One More Wedding Post

Hey there!  I am back with what I hope may be one final wedding blog post!  This last weekend we received the professional photographs of Bethany and John's wedding day.  It was such a beautiful day, beautiful, wedding, and beautiful bride, and I am so happy that the professional photographs capture the beauty and love of the day.

I am starting with a couple of family photographs.  The top photo is, of course, Doug and I with our daughter.  She is towering over us in her heels and looking so stunning.

The second photo is our family - new members too!  And below is our family, complete with my mom, or as the kids refer to her, Granny!

I thought I would give you a quick peek at some of our decor.  This is the table top arrangement we used.  Bethany found the fun wood votives and the trinket boxes.  I found the little lanterns and the mercury glass votives.  I had succulents growing in my kitchen for five months to use on the table and to enhance the arrangements.  Finally, I made the table runners using 12 inch wide burlap and 5 inch wide lace sewn over top of the burlap.

One of the really sweet and unique decoration we made was the photo filled antique window.  We enlarged Bethany and John's engagement photos and placed them in the window panes.  We used two of these large windows and an antique door with glass panes, all containing photos, to decorate various areas.

As you can see above and below, our caterer really embraced our vintage/rustic theme.  Their sets up were fabulous, as was the food they provided.

No, they did not serve dip from the container!!  The photographer wanted to photograph the buffet areas before the caterer was quite ready.

And now for the final wedding craft:  I created a banner for the front of the cake table. Originally we planned to use an antique buffet from which to serve the cake.  However the base of the cake was too large for the buffet so we ended up with a regular table (boo).  However, the extra touches we had, decorated cupcakes displayed on my pink depression glass sandwich server, flowers, and the banner I made for the cake area all helped to cover for our inability to use the buffet.

The banner was made using my Cricut and Pretty Pennants cartridge.  It looked lovely on the front of the table.

The cake looks great - and it tasted great! It is missing the topper in the top photo.  They used a small bird nest with two little love birds, carrying through the rustic and love birds theme.

If you peek around Bethany and John feeding one another cake, you can catch a glimpse of the banner.

The cake was not our only dessert.  As a surprise, we also had ice cream cones, which many people loved!  It was a fun idea for a warm evening and many of the guests enjoyed ice cream and cake!

I am straight up going to confess that I spent so much time working on a wedding book at blurb.com that I did not make this week's BBTB2 project.  Our sweet DT sister Maureen challenged the team and all of you to use a Cricut cut Owl on a project this week.  I hope you will take time to go by Bitten by the Bug 2 and share some love AND consider joining the challenge this week.

I will be back with some actual paper crafting later this week!!

Wedding Crafts - Still Awaiting Professional Photos

Hello everyone!  There are still wedding crafts and details to share, though I have decided I am not going to await the professional photographs to show you how some of the crafts were used.

As many of you know, Bethany and John are both public school teachers.  We did not want the wedding to be overwhelmed with all things school related, but we did want a couple of cute teacher inspired touches.  I designed their wedding favors (above) to reflect their profession.

I found natural wood pencils on-line that could be orderd personalized.  I order a ton of personalized pencils, but as I understand it, Bethany and John will be using the leftover pencils in their classrooms this fall.

I found two print and cut images in the Silhouette America store:  the report card and the Always & Forever image.  I combined the two, placing the Always & Forever image onto the report card.  I then used the add text feature and personalized the report cards with "Bethany & John", "7/5/14", and "Thank You".  I printed the altered report cards onto cream colored 8.5 x 11 inch card stock, four per page.  I used my paper trimmer to cut the report cards apart.

I purchased mini-composition books (3 for $1 at Dollar Tree) to use as our base booklet.  With the help of my scrappy girlfriends, Bethany, and her matron of honor, we covered all of the book with brown card stock.

My friends then glued the report cards to the brown covered booklets.  I had planned to used pink and white twist twine to tie the pencils to the booklets, but I will be honest - that became too labor intensive during the last two weeks before the wedding!  So, I placed the pencils in a round clear cylinder vase and placed that in a large rectangular Longaberger basket full of the notebooks.

The favors were not my only print and cut project of this wedding - I also made personalized print and cut tags for the hospitality bags.  Keeping with the pink and brown colors, I printed the tags on to pink card stock and affixed the tags to the tan and brown love bird hospitality bags.

The bags were filled with local information, maps with points of interest, restaurants, etc.  There were "About Aiken" booklets.  I made a personalized map that included all of the venues with an attached page of written directions to all of the venues:  Rehearsal, Bridal Breakfast, Groom's Luncheon, Wedding and Reception.  There were personalized bottles of waters that matched the printed tags and there was homemade baked honey chex mix.   I had also purchased tea from a South Carolina tea plantation - the oldest in the country, but I forgot to add it to the bags!!

I also made bags and tags for the children who planned to attend the wedding.  We had eight children coming, six family members and the children of special friends (one of their daughters had been in John's classroom last year so it was especially fun for her to attend the wedding).   Anyway, I found wedding themed  activity coloring books (with crayons) for the kids bags.  I purchased a huge box of play-dough and split the containers among the bags.  I added candy necklaces and toys.  For the girls there were Playmobile Bride and Groom characters and for the boys there were Playmobile soldiers and pirates.  I added Legos to the older boy's bag.  And as you can see, I carried the love bird theme through on to the print and cut tags.

The bags for the children were placed in an antique tool box for me to hand out at the reception - they looked wonderful!  I think this was a fun surprise for not just the children, but for their parents as well.

I am still hoping that we will receive the professional photos soon.  I promise to share more of the fabulous shots when they arrive.

Bridal Breakfast Prima Doll Menus

Hello friends.  In Wednesday's blog post I shared the wedding invitation to Bethany and John's wedding.  One of the inserts was an invitation to the bridesmaids and women of the families.  This post will share a bit more detail on the Bridal Breakfast.

The bridal breakfast was held at the historic Willcox Inn in the historic district of Aiken.  Aiken has a rich equestrian heritage that dates to the late 1800s.  The Willcox is one of our treasured buildings from that era.  Today the Willcox is a lavish spa, hotel, and restaurant.  It was recently featured in Southern Living's wedding section.  I scheduled the breakfast at the Willcox for two reasons - the history and beauty of the building, and the elegant relaxed atmosphere.  Not to mention that the food is wonderful.

We had 35 women gather at 9:00 am the morning of Bethany's wedding to enjoy girl-only time and to start the day in a fun and relaxing way, ensuring that everyone had breakfast!  In the photo above, my college roommate, Mary - right (who came from Michigan to SC for the wedding!), chats one of John's aunts.

We were seated at four different table, but all in the same library room setting.  In the photo above, the groom's aunts, stepmother, and nephew (our only male companion) enjoy coffee and juice while awaiting our food.

Our favorite local florist delivered lovely hydrangea centerpieces to the Willcox for the breakfast.  After the breakfast, while the bride and bridesmaids went for manicures, I dropped off the centerpieces at the reception venue to be used on the buffet tables.

My daughter has "a thing" for elephants, in particular, lucky elephants.  She tells me that when the trunk is raised the elephant is lucky.  I found these tiny raised trunk elephant place card holders and just KNEW we had to use these at the breakfast.  My mom wrote all of the attendees names on the place cards.

The Willcox offered to print simple place menus for our guests, but I wanted something less formal, more fun, and unique.  I decided to use the Prima Doll Stamps, Prima tags, and flowers & gems from my stash to create fun, individual place menus.

I used ledger card stock to create the doll bodies and assorted small print card stock to create the dolls' dresses.  I used Copic markers to add color to the bodies and to change the details on the dresses. I added  brick stencils and color highlights to the cards.   Most of the ladies took their menus as a keepsake.  I was happy that they liked them so much.

We had a limited menu with a choice of two entrees:  French Toast with Cinnamon Apple compote and Bacon Eggs Benedict.  I chose the Bacon Eggs Benedict, but I noticed that the choices were fairly evenly split.  In addition to unlimited coffee and juices, the guest also had the choice of a side dish:  Bacon, Fruit, or (as a reminder that we ARE in SC) Cheese Grits.  Most of the ladies were from areas other than the southeast so it was fun sharing some of the local fare with them.

In addition to thanking everyone for helping us to start the day in such a happy, upbeat way, we also used this as an opportunity to assist Bethany with her "something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue".   When Grandma Edwards passed away in late March, Beth inherited a lovely Cameo broach.  Bethany pinned the broach to her bridal bouquet and it served as her something old.  Her something new was the pearl and elephant wrap bracelet in the photo above.  It looked wedding-ish, yet fun too.  I had this bracelet made for her as her something new and she loved it.  Her something borrowed was a mint penny from her birth year loaned to her by her Matron of Honor.  And her something blue was/is her fabulous engagement ring.

A photo of me with our bride on her wedding day!

One last peek at one of the menu cards, above.  And a photo of the Edwards ladies and my mom, below.  Left to right are Doug's niece Kyndall, his sister Joan, his sister-in-law Toyetta (Kyndall's mom), our great niece Ellie, Bethany, Me, my mom, my son Aaron's fiance Crissie, our sister-in-law Lisa, and our niece Julie - Ellie's mom.

I am hoping for more photos from the photograph over the weekend end.  You will know next week if they arrive as I will be able to share a couple of more wedding crafts.

Thanks for stopping my today!