Escort Card Holders

I finished one of the projects that has been lingering for a month or two now.  I made escort card boxes and escort card shutters.  The boxes can each hold 90 cards and the shutters can hold another 60.  If we have 300 guests, there will be another 60 cards or so that will have to be set on the table in rows between the boxes. 

The most tedious part of this project was spray painting the boxes and shutters black.  We got the shutters for $4 from the Re-Store, but they were ivory to begin with.  I found the boxes at Good Will, but they started their life as brown cassette tape holders.  After the painting ordeal was completed, it was only a matter of adhering the different ribbons to the holders! 

One of my last big projects left to do is make up the wedding programs.  However, I can't make them until I have good guest-imate (haha, get it?  instead of guesstimate?!) of the number of people who will be attending.  So far of the nearly 325 people we have invited in the first round of invitations, only 110 people have responded that they are coming and 48 have sent in a "no" rsvp.  I hope the rest of the bunch respond quickly; there is less than two weeks left until the rsvp deadline! 

58 Days!

I was so excited today to find a wedding album on facebook of a friend-of-a-friend who happened to have her wedding reception at the Howard Johnson Hotel.  I got so excited and eager for my own wedding while looking at the pictures that I thought I would share a few with you as well.  It's getting so close, and seeing these pictures makes it seem even more real! 

The couple's first dance.  We will not be doing the chair covers you see in the picture.  Chair covers can be cool, especially if you add a ribbon or sash around them, but I am not in love with them enough to pay to rent them for 300 people. 

Looking out over the main part of the ballroom.  Like this couple, we will be doing uplighting around the room, but in a golden/amber hue instead of purple.  Our head table will be on the dance floor, which is in the right-hand corner of the room as seen in this picture.

Let them eat cake!  We will also be placing our cake table in one of the alcoves of the room.  However, we will be hanging glowing Chinese paper lanterns in turquoise and white over our cake table.  Our cake will be quite a bit taller than this one, too! 

I am so excited for our first dance!  I hope Lee and I get a picture like this! 

The tablescape.  We will be having a floating candles on mirrors surrounded by votive candles as our centerpieces.  Our napkins will be folded as shown in this picture, but underneath each napkin we will have a turquoise "Thank You" card with games on the back.  We will also have a small candy favor in front of each spot. 

This couple put their head table up on the second upper level of the ballroom.  I like the idea, but we will need the extra space up there for guest tables.  We will also be doing the icicle lighting underneath the tablecloth of the head table. 

The countdown is on!

74 days.  10.5 weeks.  The wedding is quickly approaching!  My wedding to-do list is definitely shortening, and now the bulk of the items left on it must be completed when I am home in June or immediately before the wedding.

The invitations will be mailed out on Saturday from Bridal Veil, Oregon!  Look for them coming soon to a mailbox near you.  :) 

Tonight I worked on a framed wedding agenda and menu board.  The agenda describes the order and timeline of events for the evening.  The menu board spells out the food and dessert choices. 

The frames measure about 2.5' tall.  Here they are pictured leaning against my cupboards.

I bought the frames for these projects at Goodwill and painted them each silver.  I used the large format printers at Kinkos to print the agenda and menu I had created.  If you have never used large format printing, you should try it.  It is very cheap (printing each of these cost less than $4).  They warn you before printing the quality may not be very good, but the quality of print is just fine in my opinion.  I then adhered the prints to foam board from the dollar store using scotch tape.   I probably spent around $15 for the entire project.

While printing the menu and agenda at FedEx Kinkos this past weekend, I also printed out a large black and white congratulations poster and engagement picture, each measuring 3 feet by 4 feet.  These will be used to cover up some wooden white board cupboards in our reception venue.  The engagement picture turned out so nice that I may blow up some more engagement or wedding photos to decorate our home after the wedding! 

Eat, drink, and be married!

Paper straws for by the punch bowl.  I couldn't resist!

Puzzles

I have been working on some fun puzzles for the wedding!  I want to make sure the guests have some small thing to entertain them while waiting, so I have made a couple of puzzles and fun games for the guests. 

I made a crossword puzzle, a digital camera "I Spy," and a wedding mad libs.  My favorite is the crossword puzzle.  I took a picture of the one I printed out and solved:

Oops, I forgot to fill in one of the answers!

One puzzle/game will be placed at each person's spot at the reception, and I will print out a few extras in case people would like to try their hand at more than one.  I hope the guests enjoy completing their puzzles while waiting for their food!

The Wedding Craziness

Sometimes I feel like wedding planning is pretty crazy.  Last week especially was a whirlwind of wedding craziness.  I guess as long as I am not going crazy, we're fine!

Last week was good, in spite of how much needed to be done.  Lee and I met with both the reception and the groom's dinner venues for taste testing.  Right now, it looks like we will be having a buffet of roast beef and chicken pasta for the groom's dinner, with garlic mashed potatoes and vegetables on the side.  Lee's aunt will be making us (another) cake for dessert.  For the wedding reception, we will be having a buffet of garden salad, dinner rolls, lemon pepper chicken, roasted pork loin, a vegetarian Alfredo pasta, baby red potatoes, and green beans almondine.  We will be having wedding cake for dessert, of course!

Eagles Crest Grill, site of the groom's dinner

It was very interesting visiting with the reception venue and the church venue again.  Both venues have imposed quite a few stipulations that were not in place when we first booked them last winter.  The reception venue has raised all of its prices and changed parts of the contract.  In spite of the price increases, my parents are going to be graciously purchasing 2 kegs of beer and 15-20 bottles of wine for the reception.  However, we are going to do away with hors d'oeuvres, since the prices have drastically increased for fruit and vegetables platters.  Another bummer about the reception venue: if there ends up being a Friday event before our wedding, we can only start decorating at 10 AM the morning of the wedding.  A good thing about the reception venue: much of the hotel is undergoing renovations.  The pool area has already been redone, and most of the guestrooms have been redone as well. 

Meeting with the church was fairly straightforward, but we were told we would not be able to move anything major on or off the stage.  For example, if the piano is on the stage, we have to leave it there.  If the piano is off the stage, we have to leave it off the stage.  Luckily, Lee's parents know the guy who is in charge of decorating the stage, so hopefully we will have some say in how we want the stage to look.  We can still decorate the stage with any small items, including flowers, lighted trees, and candles.  Luckily, we can start decorating the church on the Friday before the wedding. 

I also was able to have my gown fitting.  This was definitely one of the highlights of my week.  I am using Emily's pageant gown seamstress who is SUPER talented to alter my dress.  She was very meticulous, which I loved.  I think she might even be more detail-oriented than I am!  She also had some great ideas for the bustle and hiding the zipper on the back of the dress. 

Gown designed by Caroline Hayden and sewn by the lady who is doing my alterations.  My sister wore this gown at the Miss North Dakota competition last year!

I was able to go shopping in Fargo with Becca and Lisa to help Becca pick out her bridesmaid dress.  Becca was the final bridesmaid to choose her dress.  I am happy to report that there were five different styles chosen between all six bridesmaids!  They are going to look fabulous! 

Finally, Lee and I went attended a wedding last week.  The wedding was gorgeous and very well done.  It was also probably double my current wedding budget!  This bride and groom did not skimp on any details.  Since it was a great wedding, I will be taking a couple of ideas from this wedding to use in my own.  For example, I loved the use of uplighting at the reception and the votive candles all around the room. 

Escort Cards

Lee and I decided we wanted to have escort cards to direct everyone to their tables.  At the Dollar Tree (my favorite wedding retailer...haha), Lee and I found 50-packs of escort cards for 25 cents each.  We plan to dress them up a bit, but that will be a later post.

Right now, I want you to contemplate the pictures below and tell me which escort cards display is your favorite.  Recall that we have to display around 300 of them.  They will be alphabetized, of course, because we want people to easily and quickly find their name.

Escort Card Boxes

Escort Cards in Picture Frame Trays

Escort Card Shutters

Simple Ribbon Under the Escort Cards

Escort Card Boards

Framed Escort Card Boards with Ribbon

Reception Chair Plaques

Here's the newest project!  I made signs for the back of the bride and groom's chairs for the reception. 

Bride sign hanging on the back of a chair

The two finished signs

For this craft, I bought clearance wood plates for a few dollars a piece from Michaels.  I covered each plate with white acrylic paint.  I then used the printer ink transfer technique described here to apply the letters.  I painted the words "bride" and "groom" turquoise, but I left the monogram and date as is.  I used leftover silver roping (remnants from my card box project, but originally from the Dollar Tree's Christmas section) to attach the plaques to the chairs. 

My only regrets on this project are that I didn't perfectly straighten the writing so it matches up with the points of the plaques and the turquoise lettering isn't perfect due to having a big paintbrush and shaky hands.  Oh well.  Not too many people will be looking at the backs of our chairs at the reception.  Honestly, this project is probably only going to be good for one or two pictures, but it's a fun wedding craft I wanted to complete.  Also, when playing around with it, I found as long as the writing is parallel with the floor, you don't really notice the crookedness.  What do you think?

Wedding Cake!

Hello my friendly blog readers.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I had a fun Thanksgiving trip to Boise, Idaho to visit Lee's Aunt Brenda.  Brenda is an occupational therapist and a professional cake maker on the side.  She owns her own business, Brenda's Creative Cakery. 

While in Boise, Brenda gave us the full cake-tasting and designing experience.  We got to try a number of different flavors of cake and look at her wedding cake albums.  Yes, albumS.  I think we looked at 7 different cake albums, each completely full of photos! 

Of the flavors we tried, Lee and I really liked amaretto and white chocolate.  We did not get to try her buttermilk devil's food, but we heard raving reviews about that flavor.  Brenda told us we could choose more than one flavor, and those three are our top contenders right now. 

We also contemplated wedding cake designs.  After looking at numerous photos, Lee and I decided to model our cake after this classy cake:

The cake will be a round, stacked, and 6-tiers (it needs to be tall for 300 people!).  The cake will be topped with fresh white flowers.  We will have buttercream frosting dusted in a shimmer powder.  Each tier will have a different white-on-white frosting design.  A 3/4" turquoise ribbon will be around the base of each tier to add a little color to the cake. 

Lee will also be getting a grooms cake of his choice.  He hasn't decided on the flavor, but he said he thinks having chocolate ganache frosting would be cool.  His aunt Brenda thinks he should have a big picture of teeth on top of the cake.  :)

Paper Products

Recently I have worked on a couple of paper products for the wedding.  First, I worked on a guestbook instruction sheet which will be framed and placed by the guestbook.  It includes our monogram and the fonts that I will use on the rest of our formal paper products, such as menus and programs.

I also made a fun, playful I Spy worksheet so people have something to do during the reception!  Also, this will ensure that people take pictures (and hopefully post them to facebook) of our wedding reception.  I found this idea on Pinterest. 

Getting Around Town - DIY Map

Last night, Lee and I were able to pick up the remaining silk flowers I need to make the bouquets!  Since I'm in Portland for the weekend, I couldn't finish the bouquets just yet.  Instead, I decided to try my hand at designing a map of Grand Forks to include with our invitations.  It's nice to have Lee around to provide feedback on what looks good.  :)  But I would like to have your feedback too!  Is there anything else needed on the map below?

The red route shows the easiest route (with the fewest turns) to take from the church to the reception.  As you can see, there are many ways to get to the reception, though!  Also, this route takes everyone past the three hotels we have made group reservations at.  That way, anyone who needs to stop at the hotel between the ceremony and the reception will be able to.

It was quite simple to make the map.  I Google-Mapped Grand Forks and took a screen shot of the area I wanted to feature.  I then took a screen shot of the map, pasted the shot in to Microsoft Paint, cropped the image, and saved it as a jpeg.  I then opened the image in Microsoft Word.  I drew lines over the major roads and landmarks in the appropriate colors and labelled them with text boxes, clip art, and images from online. 

To finish it all off, I deleted the original Google Maps image from the background. I then took another screen shot of the Word Document, cropped the image again Paint, and saved the image you see above as a jpeg.  I love computers.

I'm not sure what will be next on the DIY agenda.  I feel like I have been going full speed ahead on these projects and may need to slow it down for a little bit.  I don't want to run out of projects to do!  :)

Small Update

Here's what I have been up to lately:

• Working on our wedding website.  It's not done yet, but it's getting there!
• Booking blocks of rooms at 3 hotels for our guests
• Continuing to arrange flowers (more pics to come soon!)
• Taking just-for-fun cheap couples pictures at Walmart for my birthday.  They were just as hilarious as I thought (and hoped) they would be.   
• Watching the movie Bridesmaids for the first time
• Creating our Honeyfund registry
• Making plans to attend the Rose City Bridal Showcase in Portland on October 8 & 9.  I like bridal expos so much, I will probably go to the Portland Bridal Show in January too!
• Getting catering estimates from the Grand Forks Cold Stone Creamery to make my wedding ice cream dreams come true.  :)

Dollar Store Bride

If you know me well, you know I cannot resist a deal.  I am not afraid to admit I love freebies, coupons, and the dollar store.  Today Lee and I decided to visit the Dollar Tree to check out if they had anything to use for our wedding.  And of course they did! 

Lee and I first checked out the wedding "section."  (Did you know: not only the Dollar Tree has a section dedicated to weddings, Walmart has one too!).  Our first find was 300-count bags of fake white rose petals.  We figured we could use these either in the church aisle or to scatter on tabletops.

 We also picked out some white wire garland with little plastic hearts sticking out of it.  We think we could use it for tying back tulle, edging tables/doors, or wrapping around things.  Not very specific uses, but we are sure we will use it!  The garland pictured below isn't the exact garland we bought, but you get the idea.

We then went on to the candle aisle.  I decided I will be making our unity candle, so we scoped out the candle options at the dollar store.  They have two tapered candles for a dollar, so I am sure I will be back to purchase two of those.  Today we purchased two glass candlestick holders for the taper candles.  We will use a pillar candle in the middle.  I have yet to brainstorm how I will decorate the pillar candle...

Onward we went to the picture frames.  Although we did not buy any picture frames today, I know we will be back to revisit this section of the store to purchase frames for some of the projects I have in mind!

Then, divine inspiration struck.  Earlier this week I had seen a fabulous centerpiece on Pinterest.  Oh how I love Pinterest!  The centerpiece utilized fishbowls stacked upon each other.  When Lee and I stumbled upon small fishbowls at the Dollar Tree, I knew I would want to try to recreate this decoration.

All of the fishbowls at the Dollar Tree are the same size, but we decided we liked the look of the identical fishbowls stacked just as well.  We debated about what to put in the bowls, and we decided to put a candle in the top bowl.  In the bottom bowls, we decided we would put turquoise beads and a single white flower bud nestled on top of the beads (kind of like the picture below, except the flower would be white and the water would be turquoise beads). 

We looked through the store for blue beads, and we found a perfect substitute: air freshener gel beads.  These gel beads are the perfect color.

In total, we bought enough fishbowls to make one tower of three and two towers of two (7 total).  We also bought 4 containers of the gel beads.  We'll buy the flowers and the candles later.  We think we are going to use this decoration either at the guest book table or on the punch or cake table.

Last, but not least, I bought a package of white doilies.  I want to try making a craft like the one below:

 

-1

Lee and I celebrated our "-1" anniversary this past week.  I was able to arrange a 3-day weekend for work, and we spent an evening talking about our wedding over dinner and fro yo.  We ended the night by going to the Harry Potter premiere. 

Lee has put me in charge of finding potential first dance songs.  We would preferably like to do a waltz for our first dance.  Any ideas?

Ice Cream

I need to have an ice cream bar at my wedding reception!

Yummy Favors

 

How easy!  And relatively inexpensive!

Photo Booth

I would love to have a photo booth at the wedding, even if it's not manned by a professional photographer.

Random Inspiration Pics

Sadly, it has been a long time since I have blogged.  In fact, it has been quite awhile since I have even thought about wedding planning.  I have been too busy! 

Here are some inspiration photos I have run across in the past few weeks.

I love black table cloths.  

I'd like to make little plaques for our chairs.  Not only cute for the chairs, but cute picture props as well.

I think a chalkboard is a good way to announce important information.  However, I really like the framed information as well. 

It's difficult for me to picture and plan what the front of the church will feel like.  Both of the pictures have white flower arrangements that I love, but I picked out these pictures as inspiration for different reasons.  I like the feeling of decadence the first picture offers with the different textures and many luscious details.  I like the symmetry and simpleness of the second picture.  Mostly, I am in love with the large white flower arrangements on pedestals!  I don't think either picture captures anything I could do with the venue, but I like the pictures anyway. 

Thinking about the ceremony a bit more, I actually envision hundreds of candles at the front of the church.  :)  Candlelight wedding services (just like Christmas Eve!) are also in vogue right now. 

I'd like to have some decorations in the aisle, whether it's tissue pomeanders, candles, or petals.

Finally, I have a feeling I will fully embrace some of these DIY projects, like this one, once I have graduated in June!
 

Update!

I've only been home for just over 24 hours, but wedding planning with my parents has already been happening.  Here's an update with some of the highlights:

The Touch of Magic in East Grand Forks (the venue which I indicated as my first choice for a wedding reception in a previous blog post) is closing at the end of 2011.  Looks like I won't be having my wedding reception there!  ***Sigh...***  Moving on to my second choices, I guess.

One of these second choices was the Hilton Garden Inn.  I called the Hilton today, and I found out they seat up to 200 people in their reception hall.  My mom and I went to visit with their event coordinator this afternoon.  After visiting with her about prices and options, my mom was absolutely sold on the venue.  I think the Hilton is a great venue too, so I will be scheduling a taste-testing of the food once Lee gets back into Grand Forks.  We'll look at the Hilton's reception hall again at that time and make our final decision!  Even though I can't have the reception at my favorite choice, I'm really happy with how things are working out with the Hilton.  I think it is meant to be!  After all, the Hilton is the place where Lee and I first met.

I also called the North Dakota Museum of Art (NDMA) today to check prices for the ceremony venue.  The NDMA charges TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS to rent the building for a wedding ceremony.  The price is absolutely disgusting, and definitely not within my budget constraints.  Also, policies at the NDMA do not allow wedding ceremonies to take place during museum hours.  Even if I could afford it, I don't think I would want an evening wedding.  It's time to start considering plan B for the ceremony venue, and I don't think the answer will come as easily as it did for the reception venue. 

Major point of dissension between me and my mom: photography.  Having a good (strike that, not just good, but talented) photographer is really important to me.  My mother disagrees.  She thinks one photo is just like the next photo and suggests I hire someone I know to take pictures.  I really don't feel comfortable hiring someone who is not a professional photographer.  I know photography can eat up a large portion of the budget.  However, I don't think I want to settle on this issue.  


Dress shopping is in the near future!

Fine Dining and Dancing

If you haven't read my previous post concerning where to have the ceremony, please look at the post below and read!

Also adding to the "where" factor: the reception venue. I feel this venue will be easier to determine once the ceremony venue has been decided. Here again are pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Touch of Magic

Pros: Beautiful venue, one of the most sought-after venues in Grand Forks, really tasty food, romantic atmosphere, feels intimate even though the venue can hold a large number of people, wood dance floor, buffet-style service
Cons: None that I can think of!

Ralph Englestad Arena

Pros: Beautiful venue with marble floors, unique
Cons: Large space for people to get spread out in, echoes because of marble floors

Hilton Garden Inn

Pros: A fun place to dance, place where Lee and I first met, intimate setting, decent food
Cons: Holds only ~100 people

Alerus Center Ballroom

Pros: Large enough for all guests, can be decorated really cute
Cons: Feels too large because of cavernous ceilings, have to pay for everything from the tablecloths and napkins to the pieces of the dance floor

North Dakota Museum of Art

Pros: Architecture of this building, can host dinners, built-in dance floor, balcony overlooking the main floor
Cons: May be too small (would have to check), museum's in-house catering service isn't very good, don't know what art would be on display