few different patterned rolls of wired ribbon
a hole punch
and a bunch of tiny stickers picturing flowers or bugs or some such cute thing.
Phew! Got it all? Actually you should have almost all of this sitting around from our previous projects, so the list shouldn't be as daunting as it first sounds!
Step 3: Time to get dirty! You will need a large uncluttered space for this first step that can sit uninterrupted by pets or kids or really handsy adults for a good hour or two. First, lay out each of your paper bags flat in a line or large square, until all your bags are displayed with their face up, and folded bag bottom behind. With a cup full of white paint and a nice wide paint brush, begin painting your bags. You are simply making a white rectangle in the bottom half or third of your bag, and the edges don't even need to be neat or well defined, so try to go through this part quickly so you can move on to the fun stuff. I actually had my art class of 10 year olds do this part for me, if that tells you how much you don't need to be a perfectionist here. When all your white rectangles are in place, pull out your accent paint color put in in a cup and add a little water (just enough to make it slightly less thick and easier to fling). Dip your big paint brush into the accent color, and with a fully loaded brush, starting flinging the paint across your field of paper bags, giving each bag a nice LIGHT splattering of color.
Step 4: While you're waiting for your paint to dry, cut your ribbon into lengths of about a foot a piece, and set aside.
Step 5: Your paint is probably still wet, so go ahead and chop up those sticks you collected earlier. They will serve as a little picture frame for your white rectangle, so they need to be cut into stacks of two equal lengths, one longer for the long sides of the rectangle, and one shorter for the shorter sides. Pick a uniform length for the long and short sides to be, something close to the average rectangle size you've painted, and start cutting your sticks with a pair of old scissors. Again, this process doesn't have to be perfect, some of your sticks will be fat, some skinny, some of your stick frames will be smaller than your white rectangle, and some bigger. This only adds to the charm at the end, so don't worry about it, just chop up your pile of uniform long and short sticks, and think about how pretty you'll look in your dress.
Step 6: When your paint is fully dry, grab your Sharpie marker and start writing. I wrote "Thank You!" on each of my bags in the center of the white paint rectangle, but you can certainly print out anything you want to say to your guests here, as long as you keep it brief! Something like "True Love," of "Happily Ever After" would be great.
Step 7: Make those stick frames! This is the most tedious part of the job, as hot glue guns make annoying stringy things that muck up your process, but it's still a fun and easy job, so just enjoy the process! With your long and short stick-stacks and your heated up hot glue gun, begin gluing the rectangle stick frames down around each white triangle, until all your bags are framed. A little time consuming, but so worth it when you're done-- this is the most memorable part of your decorated bag!
Step 8: Slap on your stickers! This part is so gratifying, because all the hard stuff is now over, and the stickers are nothing but cute, easy, and fun! I used little honey bees for my sticker choice, so i also used my black Sharpie to draw in little buzz-y flying lines behind their little bee butts.
Step 9: It's bag filling time. Definitely my favorite part because I felt like a rich and benevolent gift giver plunging birdhouses and wind chimes into 100 lovely paper pic nic bags. I should note here that I also included a few tiny extras into my packages, which added interest and fun to their opening with pretty much no extra cost to me. I found little brown paper packages (about 4x4 inches) at Hobby Lobby, 100 for $2. I stamped each one of them with a rubber stamp and ink pad I had laying around that said "Love Grows," filled them with a tablespoon each of wild flower seeds, and stapled them shut. I also cut out strips of paper, folded them over, stamped them with another rubber stamp of a flying bee that said "Bee Well," and signed them inside with love from Mr. and Mrs. Stone. So when I stuffed my pic nic bags, each one ended up holding 1 birdhouse, 1 wind chime, 1 stamped seed packet, and 1 card.
Step 10: Almost done! Now that your bags are looking fat and frisky, fold each one over on top with the fold toward the back, and use your hole punch to punch two holes, about an inch apart, into the middle of the fold. Using the ribbon you cut earlier, thread a piece from front to back through one hole, then from back to front through the other. Tie your ribbon into a pretty bow and reapeat on each paper bag.
Now take a breath and step back to survey your fabulousity! Your guests are about to have the best time ever and you are the one making it happen! Yay for inexpensive extra fun gift bags!
I know. There's so much you can do with paper. I never get tired of it either! In Handmade Invitation Love Part II, we'll be finishing up the big invitation project we started in part I, but now we've moved on from the big tedious work, and we get to do the just plain fun part!
Besides the invitation itself, a lot more information needs to go into an invitation package. An RSVP card is practically worth its weight in gold for planning your event (which leads me to this much needed apology: SORRY to all you party people who came before me, to whom I NEVER bothered to RSVP because I assumed my presence or absence was a given, I get how important this is now and I apologize for any mucking up of your plans I may have caused!). A map is also a nice touch, not always necessary (though it was in our case), but helpful and fun. And why not throw in as much handmade artwork and creativity into your package as possible?! It's not like you get to invite people to a giant celebration of you without looking like a self absorbed jerk every day! I also tossed in an added slip of paper just stating how much we value our friends and family, our coming ritual, and our blessed life in general. It was something I felt the need to convey, and yes, I could have squeezed it onto the invitation card, but that would have left less room for my cartoon bride and groom drawing, so I think you see how an additional printed paper was my only real option.
Alright, have I justified the need for more crafty paper fun enough to get you on board? Great! Then let the cutting and gluing begin!
Best RSVP Cards Ever
That's right, I said EVER.
Step 1: Again with the trips to Hobby Lobby, I picked up 4 packs of small (about 4x6 inches) white envelopes, 25 to a pack. I think with the sale (wait for the sales there, they rotate every week) it cost me less than $10 for the whole sha-bang. I got another stack of textured card stock while I was there (regular 8x10 size). Paper and envelopes in hand, I went home and got together with my increasingly irritable fiance and our trusty digital camera.
Step 2: You are now going to do that thing that teenage girls on social networking sites are so fond of-- meaning you will be holding the camera out in front of you and your partner and taking a bunch of pictures until you get two you really like. Toss on the clothes you'll want in the picture, put yourself in front of a nice backdrop, apply a little lip gloss, and start clicking away. What you're wanting here is one picture of the two of you looking ecstatically happy like you just won the lottery PLUS a free trip to the moon. The other picture will be you looking extraordinarily sad, like you just lost your puppy, and your job, and you just can no longer fathom what life is all about.
At this point in the invitation process, Josh and I were both so tired of paper and eachother that we could barely stand to be in the same room, but we faked our way through the picture taking just swimmingly and loved the end result, so I know that if needed, you can do this too!
Step 3: Once you have the pictures you like, load them onto your computer, shrink your best happy version and your best sad version down to a size that is small enough to fit side by side on a paper the width of your envelope. When they are sized to your satisfaction, print them up, cut them out, and set them aside.
Step 4: Using a light pencil stroke, trace one of your envelopes onto a piece of paper, and cut it out so that you have a piece of paper just small enough to slip inside the envelope when it is cut down to size. Now take your two adorable pictures and glue stick them side by side to the top half of your paper slip. Using a black Sharpie marker, draw a little frame around each one, much like you did on your original invitation. Now, using a thin tip black Sharpie, print neatly across the bottom spaces for your guest to fill in his or her name, and the number of people in their party. In the space in between, draw a small box under each picture for your guest to check, and under that, write out the box/pictures description. Under the happy picture, write something like "YES! We can't wait to come to the best wedding ever! We will be there with bells on!". Under the sad picture, write something along the lines of "So sorry and broken hearted that we will not be able to attend the best wedding ever."
Step 5: With your prototype now in hand, color copy it as many times as needed to fill up one 8x10 sheet of paper. I think I got 4 cards to a sheet. When you have your four copies, cut them out, lay them face down in your copy tray with a blank piece of white paper behind them, and start copying. Be sure to print your RSVP's onto the textured card stock you brought home, it makes a lovely little card when you're all done.
Step 6: Cut out your cards, pair them with your stamped and addressed envelopes, and stuff them into your invitation package. These RSVP's were perhaps the biggest hit of our pre-wedding hype, and many people refused to give them back at all, calling to confirm instead and informing us that the pictures were too cute to take off the fridge. We even got a few back that were black and white copies of the color ones we'd sent out, letting us know that the sender had found a way to keep the card they wanted, but still reply in a civilized manner. So really, the biggest problem with your RSVP cards is that they might turn out so awesome that you won't get them back!
A Dreamy Map to a Dreamy Day
Step 1: It's all easy from here, I swear! to make your event map, simply divide another 8x10 piece of white paper into four parts, cut one out, and grab that trusty pencil to start sketching. Find nearby central location to start giving directions from (a well known building, park, or intersection), and draw a little path from there to your event. Be sure to label each street as you go, and provide a little compass somewhere in the picture so people know your north from your south.
Step 2: Once your technical information is in place, have a little fun decorating the designated path! I doodled in little flowers and butterflies along the way since our event was in a park, and I also drew in some exaggerated large doodles of landmarks along the way to help readers know they were on the right track. I'd meant to make it look like a really cool pirate map, but it ended up looking like everything I ever drew in the margins of my high school notebooks. No matter, it was going to be cute in the end no matter what by virtue of it's hand-made-ness, so don't be afraid to let your inner artist have fun with this one. Just remember to leave plenty of blank space in your map overall, so that your guests can still see the forrest for the trees, or in this case, the map beneath the butterflies.
Step 3: When you are happy with your doodles, trace your pencil lines with your now familiar fine tipped black Sharpie, and erase any pencil marks left behind.
Step 4: Just like your RSVPS, this map will be copied again and again until you have 4 identical prototypes. Once you have these, lay them face down in your copy tray with a blank piece of paper behind them. Put your map paper into the copy tray and copy as many maps as needed for your invitations.
Step 5: An added note here, you can use any paper for the map, and I recommend a pale colored paper just for some fun variety. I found a particularly fun paper at the craft shop, which is transparent, strong like card stock, and comes in a variety of colors. I printed my maps on these in many different colors, and then cut them out with decorative scissors that cut a pattern into the border and gave the maps an extra whimsical air. I recommend both the funky paper and the crazy scissors for this project!
Extra Quote Inserts for the Overly Verbose
It's true, we're going a little overboard here and you can totally stop with the above project or even the one before that if you like. But if you like a great package filled to the brim with wondrous lovelies as much as I do, then we have one more tiny project to go!
Step 1: If you already have more you wanted to say, quotes you wanted to share, or information you still want to include, this is the place to do it. Pick your phrase, info, or famous person's stolen line, and type it into a document on your computer. Go ahead and find yourself a great font, and feel free to write in bold and use a bigger font size if you like.
Step 2: Once you've typed out what you want to say (and for goodness sake, at this point let's keep it relatively brief), copy and paste your phrase as many times as needed for your invitation total. Be sure to leave two spaces between each one to ensure plenty of cutting room when you're done.
Step 3: Load your chosen paper into the printing tray (I used the see through- colored fun stuff for this project as well), hit print and watch the miracle of technology do most of your work for you. When everything is printed, grab your scissors (I again recommend the pattern-cutting scissors for this), cut out your last words, stuff them into your envelopes, and... THAT'S IT! You're done! Now go take a hot bath and a day off!
At the outset of our wedding preparations, I must admit I was a little star struck by all the glitzy options available to me. Also, having never been one of those girls who was referred to as "princess" by her parents, or dressed up in pink (my mother gave me a boy's name so I wouldn't be discriminated against for goodness sake...), I had a bit of a left over yen for a little pampered girlie action, and I thought I might satisfy it by allowing a little splurge spending on fancy printed wedding invites. After all, you just get married the one time, and when besides this will you get to walk into one of those fancy paper stores and get your own information printed up all sparkl-ey and scroll-ey like?
So, I set out one blustery morning to explore the paper shops and create the fairy-tale invitations of my dreams, that would practically be delivered by singing bluebirds if anyone happened to offer that service. Turns out, that service is not available. In fact, every store I went to was less creative and interesting than the last, and the visions I'd had in my head were quickly met with a harsh reality. First, every option available to me was already exemplified in the store's sample books, meaning hundreds of brides before me had sent out the very same thing, no matter what I went with. Second, none of them were terribly interesting or artful, consisting mostly of cliched silhouettes and lame clip-art, coupled with laser printed catch phrases around the couple's added-in names, making every invitation look like an impersonal fill-in-the-blank form that was cranked out of a computer like a million before it. And that is just what those invitations were.
Second, and perhaps more insulting, was that the starting price for 100 of these depressing invitations was $400, and going steeply up from there! I balked at the price, I yawned out of sheer boredom, and I left each store increasingly disapointed and mentioning to the shop girls that perhaps I'd just make my own invitations afterall. This statement was, without exception, met with derisive laughter and the snotty proclimaton that I'd be back, and begging them to get my expensive crap printed on time. I disagreed.
With my wedding invitations (not to mention my pride) on the line, I headed back yet again to Hobby Lobby. I skipped the wedding section, where things are, as usual, overpriced and not that interesting, and scooted over instead to the blank stationary department (located I believe intentionally on the opposite side of the store so as not to give any brides too many less costly ideas).
There I found these FABULOUS stacks of speckeled brown paper card sets, reminiscent of the brown paper bags our groceries once came in, and the perfect price tag informed me that they were 25 for $10, envalopes included, and that they were additionally on sale for 40% off! I grabbed four packs and some glue sticks, and headed home.
In the end, my invitations were so fun that I'm still proud of them a year later, and my friends kept them as memento's rather than throwing them away. They've even generated some paper craft making work for me on the side, as my friends showed them to their friends who called me up to help with their own weddings! And rather than spending hundreds of dollars on forgettable paper, I spent $100 total for my 100 invitations, which are still the talk of the town! Though to be fair, it's not a very happening town :)...
DIY Wedding Invitations
Step 1: Get ready. This is a labor intensive job and is not for the faint of heart if you're making as many as I did. I recommend that you get together a group of girls for a work frolic to crank these out, or expect to spend a week of evenings on the floor with your partner getting increasingly annoyed at each other as you work your way through this project, which is the path I chose. Still, totally worth it in the end!
Step 2: Ok, now that you've enlisted your helpers, time to get to work! For my invitations, I started out with pre-made blank card packages which included matching envelopes. Not pricey at all, and definitely worth saving the effort of folding raw paper yourself. With your cards selected, your next step is to go through your pictures and find the one of you and your partner or something you both love to grace the front of your card. Once you have this, shrink it down on your computer to a small but clear size (mine was about 3 by 4 inches), copy and paste it as many times as needed onto one document, and color print it out. I used the library printers for my pictures, netting me a cost of $1 for the four sheets I needed of 100 small pictures.
Step 3: Cut the printed pictures out individually, which shouldn't take long since you can just cut them out in strips on your printed pages. Now glue each one to the front center of your cards, or off to one side if you prefer a little a-symmetry.
Step 4: Using a paint pen, draw a little picture frame around your picture. It doesn't have to be perfect, the idea is that it look sweet and hand drawn, while serving the double purpose of anchoring your picture to the card, so that it doesn't look like a simple glued on kindergarten project. You are now done with the front of your card!
Step 5: On the inside of your card you will be printing up all the information needed for your guests to actually get to your event, coupled with whatever flowery language you want to include in the presentation. Spend a little time Googling the available phrasing for wedding invites, pull what you like, and write up what you want to say, being sure to include, your names (correctly spelled unlike my first draft), and the date, location, and time.
Step 6: Now that you have your script, cut white piece of paper to the size you'd like your information printed on, that will be glued to the inside of your card. Be sure to leave room for a border around this white paper. With your paper sized and cut to your liking, lightly pencil in your words so that they look pretty and are easily legible, then pen them in over your pencil lines with a fine tipped black Sharpie pen. These really are the best pens for the job, so no need for fancy art pens. If you'd like to include your own stick people illustrations here as I did on mine, pencil and then pen those in as well!
Step 7: Erase your pencil lines and photocopy your impressive piece of art until you have enough copies to cut out and fill one regular sized piece of printer paper. Then lay the copies face down on the copier, insert a stack of nice textured white card stock into your printer bin, and copy as many of these as needed. I got four to a sheet, and so had to make 25 black and white copies, a total of $2.50 at the library. If you are having a work party, be sure to get all this printed and ready to cut before your guests arrive, to keep the work quick and easy.
Step 8: Cut out your stack of newly printed paper!
Step 9: Working with a stack of scrapbook paper, use your glue stick to paste your white printed paper down against a pretty piece of patterned paper (I just pulled from a book of mixed scrapbook paper, so all the patterns I used were different, which was fun). Cut out the craft paper around the white card stock, creating a pretty framed border of and inch or less of background pattern.
Step 10: Now, here's where I got fancy. You can skip this step if you like since it's a little time consuming, but I really recommend it-- it's what really set my invitations apart and it's the extra bling and creative touch I was looking for that the stores could not provide for me. Head back to that sketchy bridal department at Hobby Lobby. Ignoring everything else you see there, find the little wedding favor section. There you will find these adorable little metal medallions with sweet little sayings on them like "love" or "Mr. and Mrs.". I went with the ones that say "Happily Ever After." See? I worked in the fairy tale after all. They are $5 for 25, so I spent $20 for the lot of them, which in the end felt like a great bargain.
Step 11: Using a big embroidery needle and colored embroidery floss, poke your needle down through your framed piece of card stock at whatever spot you choose (I did the left bottom corner), and back up through the paper about an inch away from your first hole. Leave about 6 inches of thread coming out of each hole, and repeat this action on each of your framed card stock pieces.
Step 12: Slip the thread through the hole in your medallion and tie the thread in a pretty and secure bow. Now repeat on each piece of paper, until each one has a lovely bow-tie hugging a stamped medallion.
Step 13: Using your trusty glue stick again, apply a liberal amount to the back of your framed medallioned card stock, and press it firmly onto the center of the inside of each of your cards. Voila! Your invitations are made, they are creative and fun to open, and they didn't cost you the equivalent of two car payments!
*Stay tuned for the next two installments, making your wedding maps and making your RSVP's!*
I love a terra-cotta flower pot. They're so simple and pretty and utilitarian, I could sing their praises all morning long-- I'm surprised William Carlos Williams never got around to writing a sweet little poem about them! Their earthy orange color, their porous yet solid smooth texture, their short round stature-- like one of Winnie the Pooh's honey pots, but way more functional! I know, I know, it's just a pot. And I have a notoriously black thumb when it comes to plant life, so for all my terra-cotta fan-dom, I don't get to utilize them very often. That's why when it came time for wedding decorations, I knew this was finally my chance to celebrate the flower pots I've thus far let down so many times!
With a little creative crow-baring on my part, I managed to work the flower pots into both the ceremony and the reception, by using one pot as the ring bearing vehicle (rather than that tired old tiny pillow that for some reason still costs $25 at the bridal shops), and three more as the silver wear holders on the big buffet spread. They were simple little added touches, but I loved what they added to the feel of the day. Ah, and did I mention that the pots cost .45 whole cents a piece, brand spanking new from the store? So both projects together cost me right about one dollar and sixty cents... hurray for terra-cotta flower pots!
Ring Bearing Flower Pots
Step 1: Using a small pot, fill the bottom with any loose and not leaky filler. I used a little pile of scrap muslin from the many piles of it I had laying around from other projects.
Step 2: Once your pot is filled, find a small piece of moss, either real and dug up from the roots of a tree in a moist area, or using the fake kind that looks plenty real from the craft store. The piece you want will be just a little larger in circumference than the top of the pot you are using. Lay the moss on the table in preparation for step 3.
Step 3: Using whatever strip of ribbon strikes your fancy (I used a thin strip of cotton ribbon with tiny blue and white checks), tuck one end of it through the moss from top to bottom near the center of your moss circle, then poke it back through and thread it back up from bottom to top about an inch from your first ribbon insertion. This should leave your ribbon tucked into the moss with its long ends loose over the top, and centered in the middle of your moss circle.
Step 4: Pick up your chunk of moss and ribbon, and place it onto the top of your flower pot, over the inside filler. The moss should lay slightly mounded over the pot, with the ribbon situated in the middle. Tuck the moss down into the sides of the pot to secure it in place.
Step 5: Slip you and your partner's rings onto a strand of the ribbon, and tie the two pieces of ribbon together into a bow. Voila! Your flower pot ring bearer is ready for its procession down the aisle, and no one will be tempted to fall asleep staring at a tiny ring pillow!
Flower Pots for Kitchenwear
Step 1: Using three medium size flower pots, set each out on your craft table with a piece of white chalk, a dollop of white paint, and a paintbrush at the ready.
Step 2: Taking your chalk in hand first (unless you're a maverick like me and just want to go straight to the painting), lightly sketch in the words you want to paint. I was labeling a pot for each utensil they would hold, so I was writing the words "forks," "knives," and "spoons." Remember to be aware the human tendency to write downward at a slope, and make sure you are writing your words straight across, using a ruler and a lightly chalked in guideline if needed.
Step 3: Load up that paint brush and get your art on! Paint over your chalked on words, keeping a steady hand to make smooth lines of relatively even thickness. Don't be afraid to put plenty of paint on your brush, as this helps your brush strokes lay down more neatly. It doesn't have to be perfect, since the look you're going for is handmade anyway, but it should look like a grow-up did the painting :). If I remember correctly, I actually didn't even bother with the niceties of these steps when I made mine, I was in such a hurry to move on to my next project, I just grabbed a bottle of white-out and went to town, and even mine turned out great in the end, so I'm confident you can't go wrong!
Step 4: Toss your silverware into the labeled flower pots and let your guests dig in, it's just that easy and so much more fun than those gray plastic bins the catering services charge you for!
With fluttery flags, garlands, and paper circle wheels, the overhead level of your par-tay is now as festive as anything needs to be. On to eye level! As I said before, we did a lot of decorating for a sunny afternoon event that was simple, practically free, and does not require instructions. All of our flowers were stolen from the roadsides, with a lot of tall grass and weeds as filler, which ended up looking so pretty I just can't believe that the flower industry can even exist during the summer months. (And by the way, had it been fall with less floral roadside array to choose from, I think fall leaves, bare sticks, apples, and pumpkins would have made an equally lovely and easy to gather look). We gave the flowers a nice drink of water in our collection of old mason jars, and tied a pretty ribbon around each one. A time investment of pretty much nothing, since stealing ditch flowers and tying pretty bows is the kind of work we around her put the children to :). We also covered all the tables in lengths of muslin which we just cut straight off the bolt, so again, easy-peasy, so simple and pretty, and muslin is a dollar a yard if you buy a whole bolt with a trusty half-off store coupon.
So the only other eye candies we created for the middle of the space, the eye-level decorations, if you will, were both simple projects that put to use the old frames we had laying around the house looking for work. One was a series of picture frames displaying Josh and I as children (perhaps a cliche wedding tradition at this point, but his GIGANTIC childhood cheeks were just begging to be put on display, plus, I like a good story, so I think it's always good to see where people have come from), and the other is our Thumb-print Tree sign-in project, which we ultimately slapped into one of those old frames, and love passing every day in our entry way! So much better than a dusty old guest book we'll never look at again!
Ready for more almost free projects that make your day memorable for the fun and not the bills? Let's get crafting!
DIY PICTURE FRAME CLOTHES LINE
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love anything involving clothespins! They just make me think of fresh laundry on the line and breezy sunny days, so they always make me happy! Also, I'd seen other weddings with slide shows (a little over the top for our style), or bulletin boards (a little under the top for our scene), and I just knew I could find a more visually fun way to accomplish the same idea. Enter the picture frame clothesline, which came to me in a flash on one of my long sleepless pre-wedding nights!
Step 1: Find a few old picture frames that convey the look you're trying to achieve, whether that's rustic, shabby chic, funky, or what have you. If you don't have them already laying around your house (I'm a painter so people tend to donate frames to me), just hit up your local thrift store, where you are likely to find a nice sized pile of orphaned frames just waiting to go home with you for very little money. You'll want them to be plenty big to accommodate your clothesline (Mine were about a foot and a half by two and a half feet).
Step 2: Spend some time going through old pictures of the both of you, finding the ones that best represent your own history, or that are most embarrassing :). Remember to get an equal amount of pictures of both of you, so that you don't end up looking self-absorbed or obsequious! Once you have your final stacks, either photo copy them so as not to damage the originals, or make sure you have permission from their owners to stick some tape on the backs.
Step 3: Find the left over scraps of craft paper from the paper wheel project, and use them to frame up your photographs. Simply place a small piece of two-sided tape on each of the four corners of a picture, press the picture onto a piece of craft paper, then cut the paper out around the picture, leaving about a half-inch border of paper around the photo. When you do this with each of your pictures, you'll have them prettily framed for the project, and you'll ensure that they won't curl up at the ends while hanging out at your party!
Step 4: With all your pictures ready to go, it's time to hang the clothes line. Using a stapler and a ball of thin twine or cotton kite string, staple one end of the twine to the upper right hand corner of the back of your frame. Taking the string in a diagonal direction, down about 4 inches to the left side of the frame, pull the string taught and staple it to the back of the frame again. Repeat this action going back and forth down the frame (you can go a little wider between spaces if your photos are bigger), until the whole length of the frame has string zig-zagging it's way from top to bottom.
Step 5: Now for the fun part! Order your prints however you'd like them to be displayed (I did one frame for me, one for Josh, and one for pictures of the both of us), grab a fist-full of clothes pins, and start hanging your pictures up along your lines. Feel free to overlap a little, or to leave plenty of space depending on how much you have to work with, either way gives its own fun look. Now set them aside and go eat some chocolate, your framed wedding pictures are ready to go!
Thumb Print Wedding Tree
Despite the fact that we had a bit of an outlaw audience at our wedding, we decided to make a tree made of our guests fingerprints (and crossed our fingers that this wouldn't make anyone nervous!). This was one of our favorite projects, because it's the one we get to keep and look at all the time, it's so pretty and fun hanging up in our entryway, and we still enjoy glancing at all the prints of people we love who we got to share the day with. Also it's a great conversation piece that people often comment on when they walk in, and it's a really good way to rub in how much fun your wedding was, for visitors who made the mistake of missing out...
Step 1: Find a large, acid free piece of paper or craft board, big enough to accommodate a whole tree full of your guests thumbprints (we had almost 200 people, so we needed some big paper!). Gather up a Sharpie fine point black pen, a pencil and eraser, and three different colored ink pads, as well.
Step 2: Start drawing! With your pencil and eraser, making very light lines, begin to sketch out the basic shape of your tree, putting down the roots, trunk, and big branches first, then filling in the smaller sticks and branches once you're happy with your main proportions. Be sure to leave a wide margin of blank space between the tree branches and the edge of your paper, as this space will be filled up with "leaves" by your guests. Don't be intimidated if you don't spend a lot of your free time drawing trees! Google image will provide you with page after page of tree silhouettes, and from there you can copy a shape with more ease than you think. Just dive in and give it a try-- you can do it, I believe in you! And if you really really can't, you can buy one of my hand-drawn trees at my etsy shop (username: jessblissamber) :)...
Step 3: With your tree all penciled in just the way you like it, grab that trusty Sharpie and commit it forever to your paper. Again, don't let the pen intimidate you, this is your art, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it will look like a tree when you're done no matter what, because trees are an organic shape, so it's hard to draw them "wrong." Once your tree is outlined, feel free to fill in the trunk and branches with whatever scriblley pen lines you like. I used a spiraled continuous line in my tree, which you are welcome to copy. I also penned in a little carved tree heart with Josh's name and mine, which I also recommend for a little added visual interest.
Step 4: You did it! You made a tree! Now make a little sign to go next to it on a folded piece of card stock, so your guests will know what to do with your new-fangled sign in art. In your clearest handwriting, post on your sign "Please "leaf" a fingerprint and your name!". Then, because people aren't always the greatest at reading instructions, put 3 of your own fingerprints below on your sign, and sign a fake name to each one, illustrating just what it is you want your guests to do. This worked just great for us, and our tree filled up quickly with multicolored "leaves" and signatures. Plus, everyone walked around with a matching green finger for the rest of the day, which just made me smile :).
Tired of those weird party streamers that tear and dangle halfway through the event and never looked that festive to begin with? Wondering why they are both strangely depressing and yet ubiquitous at every party? It's because they're super inexpensive and cover a lot of space with a little effort, and while they're great for a 5 year olds' birthday, the lack of cost and effort shows. If you're willing to put in the extra effort at hardly any more monetary cost, the fate of tired decorations does not have to befall you, and a room full of flutter handmade paper loveliness can be yours for the taking.
First let's talk streamers, crafted by your own industrious little hands, and personalized for your event-- a sure-fire way to make all your guests feel cozy and great, without their even knowing exactly why!
Personalized Party Streamers
Step 1: Rather than grabbing the aforementioned giant rolls of gauzy paper for $2 a roll, stroll right past those bad boys and on to a nice roll of real ribbon, or (if you're budgeting and looking for super cheap supplies), a big spool of that skinny ribbed plastic-y ribbon that you use on Christmas gifts and curl up at the ends with scissors. Now you can walk away from the party supply section altogether, and pick up a nice cheap pack of large index cards-- I believe the plain old white ones are best. Grab a few bottles of paint to match your color scheme, and make sure one of them is black or a dark color for printing. Make sure you have a stapler while you're at it, and head on home, if you're not there with all these supplies already!
Step 2: Now is the time to figure out what personalized messages you'd like to emblazon on your streamers for your guests to see when they enter your space for the first time. Since I was making streamers for my wedding, I wrote things like "Josh loves Jesse," "Jesse loves Josh," "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine," and "Happily Ever After." Find a nice long table or stretch of floor, and lay out enough index cards, blank side up, to spell your message. Be sure to include an extra index card for the space between each word, to make your streamers easier to read when they're dangling in the air.
Step 3: It's painting time! Get out a paint brush and your darkest color of paint (again, I like black for plain block printing). Paint one letter of your message per card, leaving the blank space cards in between. Your lettering could be clean, big, and clear, but does not need to be fancy, in fact the simpler it is, the easier it is to see and read, which really, is sort of your whole goal here.
Step 4: Are your letters all painted and looking grand? Now let's address those left over blank space cards between words. You can leave them blank, but I like to put just a little something on them to spice up the overall appearance. For my own streamers, I painted a simple red or yellow flower on each blank card, outlined in black, and smaller than the letters. I also left two extra blank cards on the outside of my phrases, one at the front end and one on the back, and painted a little red heart on these, also outlined in black. Super simple, and the painting section of this project took me about half an hour altogether.
Step 5: With all your awesome painted cards sitting in neat rows looking like the bees knees, it's time to strap them to a ribbon and hang them on a wall! Take your spool of ribbon (I used the inexpensive ribbed kind) and lay it out over the top of your cards. Remember to allow about 6 feet of extra ribbon on each side for easy hang-up on the day of your event, this way they can fit into any space without having to pre-plan which banner will hang where. With your trusty stapler, attach each card, one by one, to the ribbon, keeping about 6 inches or so between each card. Only use one phrase per cut of ribbon, so if you have 5 phrases painted out, you should end up with 5 separate streamers ready to pretty-up even the most plain of spaces (remember I was decorating a rusted metal park roof, and even that looked great with I was done)!
And that's it, you're done. In about an hour's time, you have some fabulous personalized streamers that you and your guests will love, and it should have cost you no more than 5 bucks... yea, sometimes an extra special handmade life is just that easy!
Paper Mobiles that Your Guests Will Try to Steal and Take Home
(I just went ahead and granted permission for this, in order to cut down on the theft)...
Step 1: You'll need the afore mentioned ribbed ribbon and stapler for this project, along with a hole punch, a stack of craft paper (I prefer the thick kind that comes in a pad, though the thinner kind works too and is a little easier to bend), and a stack of embroidery hoops in the size you want your mobile to be. I picked a variety of sizes from medium to large to give more diversity to my mobiles.
Step 2: Just a little note here to say that you do not have to use embroidery hoops for your mobiles, as the metal screw on half of the hoop does make it slightly more challenging to balance while hanging, but while trying to find a round shape for this craft and working on a budget, I quickly found that every hoop available to me cost around $10 a piece, and with $2,000 to spend and 20 hoops to make, that was just not a workable figure. Then one day while embroidering my famous dirty dishtowels (see my Etsy shop at username jessblissamber), it came to me like light streaming out from the heavens with that faint angel song in the background: embroidery hoops are round, cost 88 cents a piece at the craft store, and come with TWO hoops to work with in every purchase. Total cost for 20 hoops? Ten bucks!
Ok, back to Step 2: Select a set of craft paper from which to work. I did not pay any attention to color or pattern at all here, as I felt the random nature of the prints were part of the fun, but you may want to be more match-y than me, so pick your papers and set them in front of you. They should start out square in shape, so if they are currently rectangles, just chop off the bottom half so that you're starting out with squares-- it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be square-ish. Now fold your first piece of paper into a fan, stapling it together on one end so that it makes the traditional fan shape-- rounded on one side, flat on the other.
Step 3: Repeat this process with your next piece of paper, so that you now have two pretty fans sitting in front of you. Now take the flat ends of each fan, put them together so that both pretty sides are facing the same direction, and staple the flat ends together. Now you have one giant corrugated circle of prettiness to hang from your new mobile. Assuming you need about 5 circles per mobile, calculate how many mobiles you plan to make and multiply that number by 5-- this is how many paper circles you'll need for this project. Now you just put in a good movie, and spend the next few hours repeating steps 2 and 3, until you have all the circles you need!
I also mixed it up by making some circles big, like the ones you're now making, and some small. To make the small ones, I just used one piece of paper instead of two, folded my fan in half in the middle (as if I were making a paper bow-tie), and stapled the flat ends together on both sides.
Step 4: Phew! All your circles are ready to go! I know that was a little time consuming, but this is the kind of thing you invite your girlfriends over for, so that it goes quickly and everyone has fun in the process! Now grab that hole punch, and knock out a nice little hole in every one of your circles. After so much folding and stapling, this task is satisfying in it's slightly destructive nature.
Step 5: You're on the home stretch. Using the ribbon from your last project, cut it in the lengths that you'd like it to hang from your hoop (I gave about a foot-and-a-half of space for mine), with a little extra length for tying at both ends. Tie the ribbon to the paper circle on one end, and to the hoop at the other. Every circle does not have to hang at a uniform length from the hoop, just remember that in the end you'll have to scooch them around a little to make sure they balance right with their different lengths or sizes, so that the hoop hangs evenly. Again, I used 5 per hoop, but the number you use is up to you!
Step 6: Last one, I promise! This is a longer project, I know, but so worth it! I still see my mobiles hanging from friends porches when I stop by to visit, and it makes me smile every time :). With all your mobiles all strung up and ready to go, all you need now is some extra ribbon on top to give them something to hang from. Grab that trusty roll of ribbon one more time (and yes, the spool should have plenty still left, these things go on forever-- I used one roll for both these projects and I still have half of it sitting in my laundry room waiting to be utilized). Cutting out lengths of about 2 yards each, take 5 lengths for each hoop, and get to work. Folding a length of the ribbon in half (so it's now about 1 yard long), tie the middle in a knot to your hoop. Repeat this with 4 more lengths of ribbon, spacing them evenly so that your hoop will hang flat as it sways in the breeze of your bouncing guests. When all 5 lengths of ribbon are tied around your hoop, gather them up in your hand so that they all meet in the middle and let the hoop and paper circles dangle securely below. Tie all the ribbons in your hand into one large knot, and hang it up from the ceiling. TA-DA! You're done! Now do that with each remaining hoop, and then take a hot bath, enjoying the fact that you are a handmade maverick-- a creative genius! With a beautiful wedding looming at almost no decorative cost! Yay for you!
Ok people, let's get down to the brass tacks-- isn't that what they say when it's time for the nitty-gritty work to commence? Filling a space with armloads of handmade goods isn't done overnight, and it isn't done alone either. Before I share with you the in's and outs of decorative handwork, I want to be clear about two things: 1.) It is time consuming but worth it, so if you're really going to DIY your perfect day, get ready to spend every night for several months working your little fingers to the bone-- in a fun way :)! And 2.) Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes your community of friends and family to pull something this large together, and really, you and I wouldn't have it any other way, right?!
While I did the vast bulk of this work on my own in my home through long blustery winter nights, I could not have made my dress with out almost all the work and inspiration coming from my dress-revamping friend, Angela. I could not have baked the lovely cake that her mother made for us. I could not have set up my wedding (which took a team of 20 people) the morning of the event, and gotten ready for said wedding at the same time. So I have to send out a universe-size thank-you to all of my wonderful helpers, and I also have to help you chomping-at-the-bit readers to "keep it real"! Yes, you'll be working a lot when you are hand making the days and events of your own life, and yes, you'll still need other people along that way. After all, isn't communing with other people what weddings and life are all about?!
And now for those brass tacks I mentioned...
DIY TRIANGLE BUNTING BY THE MILE
For a huge blank space like the one I was trying to fill, I knew the first step would be to have plenty of texture, color, and movement, up in the air, as far as the eye could see. To this end, I made enough scrap fabric bunting to wrap around the whole park area several times over, allowing for plenty of criss-crossing and loop-di-looping overhead. The effect was just what I'd hoped for, a fluttery light hearted home-y feel that left everyone smiling under the breezy canopy of calico's and plaids.
Step 1: To begin this big project (it took me a few weeks to get it all cut, stitched, and coiled away in bags), I started out with a trip to my local thrift store. I don't mean the established and more popular thrift stores where people are shopping for brand name clothes, I mean the little church-run kind, off in the woods somewhere, where clothes are still sold by the bag for a dollar a crammed-in pile. When you're going to chop them up anyway, no one cares what designer name the tag boasts. So off to the nearby town of Ebeneezer went I, where I crammed plastic shopping bags full of skirts and dresses of every print, and then proceeded to shamelessly flirt with the sweet and a little simple guy behind the register to get out with an even more steep discount. I believe my total cost was something like 5 bucks, and I left with a backseat full of clothes.
Step 2: After choosing the size of triangle you'd like to use (I went with BIG, probably a foot on each side, to save a little on sewing time in the end) and procuring a really good pair of scissors, begin cutting up your clothes. I like to chop up the clothes along the seams first, to provide myself with a more flat and workable piece of fabric to cut from. If you like, you can make yourself a triangle template from a piece of paper and trace the shape with a marker onto the fabric, cutting from the shapes you draw. I didn't bother with this, preferring to blaze through willy-nilly and just get the work done. This did leave me with shapes that were not completely uniform in size, and some that only slightly resembled triangles, but I liked the home-made look this achieved, so it worked for me. If you prefer a more proper look, then I suggest the template.
Step 3: Make a stack of triangles as high as you feel you'll want to sew. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my stack probably reached my hips when standing, but I'm also not exaggerating when I say I made miles of bunting, so don't feel you need to be quite as industrious as I was, unless you also have a big space to fill and a lot of nights to work on it! Remember as you build your stack to alternate the patterns you are putting there, as the order you build up your fabric in will be the order you end up stitching them in as well, so we don't want a whole row of pink polka dots with nothing in between.
Step 4: Find a roll of strong cotton string or twine, thick enough to hold the weight of your fabulous creation, but thin enough not to break the needle on your machine should you bump into it while sewing. There's nothing more terrifying than sewing peacefully along while daydreaming about your wedding day, only to have the sharp end of a needle suddenly slam into something too thick, snap in half, and come shooting straight out at your eye! Heed my warning readers, I speak from experience. Leaving a nice long piece of the twine bare (a good 6 feet, so that it can be wrapped and tied around any tree or pole without interrupting your bunting), and then start your sewing. Drawing from your stack, pick up one triangle at a time, fold one end over the twine so that about an inch overlaps in back, and simply stitch the triangle closed over the twine, tightly enough that it won't slip around once you've stitched it in place. If you're wondering about the raw edges on the rest of the triangle, I left mine that way on purpose. Again, I like the handmade feel of a raw edge, and more importantly, hemming the edges of all that fabric would have tripled my work time. And while I loved making all this swag for my wedding, I didn't love it THAT much! Also, make sure that each new piece of fabric you add faces the same way, with its print on the outside, and the fold over stitch in back. Got your first triangle sewn nicely into place all pretty and perfect? Great! Now do that a thousand more times, and you'll have all the bunting loveliness a girl could ever want!
Step 5: You're actually done at this point, provided you've thought to trim your threads along the way, which I highly suggest, so just a few more pointers to keep you on the right track. Do make sure that when you are done with your long bunting banner, you coil it up nice and neat before you bag it. Otherwise it will come out looking like what my lingerie used to look like before I figured out that I couldn't just wad it up in a ball and toss it into the washer and dryer as if it were a pile of sweatshirts-- a tangle blob of fabric that will never un-knot itself without the help of Rumpelstiltskin himself, and you know what a hard bargain he drives.
Also, if you have so many triangles (like me) that you end up using more than one ball of twine, be sure to leave 6 feet of empty space at the other end of your bunting as well, for tying purposes.
Lastly, if you are still harboring a fear of the sewing machine, a malady a surprising number of modern people share, I suggest two things: 1.) Get over this fear so that we can get on with crafting! And 2.) You can actually do this whole project with hot glue instead of a needle and thread, it will be just as pretty and strong, though your fingers might get a little burn-y.
And best of all, bunting lasts forever, and can be pulled out again and again for parties or sunny days for the rest of your life! Yay for bunting!
Do you know the old story of Stone Soup? The one where an old man walks into a town, hungry and tired, and right away the townspeople inform him that they have no food nor bed to share with him? "It's ok," he tells them, "I've got my own recipe for the most delicious soup in the world, and i carry it right here in my pocket." Then he pulls out a rock and shows it off to the local folk. Curious, the people ask how he plans to make dinner from this. "Well," he answers, "if one of you has a kettle and some water to put over a fire, I'll show you!" Quickly they gather these things for him, excited to see soup made from a stone. The old man drops his stone into the pot, and begins to heat the water. As he stirs and samples it, he says "could use a little salt-- does anyone have a dash of salt I can add to this stone soup?" Salt is handed to him right away. "Maybe a few carrots would help too, and an onion might make it even better..." Soon carrots and onions have been rounded up and put in the pot, to help along the mysterious stone soup. Eventually as the smell wafts through the crowd, each person manages to find something to contribute to the pot, and in the end everyone eats, including the old man, and without sacrifice on any ones part, everyone goes home fed and happy, and a bed is found for the old man, who gave them the Stone Soup recipe. This was the philosophy behind feeding our guests, and I'm so glad to finally know that the tale I heard so often growing up really does work out just like they said it would.
I'm just going to say it, when I'm on the fence about attending a wedding, it's the free food that tips me over the RSVP edge. I know there's no such thing as a free lunch, and technically the sacrifice of my whole day as well as a gift was required to get me in the door, but i don't care, where there is free food, particularly food that promises to be yummy and bountiful, you will likely find me nearby. I can only assume this is true for my guests as well, and that's fine, we are all mortal, after all. I say then that rather than deny this gastronomical truth, we embrace it fully, and give the people what they want!
I know that feeding the multitudes is a big part of any ones wedding budget, and I've learned that it is actually the biggest contributing factor to cutting down a couple's guest list. A friend of mine just last week had a lovely wedding that she'll be paying for for a while, and she told me the cost to feed and entertain her guests was $40 per person! And no, nothing was brought in from the ocean or the moon! I wanted none of this. I wanted every person I'd ever met to get to come to our big day if they felt so moved, and when they got there, I wanted them to feel happy and well nourished from start to finish-- no peckish low-blood-sugared testy guests at my wedding! I didn't just send out 100 invitations to everyone I find an address for, I printed up posters and posted them in the common areas of places I love and communes I've lived in. When you've got croquet, sack race, and volleyball teams to fill, you need a big crowd, and I'm not averse to a big pile of wedding presents either :)...
How then to feed an expected throng of 200 people while keeping to a $2,000 wedding budget? The answer is easy and not as old-fashioned as the catering industry would have you think: POTLUCK! Early on in our planning, Josh and I made a poster for our living room wall with the wedding sectioned off into 6 parts, and a sharpie on a string to jot down ideas as they came to us. One of the sections (by far the one that got the most attention) was food, and I suspect that even our house guests were putting up suggestions when our backs were turned, because not all of the food ideas look like one of two hands wrote them. Once we had our list of deliciousness compiled and a little bit narrowed down (we didn't include carameled apples just because they sounded good to me at 3 in the morning once so I scrawled them across the wall on my way to bed), we made a matching list of friends we felt comfortable asking for help, and let them each choose something off the list to bring to the wedding. This was such a great idea all around because not only did it net us a HUGE and diverse spread of FABULOUS healthy food, but it gave our meal-bringers some choice in the matter, and made them feel much more a part of the event. I really think the people who pitched in were the people who stayed latest and had the most fun, due in part to their shared sense of ownership in the day. It also ensured that in asking people to potluck, we didn't end up with 30 dishes of green beans and a large contingent of hungry grumpy people.
Since our red velvet and buttercream frosted cake was made at the bargain price of $150 for 200 people (a dear friend has a mom who is a cake maker, and gifted this beautiful and delicious cake to us at her cost), we felt we had a little in the budget to contribute to the food as well, and not wanting to put much financial burden on anyone else, we decided to be the sole meat providers, so that everyone else could focus on fun and fabulous (and much less expensive) side dishes. Also, we ran into a food logistics problem: on a warm late spring day, at an out door event where the food would be brought early and left out in no refrigeration for several hours, what would be done with the meaty portion of the meal? Put it on ice and serve it cold? Keep it over a flame and serve it dehydrated? Let it wait with a lid on and risk food poisoning more people than could fit into one emergency room? We decided that the only reasonable answer was to for over the cash and cater the meat. This way it could be delivered by professionals at the beginning of the meal, and everyone could eat without fearing a visit from the e-coli family. By choosing a locally owned restaurant, we were able to keep our money in the local economy which we greatly prefer, and we were also able to negotiate a bulk rate meat price. We ended up agreeing to a huge helping of brisket and barbecued chicken, for which we paid $400 cash, along with some bartered work from my husband for the restaurant owner-- another benefit of buying local.
We really thought that we had amassed just enough food to feed our guests and keep everyone happy till they went their own ways, but it turned out to be like the loaves and the fishes! There was such a bounty of food-- meat, side dishes, deserts, salads... that we and our families didn't have to cook for a good week afterward, and the meat fed us and several other people from our freezers for the next year. And this was after I watched people pile up firsts and then seconds on their paper plates like they were vikings getting ready for a long sea voyage! From the top of my head I can remember looking at our three-table food spread and seeing: Lasagna, 4 different kinds of salad, two different kinds of fruit salad, bowls of pastas, vegetables cooked and raw, nachos (my personal request), beans of every kind, cobblers, cakes, our catered meat, lemon-aide and iced tea, and loaves and loaves of home made whole wheat bread, sliced and waiting for butter. It took me two plates to get a tiny taste of everything, and I loved every bite! What a labor of love from our guests, what a bountiful table we had, and what a wonderful lesson in the idea that many hands make light work.
The park we were married in is beautiful. Rolling hills and unpaved trails, babbling creeks with bridges and waterfalls, wildlife everywhere and flowers taller than me in the hot rush of spring into summer. We were a little sneaky and hosted our ceremony on a lovely peninsula that stretched out into the center of a lake, surrounded on all sides by rising verdant hills with a perfect cooling breeze coming off the water. Technically this wasn't the part of the park we'd had permission to rent, and we had a little scuffle with the parks department the day before the festivities when an unhappy bureaucrat told us we couldn't put a bunch of people on blankets and say our vows there. Happily, that woman had a much nicer boss, and the combination of a crying bride and a tough as nails mother-in-law-to-be (by tough I mean the woman was once involved in an armed government standoff but still manages to make her point in just a few well chosen words) can be very convincing. Not much to worry about when mother nature hands you magnificent surroundings right out of the gate, so I can't take too much credit for the perfect setting in the first half of the day.
The pavilion where we were expected to host our reception, however, was a different story. Why anyone thought to enter this veritable Garden of Eden and plunk an aging 70's style pavilion down in the middle of it will forever escape my understanding, but there it was: a relatively cleared field (lacking the thick trees, tall grass, and paths that filled the rest of the park) boasting a large L-shaped concrete slab, topped off by a rusting giant metal roof, and sandwiching in between 20 long and slightly depressed looking pic-nic tables. It was what we were stuck with, and it needed some work.
Over months of hikes back to this bleak spot (the fact that we were planning during winter didn't help), Josh and I slowly began to find a shared vision for what this place could be, and when early spring washed its way in, we began creating our space.
Starting from the ground up, we again laid out sheets and blankets for our guests to lounge on, both inside the pavilion and out along the grounds. We used the same collection from the ceremony, which was carried up and redistributed by our "blanket crew." What we wanted our guests to stumble into after a long ceremony of sitting still was a sort of wonderland-y garden party where one was free to roam from one activity to another and encouraged to interact with nature and other people as they went. The blankets again created a relaxed atmosphere for just such rambling, and on blankets and tables we scattered games of Scrabble, Giant Checkers, and Tiddly Winks. Outside of the blankets a game of croquet was set up to play around the guests, a game of horse shoes beckoned on one side of the lawn, and lawn darts called players on the other. I even made some giant muslin bags for the more adventurous who might be drawn to sack racing. One extra gift the pavilion did provide-- a fabulous sand volleyball pit and net, where I tore a nice sized hole in my dress diving for a ball as the sun set later that night. And yes, I got the ball.
Above ground level there were those saggy peeling tables to contend with, where people would no doubt want to lounge and partake of what turned out to be quite a feast. These were no problem at all, as no table is a match for my trusty bolts of discount muslin! I just love muslin so much, it's so crisp, clean, and simple, it brightens up everything it touches, and it hearkens back to a time I love, where fabric itself was a valuable thing, without all the added bells and whistles. So with muslin tossed over every tired old surface, we had a perfect light blank canvas on which to build, and it was an easy next step to fill the spaces with the things we found most beautiful.
While planning my own wedding, I watched a lot of those wedding shows about how other women orchestrate theirs (and then how they harshly judge each other for it!). I noticed a LOT of attention seemed to be paid to the table centerpieces, and a LOT of money seemed to be spent on them, and I found this phenomenon strange. There is just so much that goes into a big event, if there were anywhere I'd drop the ball, I thought it would be at the point of spending hundreds of dollars on centerpieces for tables I hoped my guests wouldn't stick to all day! Also, I couldn't help feeling that most of the centerpieces I saw were ugly, and that they would likely just go in the trash at the end of the day. What a waste! Atop our tables we placed mason jars from our home (we'd been saving them up) filled with grass and flowers cut from the roadsides that morning,and tied up with a pretty ribbon. On one table our cake rested, decorated with flowering tree branches, topped with birds in a nest, and standing atop a cedar trunk that Josh had cut for the occasion. On another was our haul of wedding gifts, and on another were our gifts to our guests, all tied up in brown paper bags with colorful satin bows. Easy, just about free, and pretty as a picture.
Atop our heads loomed that hulking giant of a metal roof yawning down at us with its cavernous shadowy space. Transforming this was my favorite! First I made about 2 miles of triangle shaped fabric garland, which we strung from post to tree to roof to ground, back and forth so many times the whole pavilion and field looked like it was hosting a free for all gypsie circus. Then I made 20 paper circle mobiles which we hung from the roof beams and which fluttered gaily in the breeze all day, making themselves well worth the effort. Next I painted messages on index cards and strung them from red ribbons (proclaiming things like "Josh loves Jesse" and "Happily Ever After") which were tied between the roof posts and also did a little sunshine dance throughout the afternoon.
So much motion and color above, below, and around us, really brought the pushed back nature back in to the celebration, and made the concrete and metal recede so much into the background that they ended up blending in nicely and feeling like they belonged. It took some doing, but a --fabulous-beautiful-everything-you've-ever-wanted--space can be created anywhere if you just give it a little time to speak to you, work with what you have, and incorporate the things that you love best.
Believe it or not, the ceremony with all its requisite clothing, set-up, and choreographing, was nothing compared to the work of building the wedding reception of our dreams from scratch. The reward for our effort, however, paid us back in spades. It really was the best day we've ever had, and yes, we still hear plenty of enthusiastic tales of a great time had from our guests a year later. I loved it so much I want to have a wedding reception re-enactment just to do it all again, though I have yet to convince Josh that the work is worth it twice...
So we'll journey through the reception together in much the same way that we walked through the ceremony. I'll give you a bird's eye view of the event, then we'll get down to the brass tacks of how to make your own day everything you want it to be, from decorations to food, to activities, to parting gifts.
Overall, we wanted our reception to be fun and inclusive for everyone attending, of all ages and inclinations, while still being true to our own personalities. Sounds like a tall order, but when you're working from your heart, it all comes out in the wash. To this end, we set up our party to include sitting areas, playing areas, dancing areas, and blanket lounging areas. We provided a bounty of diverse food and drink (no alcohol, which was a park rule but fit conveniently into our tight bidget), and created a scene where our most uptight relatives and our most hippiefied friends could all feel equally delighted to share in our day. And we did it with less than $1,000 dollars!
I know that a party for a few hundred people can seem like a daunting task, and I learned pretty quickly that people in the wedding industry will drain your wallet fast when talking you into entertaining your guests according their the industry's pre-set agenda. I was told to expect my food to cost a minimum of $25 a PERSON, and for my cake to start out at 3 bucks a head, and that was before anyone even started talking decorations, which were both outrageously over priced and really LAME. But you are not stuck with only the options a salesman gives you! You are more creative thank that, your friends and family deserve more fun than that, and you have better places to spend your money! And besides, a labor of love put into any gathering really is felt by you and your guests, and that kind of fabulocity you just can't buy.
So put on your apron and your crafty girl pants, and get ready to create the best day ever!
I'll be the first to admit that my sewing skills, while adequate, are not exactly top notch when it comes to the fine tailoring of delicate materials. But with a lot of creativity and a little ingenuity, I did manage to DIY my wedding dress, and you can too! Yes, my wonderful friend Angela who up-cycles dresses for a living was the MAJOR backbone of this project. But I'm willing to bet that many of you out there have a friend or aunt or co-worker so-and-so who is also skilled with a needle and thread and can be of more help to you than you think in this endeavor. And even if you live alone in a cave cut off from all other human contact, we're going to walk through these steps together so that even you can do this yourself!
First, I think it's ideal to start with an already intact dress. One with a similar shape to the outcome you're designing toward. Not only will this save you SO much time and crying jags, it will also likely cost less than the countless yards of raw material you'd be buying to build your dress from scratch. This principle can also just as easily be applied to your bridesmaid's dresses, your prom dress, or the sun dress you plan to wear to the park this weekend. Basic wedding dresses can be had at garage sales, goodwill type stores, on craigslist or ebay, or in many an old attic. Thinking I was buying a dress I'd wear as it came, I bought my monstrosity of a dress from an on-line store out of China called alightinthebox.com. It came, as I've mentioned before, assaulted with a cascade of hot-glued flattened red plastic flowers down its full length, instead of the beautiful intricate applique in the on-line picture. Once I'd plunked down my $200 for the dress, they website was never accessible to me for contact again, so my complaints of fraud went unanswered. Still, a $200 princess dress that was at least well constructed turned out to be an ok price for a dress I ended up loving after a LOT of adjusting.
DIY Wedding Dress
Step 1: First things first, spend plenty of time pouring over wedding magazines and ripping out everything that makes your heart pitter-patter (as if you haven't been doing this already). Cut out what you like and collage the end results on a piece of poster board. Now look at the themes which will likely be evident. Do you love long sashes? Full skirts or the fitted look? Bling or plain? Splashes of color, or all white? Rousching? Sleeves? You can see where I'm going here... Now sketch or write out which details you want to be a part of the finished product, and hit the second hand stores or on-line shops to find the basic shape you want. You can even go to popular bridal stores on their $99 wedding gown sales days and pick something up that's nice and new-- the world is your oyster you dressmaking artistic genius!
Step 2: Now that you have your image in mind and your dress foundation standing on a dress form staring at you in your living room, it's time for fun. For my own dress, the original form was a satin strapless top, but the satin turned out to be dingy (not a big surprise from the plastic flower dress peddlers), and the strapless look wasn't my favorite to begin with-- made me look like an unsuccessful linebacker. Angela and I agreed that the best solution to this was to simply cover the bodice up entirely with something else, and since I prefer a softer, more "down home" fabric look, we decided I should just hit the mall and find a white t-shirt to top my dress. After lots of agonizing and strange looks from shop-girls, I chose a fitted sheer ivory t with fabric rosettes clustered up one side of the open neckline. We pinned the top over the dress bodice at home, and I put the pointy hypbrid on to model. If you are already following along on this project at home, this is the part where your friend gets out her best scissors and just starts cutting! Angela cut my sleeves off into tank-top straps, and stitched them down in the back along the bodice top. The remaining edges of the top which had been cut away were stitched down to the bodice, and the straps we'd cut from the longer sleeves were left unstitched altogether-- it wasn't like the dress would need to go through the washing machine!
Step 3: With the new top in place, the major construction was done. The joining point between the t-shirt and the ballgown skirt, however, still left something to be desired. To hide the awkward spot, I found some fancy bedazzled bridal fabric at JoAnne's Fabric shop, and Angela stitched it around the waistline over the joining place, darting the fabric as she went along to fit it perfectly to the shape of the dress. This may sound complicated, but when your dress is sitting on a form and the needle is in your hand, you can just work your way along as slowly as you like, and it will turn out fine!
Step4: Creating a new top over an old bodice, then creating a blingy waistband to cover the problem seam, created the new problem of a raw and oddly angled edge at the top of the new blingy waistband. Sort of a "we-solved-the-rat-problem-by-bringing-in-wild-cats-then-solved-the-cat-problem-by-hiring-rabid-dogs-and-now-what-do-we-do-with-the-rabid-dogs" scenario. For the rabid dog/ newly exposed weird blingy seam problem, we added a sash! And can you guess who loves sashes on everything because she repeatedly read Little Women as a child? I do. Your own dress project will likely be a similar process of discovery and problem solving, but as you layer and learn, a beautiful new design will take shape under your fingers-- I promise!
Step 5: The sash was made from strips of stitched together vintage slips, collected at a flea market where whatever you can stuff into a bag costs a dollar. The color was a lovely antiqued ivory, which we simply wrapped around the middle of the bodice over the weird seam. We left it gathered just the way it laid when we pinned it there, and tied it in a simple knot in the back with a borrowed vintage broach over the knot. (My something old were the vintage dress bits, my something new were the sparkly hairpins, and my something blue was polka dotted undies that still make me smile)...
Step 6: To match the flowers at the collar that came with the shirt, and to fulfill my lifelong princess fairy dress daydreams, Angela and I had a craft day and drank milky sweet tea while we made a big fluffy pile of flowers. See the DIY Bridesmaid's instructions to make your own fabric flowers. I eventually finished my tea and went merrily home, and when I saw my dress again, it was dusted from top to bottom in white flowers on white fabric, with a great cluster at the waist to unite the pile of layers we'd started with.
My dress was more perfect for me than anything I could have found in a shop, partly because it had every detail I'd wanted, and mostly because it was made with some serious funk and love!
DIY Wedding Veil
Step 1: Ok people, this one COULDN'T be any more simple, so if you only choose one thing in your wedding to DIY, save yourself a few HUNDRED bucks and make it the veil. I went to my local fabric store (which happens to be JoAnne's Fabrics, a national chain), picked up one of their adds provided at the door which always has a 40% off coupon inside, and headed to the bridal fabric aisle. There I found a beautiful ivory fabric with a touch of sparkle, some lovely embroidery, and the overall sheerness needed for a veil if you want to see where you're going. I bought a yard of the $25.00/yard fabric with my coupon, and took it home. Any fabric store will have a nice little selection of sheer wedding fabrics for just this purpose, and most run sales or coupons, so pay attention to that because anything with the word "bridal" attached to it starts out pricey.
Step 2: After cutting a bit of this fabric off my original yard to create the sparkly waist of my wedding dress, I had the rest of it left to serve as my veil. So, and here's the hardest part, on the morning of my wedding, while my friends were braiding up my hair, I had my little sister lay the sheer fabric over my head, shorter part with the scalloped edges in front, longer part with the straight edge (because I'd cut the scallops off for my dress) in the back. Once it was situated the way we liked it, Molly took a hairpin and... pinned the veil to my head. That's it. That's how I made my veil, and it was lovely and got its own compliments all day. When I met my soon to be husband in the middle of our guests to begin our ceremony, he lifted the front and pushed it to the back, where it lay perfectly until I tore it off later to play volleyball.
Step 3: There really is no step three since all you really need to do for a great veil is pin some sheer fabric on your head, but if you want one of those veils that gather up onto a comb, here's your third step... After you've located your perfect fabric and a clear hair comb to go with it, simply fold the fabric in half and lay it on a table. working with the folded end (not the two raw edges), use a needle and thread to weave in and out of the fabric from one end to the other, making your stitch length half an inch or so apart. Once you've woven the thread through the fabric, pull the thread tight and scrunch the fabric down the thread, until it is gathered to the size of your comb. Now stitch this gathered end to your comb and ta-da! You have a gathered veil. If your end result seems unfinished to you, top it off with some sparkly bling also available at the fabric store, or with a simple folded piece of cloth cut from the bottom edge of your veil. You just saved your wedding budget for more fun stuff, you crafty girl!
I never understood the appeal of playing with Barbies. This may be due to my lack of early childhood exposure to soap operas and tv commercials, or perhaps the fact that reading Little Women seemed more appealing to me than reenacting my own limited life experience through oddly shaped plastic dolls. I did have Barbies though, and what I loved to do with them (until my sister Molly got old enough to start switching around their body parts and covering them in straight pins and nail polish) was dress them up and create their living space. Being from the poor side of the tracks, I didn't have Barbie accouterments, just some naked dolls and a few mismatched plastic high heels. I learned to make them dresses out of old socks, scrap fabric, and scrounged buttons. I discovered glue and glitter for details, then fabric paint, and even wallpaper samples. Those Barbies with no life stories had the best wardrobe around in my opinion, though they never once thanked me for my work, or modeled my pieces in public for me. Enter bridesmaids-- my living breathing dress up party! Finally I can dress up real people any way I like and parade them around for my own hand picked audience-- who would give up this chance for a couple of boring old store-boughten gowns?!
Like the boutonnieres, I am explaining how I up-cycled my own bridesmaid's dresses, which will likely be different than the vision you have for your own event. So feel free to take the instructions here, and then shift and tweak them into whatever fabulous picture you have in your own mind's eye for the big day.
Though I do sew for a living and could have made my dresses from scratch, I often find that dresses bought on clearance or at a discount cost less than the fabric I would use to make them myself, not to mention the time they save cutting and stitching new patterns. For this reason I chose to up-cycle both my dress and my bridesmaid's dresses, allowing me to spend my time on creative details rather than construction.
DIY Bridesmaid's Dresses
Step 1: Loosely sketch out the shape and look of the dress you want. Is it long or short? Empire waist or A-shaped? Cotton or silk? Is it patterned or plain, and what are its details? Ribbon, painted image, flowers, petticoats? Once your vision is clear, start shopping. It's often easy to get your start on-line, try searching the basic big store's websites for the cornerstone dress you want. I recommend starting out with something rather plain so that you have the freedom to build it into what you like. I found my dresses at Old Navy for $30 each, they were brown cotton sundresses with a v-neck, and they were the perfect foundation for the look I was going for.
Step 2: Now that you have your starting point, it's time to get right into the fun of decorating. For my dresses, I chose a tree stencil and fabric flowers. Our wedding was a sort of farm-girl-fancy nature loving affair, so the look and theme carried over nicely with these details. First I addressed the tree, a little daunting but so worth it in the end! I looked and looked for a tall tree stencil but couldn't find one that worked for me. This meant I had to make my own stencil. You can buy a stencil template at a craft store, which is just a big piece of plastic, but I find that if you have an old deconstructed cereal box at home, it works just as well and saves your money for more fun things. Using my cereal box and an exacto-knife, I drew a nice tall tree onto my cardboard, then cut the image out slowly and carefully until the shape was complete and ready to be painted.
Step 3: Next I stretched the dress over another piece of cardboard to keep the fabric taught and to prevent the paint from soaking through. I then mixed the paint I'd chosen (I used a different colored tree for each dress for a little variety) with fabric medium in a small cup, a 50/50 blend of each. This is important because it allows the paint to relax and move with the fabric, as well as making it washable should your friend want to wear it again. After this I simply laid the stencil down on the fabric, dipped my sponge brush into the paint, and stenciled away! Easy as pie, and the dresses turned out great! One note of caution though, occasionally a stencil will get wet on its backside while doing multiple paintings, so be sure to check the back for excess paint before moving on to the next dress!
DIY Fabric Flowers
Step 1: Fabric flowers are fun and easy to make and scatter everywhere! They can spruce up a dress, an event, or even just a plain old Wednesday! For my own project, I liked the pop of red against the brown sundress, so I chose red and white calico fabric to make my flowers. Choose any scrap of fabric that strikes your fancy, and cut about 2 inches wide by about 8 to 12 inches long, depending on how wide you want your flower to be.
Step 2: Using either a glue gun or a needle and thread, slowly twist and wind the fabric around itself. Keep the coil you are making flat, and glue or stitch it at each turn until all your fabric is connected to itself and you hold a lovely new flower in your hands. Stitch a button in its center, and you are now a creator of fabric flowers!
Step 3: Now that you've made your first fabric flower, make a whole pile of them and turn your world into a bouquet explosion! For my dresses I stitched three flowers each onto the upper left shoulder strap, balancing out the tree on the lower right side. You can put yours on the hem, the waistband, on hair clips or jewelry, or make a bouquet in lieu of live flowers. Enjoy!
Through the process of putting together a wedding myself, I have come to really resent the opportunist price gouging that most businesses engage in when it comes to anything wedding related. I remain thoroughly convinced that a garter shouldn't cost less than $10 for the rest of us and over $50 for the overwhelmed and unsuspecting bride. It seems almost mean spirited and certainly unnecessary, particularly if you own your very own set of opposing thumbs!
Therefore thumb-owners, please feel free to borrow any and all ideas you see here, and expand upon them to create whatever your own vision is! Don't let your wedding, ceremony, party, or life be hijacked by people who want to rubber stamp your special moments and pick your pocket clean while doing it. Free up a little time and round up your community of friends, and create, create, create! Not only will you be thrilled with the result, you'll have gained from the journey as well. And your bank account will remain intact to boot!
DIY Boutonnieres
Begin your boutonniere with some direction in mind. My own creations are what I'll outline here, but you could easily modify this using flowers, wheat, or even radishes or tiny carrots-- whatever strikes your fancy for your own ceremony.
Step 1: Using scraps of fabric from old clothing (economical and has a nice well worn vibe), cut a rectangle of fabric about 3 1/2 by 6 inches, then cut another piece slightly smaller (perhaps 2 by 6 inches) and of a different print.
Step 2: With a needle and thread, fold the fabric into a fan, then stitch the inside meeting point together. This will create a capital D shape, and will look just like the paper fans you used to fold and wave around as a child. Your stitching doesn't have to look good since it will later be covered up, it just has to hold the fabric in its fan shape. Repeat this step with the smaller fabric piece so that you now have two little fabric fans.
Step 3: Clip whatever pieces of decoration you'd like to use in your creation down to the size you'll need to fit your fan. I used fake grass, dried wheat, feathers, and tiny fake flowers, since I wanted it to look homespun, but I also wanted this job to be done well before the wedding. I clipped my nature bits to start around the stitched middle of my fan and end just inside or just outside the outer edge of the bigger piece. You can again really stray from my design here, even adding charms from any craft store to represent your own passions in life-- I stitched little metal music notes onto Josh's boutonniere, but you could go even further than that, adding whatever symbols you like-- dice, tiny animals, little books... the possibilities are endless!
Step 4: Once your pieces are clipped to size, pull out your trusty hot glue gun and get down to the fun part! Arrange your ingredients so that they form a nice shape over the bigger fabric fan, with some sticking out over the edge and some tucked down below it. Just make sure that it's not too symmetrical, which can lead to a crafty-matchy look that you want to avoid. Or that at least I want you to avoid. Once you are happy with your placement, hot glue it all down to your big fan. Again, this will be covered up, so it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be sturdy.
Step 5: Finally, it's your smaller fan's time to shine! Lay the smaller fan over the larger one, with the flat edges lined up. It should be a smaller version of the larger shape, and all your glued details should stick out from behind it with none of the rough edges or glue showing. Now, clip a small piece of ribbon with diagonal edges, and place it over the joined middle of the smaller fan, which should be right on top of the joined middle of the larger one. Atop this, place a vintage button. With your needle and thread, stitch the whole piece together, from bottom fan to top to ribbon to button. Put in several stitches to make sure it holds and... Voila! You have a handmade boutonniere! Use a straight pin to secure it to your man and congratulate yourself on a job well done!
It's true, I've been phoning it in until now-- this is the topic I've been waiting for! Your wedding day-- or heck, your graduation day, your birthday, your hand-fasting day, your favorite Wednesday-- it's a day to celebrate and an excuse to dress up to your hearts content! Decorating and choreographing our ceremony and reception was a big pile of hard/fun work. But decorating ourselves was pure joy!
Before we dive right into the big white dress, let's talk men's wear. I know girls are often saddled with a reputation for being the shop-ier, clothing obsessed-ier of the sexes, but in this Josh may have out done me. My plan of attack for wedding shopping was a sort of meandering path from shop to shop, noting what I liked or did not like and waiting for something to strike my fancy. Josh on the other hand, knew exactly what he was looking for as if he'd been waiting to wear it since he was finally convinced as a child that he couldn't go everywhere naked. He printed similar cuts and colors from internet images and showed them to every shop girl as if we were canvasing for our lost family member. If we found the right shape but a shade too dark or light, Josh cast it off with disdain and we were on to the next store-- hunters relentlessly stalking our prey. We finally found his pants, vest, and tie at Express in the local mall (thought I think we'd have hitch-hiked to Borneo if necessary), and purchased it after hiding what we wanted, waiting for it to go on sale, and printing up on line coupons to match the price we preferred. His shirt was stalked down and nicely wrapped into submission at Banana Republic, where he also found his "second" ensemble which he changed into for the reception. Did you know that men are expected to wear not one but two great new outfits at their own wedding? Josh enlightened me on this topic when he discovered that everything he wanted was on the 70% off rack. I chose to believe him because his new clothes made him so happy and he really did look great, though if any readers out there have evidence to the contrary regarding this "two outfits for the groom" tradition, feel free to let me know...
When it came to our wedding party, we shared a great dislike for this common practice we've heard of in which the bride and groom pick out really fancy clothing for their closest friends, and then force said friends to go spend a big pile of cash on a dress or suit that they will likely never wear again. Also, Josh and I were very excited to be wearing our own sort of "farmer fancy" style wedding attire, so while we wanted everyone to look their loveliest, we definitely didn't want anyone wandering around a park in formal evening wear, especially standing next to a slightly more relaxed bride and groom. To this end, we asked about $30 from each of our attendants in clothing cost-- hopefully saving the rest of their money for better wedding gifts!
The grooms men wore simple brown dockers with a white shirt. They were encouraged to rock this look however they saw fit, so some opted for ties or suspenders, while others kept it plain and simple-- just our style. I made the men's boutonnieres myself at a craft day with a table full of awesome girl friends. I call this a work frolic, a term I borrowed from my time with the Amish, but I think everyone else called it Saturday. My next post will be a how-to on everything made for the wedding so far, so tune in to that if you want your own frolic-made man attire.
My bridesmaids looked so sweet and lovely in their little brown sundresses that I bought on clearance at Old Navy. I'd seen some bridesmaid dresses in a magazine that I just loved, with a printed tree stretching up one side, and while I didn't want to spend $200 per dress, I did want something similar for my girls. Also I was in a period of loving handmade fabric flowers on everything I could attach them to (I am still in this period and expect it to last a while). With these finishing touches in mind, I set out on a quest for plain sundresses. My guidelines were that they be free of print (so as not to compete with my tree and flower plans), 100%cotton (because I just love the weft and weave of cotton, as well as it's natural drape and simple beauty), and colored some sort of earth tone, to match the feeling of happy outdoors-iness we were working to create. One tree stencil, three bottles of paint, and 15 hand stitched fabric flowers later, and my brides maids were ready for the big day.
And now for... the wedding dress! While I myself never spent my days doodling the perfect wedding dress into a notebook, I did have it's vague dimensions floating around in the nether regions of my mind, and I'd say it most closely resembled something straight out of my new favorite television reality show, "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding." The more I asked myself after the proposal what I saw myself wearing, the more I realized I wanted something so big it would scar my hips with its sheer weight in toile and be deliciously difficult to move in. I spent hours combing the internet for all the shapes and details I wanted, and countless sunny afternoons combing every bridal shop within driving range. While I was certainly intent on frugality when it came to the wedding budget, I did not consider my wedding dress to apply to this drive for thrift. Finally the day I'd dreamed of dawned and welcomed me into its sunny embrace-- dress day with my family and friends. I got there at my appointed time, lined my audience up to show their scorecards, and tried on every beautiful dress I'd been drooling over for weeks-- each one poofier and blingier than the last. I even had the rare joy of knowing that any of these dresses could be mine that day, as my wonderful soon to be mother-in-law had brought along her store card. She has a string of daughters! I really did want every dress I tried on. Despite my mother having given me a unisex name and having spelled it like a boy so that I would never be discriminated against as a woman, I have long had a penchant for huge full dresses (though I did always try to climb trees in them) and all things girlie, and on that bridal pedestal I was in my own little heaven.
At this point, two things happened simultaneously. First, as usual, I had a flash of memory that took me back to my time with the Amish, as well as my time at the commune, and my many wedding experiences there. Commune weddings usually involve a lot of nudity and body paint, while Amish weddings are supremely beautiful in their stark plain-ness. I remembered being indescribably happy in these settings. I loved the simplicity of both, and I always felt it allowed for the love and joy of the ceremony to shine through, not filtered through a bunch of frills which can be an unnecessary distraction. At the same moment I looked around me at about 20 other brides milling about the clothes racks and trying on dresses that looked disconcertingly similar to mine. I knew then that I wouldn't be buying a dress here at all. But the dress trying on day? Still totally worthwhile!
The next day I ordered a dress from China that I'd been eyeing for some time, but that I thought might be too weird for a wedding. It was a full ball gown skirt with a fitted strapless bodice, satin lined with a great shape, and its defining look was a cascade of red flowers and green leaves, cut intricately from a rich textured fabric and stitched down the bodice and skirt as if falling down the dress to the ground. A simple silhouette with a memorable flourish. I loved it and was so excited to plunk down my $200 and receive my dress in the mail! When I breathlessly opened my package two weeks later and pulled out what I was to be married in, what I found was just the shape I'd ordered, with perfectly tailored sizing. What made me cry for the rest of the day was the cheap dingy fabric overlaying the bodice, and the garishly red and green PLASTIC FLOWERS AND LEAVES that were HOT GLUED down the whole dress. Having turned down the many great options at the dress shop, I'd just blown my wedding budget on something I wouldn't wear for Halloween, and of course, the website from which I'd purchased did not respond to my mail.
The next day, puffy eyed but determined, I dusted myself off and called my friend Angela. She makes her living up-cycling old dresses and I had the ultimate project for her! Angela was awesome enough not only to turn my wedding dress debauchle into the dream dress I'd always wanted, but she did it as my wedding gift. Who could ask for more? Together we stripped off the offending flowers (so hideously fake I'd find them tacky in a vegas wedding chapel), made new fake flowers, and sprinkled the skirt with them. The bodice was covered completely by a sheer white t-shirt I found at Charlotte Russe in the mall, which came with the same fabric flowers stitched along the neckline. Angela cut the t-shirt into the tank-top shape that I'd wanted, added a sash and more sparkles and flowers, and I found myself wearing the dress that I'd always wanted, even if I hadn't known it until that moment.
Having saved so much on my handmade boutonnieres, I decided to follow the trend and continue saving on flowers all around. My bridesmaids, rather than carrying traditional bouquets, were given kerosene lanterns for their walk down the aisle. We liked the imagery this evoked, as well as its reminder of a lifestyle that Josh and I had both lived, which involved these same lanterns as our only source of night time light. My bouquet was made and given to me by Angela's husband, our great friend Wade, and was purchased at the farmer's market that morning for a total of $6. It had my favorite flower, the bachelor's button mixed in with the other leaves and blooms, and it was perfect. I loved it! My veil was made from a yard of beautifuly embellished wedding fabric I bought with a half-off coupon at the fabric store. The only other accessories we and our wedding party wore that day were our own big smiles, since none of us had bothered to buy or wear shoes...
I have been to a lot of hippie weddings. Lots of naked, glitter covered people standing in creeks or playing hand drums-- it always makes for a great show! The vows are usually humorous or whimsical, and the officiant is usually sporting dreadlocks or facial tattoos, or both (you know who you are...). I have also been to my share of extremely conservative religious weddings, where everyone is in similarly modest dress, the vows are long and biblical, and usually the guests sing together as in any church service. I've even been to the before and aftermath of my Amish friend's weddings, and had the ceremony explained in great detail. It is often much like a church service, long and with singing, and spiced up with sweet home made decorations one would never see in an Amish house otherwise. I have however, only been to a few mainstream weddings, and I've mostly found them to be surprisingly disappointing. The lack of joy, palpable shared purpose, and fun were bad enough. But what really surprised me was all the effort put into the church and ceremony by the poor exhausted bride for a short walk up the aisle and a few average clipped promises that ended before my butt had really found its groove in the seat. All that money and work, and wedding ceremonies usually have you in and out the door in less than half an hour. I always wander out a little dazed thinking, "hey, we came for a show about your miraculous love! Why did I buy this new dress?!"
With this in mind, I decided that what my wedding lacked in toile (that filmy fabric brides sink a stack of cash into and wrap all over any unsuspecting surface), I would make up for in content. If all these people were coming to grace us with their presence at our wedding, some flying in from some far flung places, we were going to give them a show. Besides, who doesn't want to truly emphasize and ritualize the most important commitment ceremony of their life? Of course there are so many rich cultural and religious traditions to draw from, a girl can have a field day picking and choosing which parts of the world she wants to incorporate and how. I will share our own choices here from start to finish, and readers are welcome to borrow all of our ideas, or blend them in with a healthy helping of their own tastes and dreams.
From start to finish, the ceremony went a little something like this: Josh and his groomsmen walkedup the aisle to our lovely harpist's melodies and stood waiting for the bridal party. I, the bride, and my brides maids had the great luck to be driven to the wedding site in historic model T's from the age of the great depression. This was all free of charge-- our wedding gift from Josh's cousin Jeff who fixes up old Model T's and belongs to a corresponding car club as a hobby-- what a great gift! The best part for me was that I was so nervous the night before the wedding that I never slept, even after taking a sleeping pill, so before the ceremony I was a quivering still slightly drugged mess. The ride to and through the park in that sweet antique car with the top down and the breeze in my hair was so beautiful, it soothed my frazzled nerves and put me back together. By the time we got to the wedding site, I was happy and ready to embrace the day!
Once arrived and out of the cars, my girls walked ahead of me down the aisle and took their places opposite the groomsmen in front. ** I really wanted to do a dance routine at this point, but there is only so much organizing that one person can do, so that idea was scrapped, though now I'm jealous when I see other people doing it! Oh well, another project for a later party. ** When everyone was in their place, Josh and I walked toward each other through the aisle, meeting to join hands in the middle. Josh and I really liked this idea, as it symbolized to us our equality in the marriage, and our mutual willingness to meet in the middle, both in conflict and our life's work. When we finally got to join hands, and Josh lifted my veil, I was so happy, and seeing everyone's smiling faces on the grass and blankets around us was perfect. Also perfect was the fact that Josh, who'd earlier suggested I suck it up and get ready when I told him I was freaking out, was trembling from head to toe, and his teeth even chattered when he whispered his greeting to me. :)
Here in the middle we paused for prayers. Shane Knox, a shaman and good friend of ours, had been prepairing for us at his spot on the blanket. With drumming, feathers, and plenty of sage smoke, Shane performed traditional Native American marriage prayers for us, calling upon Grandmother and Grandfather, the elements, and our own spirits, to open a new door before us that we may walk through toward the waiting chuppa and our commitment to a new life together. It was really the perfect initiation for us, and we were so thankful to our friend for performing this rite. It grounded us, integrated our guests into the ceremony, and left us feeling fully bolstered to walk forward in every way. Josh even stopped shaking!
After the smoke had cleared and lyrical harp notes filled the air again, we walked to the front and took our chairs to wash each others feet. I should mention here that we were not walking on a lovely blanket of flower petals as planned, since despite the two hours my sister Molly and I had spent collecting them from a shedding tree the day before, our whole flower petal bag was lost during the commotion of the day, and our flower girl had to walk to the front in her adorable tutu, having nothing to do with her hands but hang on to her mom. These things happen, you just have to roll with it!
Back to the foot washing-- this was by far our favorite part of the ceremony. Of course it it symbolic of washing away the old life, in order to embrace the new. It is also an intentionally humbling act, in which each partner takes a turn, choosing to kneel and labor in an act of love for the other. Aesthetically it was lovely to watch, spiritually it meant a lot to us, and for those of us who are purely interested in the tactile, the water was cool and sweet, the flour sack cloth soft and comforting, and our hands a familiar touch to each other. My Amish friends practice foot washing during church communion, and I can see how this act alone would keep one coming back for more.
Next came the vows, simple and relevant to our intentions for a life together, and referencing everyone present, as our love for community certainly extended to everyone there. During our vows even the bride and groom were treated to a surprise in the show, when our dog Djembe, who was who'd been let loose by our overly relaxed dog wrangler, jumped into the lake and splashed around loudly trying to catch a fish! This after he'd already volunteered to (also unplanned) walk each person down the aisle in the procession. What a helpful guy! Lastly we opened the microphone up to anyone who wished to speak. Josh and I sat down in our reserved wooden chairs (brought to the park from our front porch), faced the audience, and sponged up the prayers, blessings, and advice offered to us from all who'd come (well not all, that would have taken forever!). It did run a little long at that point, since the sun had shifted directly on to us, though not the speakers or audience, but I hiked my giant dress up over my knees and thoroughly enjoyed myself until everyone had shared their part. A walk back down the aisle,a moment's pause to pour out the sage and cedar ashes, and with them the remnants of our old single lives, and the ceremony came to a wonderful close...
Time to nature walk it back to the pavilion and enjoy the rest of the party!!!
Being a babe in the woods when it came to planning our wedding, I made my first course of wedding planning action a trip to the local bridal fair with my husband and his wonderful parents. My thinking was that I could take care of everything in one fell swoop--sampling and choosing cake makers, dj's, photographers, and musicians. Being an artist myself, I naively assumed that everyone there would be charging some minimal amount because they, like me, are just glad to be getting paid at all to do what they love. Sadly, this was not at all the case, and my first major wedding planning lesson was that THERE IS NO LOVE AT THE BRIDAL FAIR!
Whether or not this is new information to you, let me just share a bit of the education I got during this arduous journey through the land of weddings for sale. Cakes were an average of $2 per guest (with 200 hungry guests you can do the math). Flowers, which I thought I'd be ordering in abundance, cost a minimum of a dollar A PIECE, and the bouquets and boutonniere packages were priced in the hundreds of dollars. The dj's (many of whom I knew personally) charged several hundred dollars for weddings as well, and knowing them outside this setting I knew perfectly well that this was often more than double their regular party fee! Musicians started out at $600 an hour (per person, not group), and went steeply up from there, and the photographers packages ranged from one to two thousand dollars. Decorations like lighting and sparkly baubles added to the price of everything, and after stuffing my bag with all the free cake samples I could get my hands on, I went home that night, laid down on my bed, and cried.
How was I going to have a wedding worthy of the joy and love I'd found with a strict budget cap (according to the Bank of America) of two thousand dollars? How could I make everyone I'd ever cared for feel welcome, entertained, fed, and happy? How could I create a space and an experience that conveyed the limitless potential I see for our lives, when my budget was Limited with a capital L? As it turns out, when I let go of any aspirations toward the weddings other people had planned in that wedding bonanza I attended, my own planning suddenly truly was limitless. My partner and I were able to build not only a perfect day, but a ceremony that reflected the very best of our own personalities, and that symbolized perfectly the communal, joyful, handmade life toward which we were both committing to build.
With all this in mind, I am excited to share how we created a fabulous setting for an afternoon ceremony with a small amount of money and a larger amount of elbow grease! First, having learned that a venue rental starts a nearly $1000 (even the rustic old barn we really wanted was $2,000), we knew the first step was to find a spot we could love that didn't cut our budget in half at the gate. Initially, we enlisted every friend and family memberto spend their free time scouring the countryside for barns that perhaps a farmer would rent us for a lower fee. Another valuable lesson we gained from this is that essentially every barn in the rural Ozarks is either busy housing animals and tractors, filled to the rafters with every trashed household good the neighboring family has produced in the last 100 years, or (and I'm convinced this was the case with a few) is currently concealing dead bodies, stolen goods, or meth labs. Happily, in the great tradition of God closing doors to open windows, I did a little more research and learned that any of our local parks rent out their pavilions and the surrounding land for $89 a day, electricity and trash service included. I reserved our spot at Ritter Springs Park, a beautiful spread of creeks, waterfalls, ponds, hills, and unpaved hiking trails, which is my favorite place anyway, and which is conveniently located 10 minutes from our home. Perfect!
With a plethora of beautiful event spots to choose from, Josh and I decided on a long thin stretch of land that extended out into the middle of the pond/lake area. The land was surrounded on three sides with beautiful sparkling water, and wrapped beyond that by tree andcovered hills. To create an intimate space in this wide and beautiful landscape, we first constructed a chupa under which to be married. This is an old tradition, commonly associated with the Hebrew faith, symbolizing the protection of God, family, and home. Josh and his father went out into the woods where together they cut and stripped four small cedar trees, one from each of the four directions. This alone was a special time for them, and worth the effort for the day they got to spend together. At home, I stitched a canopy top from a bit of the two bolts of muslin I'd bought for the wedding. With craft paint and fabric medium I painted the phrase "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine," a verse from the Song of Soloman, along the two long sides of the rectangular shape, one in Hebrew to reference the Jewish roots of the tradition, and one in gaelic to reflect our own family heritage. On the day of the wedding Josh's friends dug four small holes, we dropped the four posts in, and set the muslin canopy on top, where it framed our ceremony and swayed in the wind. An added bonus to this project is that the canopy now welcomes visitors through the gate to our back yard, a constant reminder of the first thing we built together.
If there was any theme for the wedding at all, it was our shared vision for a sort of Americanized version of an English garden party-- the kind where people dress up and create an elaborate affair in the juxtaposed surroundings of being outside in nature and playing at sports. To this end we opted out of renting 200 chairs (saving $200 and set up time in the bargain), and chose instead to lay out 60 sheets and blankets for our guests to recline on during our ceremony. Many blankets came from our home, and the sheets were supplemented by my mother the queen of garage sales, who spent about $10 collecting them in previous weeks. This was my favorite choice for the wedding! It instantly created a pic-nic energy in the space, and our guests responded really well to it. By the time the wedding party got there, people were sprawled out in the dappled shade and sunshine, catching up with old friends, playing with babies and our golden retriever Djembe, and watching their kids get as close as they could to the water without nosediving into the mud. We'd also thrown every pillow we could find into the mix, so I believe a few people even got a nice pre-wedding nap!
Above all this we used fishing line to hang glass balls and small wind chimes down from tree branches, where they swayed and tinkled, creating just the whimsical fairy land I'd always hoped to stumble into as a child, having read Alice in Wonderland enough to suspect such things might be possible. The chimes were a dollar a piece at a craft shop, and the balls were pricier, but were returned the next day with a receipt, none-the-worse for wear.
With the fresh scent of grass and water, the sparkle of sunshine on glass and chimes and home made chupas, the cushion of blankets and pillows on grass, and the promise of a feast to come, the only sense left to address was sound, and my musician partner was not about to leave this part to chance. Not wanting to splurge on the high priced musicians I'd seen at the bridal expo, I'd decided that I'd take a cue from my Amish friends and simply enjoy the sounds of silence during my walk down the aisle. Josh however, would not hear such blasphemy, and began frequenting cafes and street corners until we found the one. A fun looking guy with long hair and a great vibe, playing his harp at our favorite quirky breakfast joint, Gailey's Cafe in downtown Springfield. He charged us $200 dollars for the whole day, invited us to his delightful house to pick any songs we liked, and played his harp for the entire ceremony, including the hour and half before hand while people were filing in and lounging on the blankets. His music and the feeling he created were beautiful, and completed the setting in such a special way that I hadn't even known to hope for.
I loved the stage we set for our family and friends so much that in the end, I am glad I was forced into creative alternatives! If I had it to do over again with a limitless budget, I'd opt for the limitless imagination instead, and I can honestly say I wouldn't change a thing.
As we get to know each other, I thought in the spirit of starting anew, I'd begin with my last big beginning, my wedding! If ever something was made with just about nothing but dreams, busy fingers, and sweat, this wedding would be it. And it was a great day had by all!
First, I have to say that I was never one of those girls who spent her whole life dreaming of that one special day, so when I found myself proposed to by my favorite tree in the middle of my favorite creek (a proposal that almost didn't happen since I kept turning down my boyfriend's repeated requests for a walk in the cold November wind), no pre-decided images of dresses or settings sprang into my mind.Honestly as a child I didn't even play with my barbies, I just made a lot of clothes and houses for them, and then left them to figure their lives out for themselves-- a habit of craftiness that came in handy during the wedding planning, despite the fact that I'd skipped the lifelong daydreaming part of things.
Second, and just as important, as a couple made up of one artist and one musician, there was no extra money for a wedding, and it turnes out EVERYTHING with the word wedding attatched to it is almost insultingly expensive! What we did have was a credit card with a $2,000 limit, and that was what we used for the whole affair. I even googled the phrase "$2,000 wedding" looking for some good advice to get me started, and the only thing I found was a really great looking plan for a wedding with this budget-- for a wedding of TEN guests. We had closer to 200!
This is where we got creative, and for the next several posts I am passing on every project I did and everything I learned along to you, dear reader. You do not need a lot of money to throw a memorable wedding, party, or get together of any kind! All you need is the freedom to dream, opposable thumbs (or really dexterous toes), and some cooperative friends (like the kind you'd want at your party). So get out your scissors and glue, put away your wallet, and plan your next shindig with everyone you've ever loved!
