Ring Bearer sign- Here Comes your Girl!

My brother-in-law got married this past October. My two year old son was the ring bearer and I wanted to make something special for him to carry down the aisle. I looked all over the internet and this is what I came up with.  I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a wood sign and spray painted it white. Then I took black paint and went around the edges. For the lettering I traced them onto a blank piece of paper and place the paper on the wood where I wanted my letters to go. Next, I used a pencil to trace the outline of the letters. It leaves an indent in the wood and then I took a paint pen and filled in the letters. Since he is only 2 I wanted the sign to hang around his neck just in case he dropped his hands. I could have drilled holes to put ribbon through but instead we just used wood nails and put it on that way. I figured for as little time he was going to be wearing the sign it wouldn’t rip through. I think it turned out really cute and he and my new sister-in-law loved the sign!

Here is a picture from the wedding day!

Perfect Pair (Food Edition) Wedding Shower Gift Idea

One of my really good friends was married in September and this is what I did for her bridal shower gift. Now, I know I am a procrastinator, but with this idea I was literally working on it until the last minute! In the beginning I had just planned on going to the store printing off her registry and then buying something straight from that. However, for some reason the Thursday before the shower I got a crazy idea to check Pinterest for “bridal shower gift ideas.”

Above is the container I put everything in. This was on their registry from Bed, Bath and Beyond. It worked out perfectly for everything. I titled it Perfect Pairs Inspired by Dana and Jake: Food Edition

This is what the inside of the basket looked like when everything was in it.

Perfect Pairs: The Bride and The Groom because obviously they are the center of the perfect pair theme here! I googled poems and this is the one I liked best. I printed out an engagement photo that they had posted on Facebook and mounted it on black cardstock. I then printed out the poem and also mounted it on black cardstock. I then put it into a document frame mounted on peacock blue (wedding color) because I didn’t want to cut the paper down to make it fit into an 8×10.

Perfect Pair #2: Chips and Dip. My friend absolutely loves a BLT dip mix from a local kitchen shop here in town. So I thought what goes well with dip? Chips of course! So I picked up this cute chip and dip tray and added a cutesy little tag.

Perfect Pairs #3: Movie and Popcorn-  Since I went with a food theme movie and popcorn seemed like the appropriate thing to do. I bought a gift card to the movie store to rent movies since the couple rents movies more often than going to the theater. I also picked up a bucket of popcorn to put the gift card in.

Perfect Pairs #4: Bacon and Eggs. The couple’s favorite place to go eat after a night of indulging in adult beverages is a family owned diner in town. So for bacon and eggs I gave them a gift card so they could go eat breakfast after a night on the town.

Perfect Pairs #5: Cake and Ice Cream. We have a fabulous cupcakery here so I got gift cards to the cupcake store and also a gift card for ice cream.

They seemed to really enjoy the gift. I originally wanted to just get something off the registry but everything that I wanted to get was something you had to special order for delivery or someone else had already purchased the item. I thought this was the next best thing!

Memory Candles

   

Both my husband and I had family members who were not present with us at our wedding because they had passed away. Both of my maternal grandparents are deceased and hubby’s paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother are deceased as well. I can’t remember where exactly I found the idea and I also had a little saying in a picture frame to go along with the memory candles that I need to look for and will post when I find it.  Even though they were not physically there they were there in spirit.

OOT Bags- CD Favor

So I got this brainiac idea from a local scrapbooking store where I used to take scrapbooking classes at. The owner had made some sort of anniversary memory album that included a CD. I thought these CD favors would be perfect for our wedding. At first I was going to make these for each guests as their favor but in the end decided that one per couple or one per single guest would be just fine.

So at my local mainstreet scrapbooking store I found these 6 by 6 inch (I believe that was there dimensions) square mini posterboard squares. There was 6 squares for each mini scrapbook.  What I did was folded it in half so that there were just 3 squares. On the third square (Farthest right) I cut the front at a diagonal for the CD to be placed.

I then found scrapbook paper at the same local scrapbooking store that had my wedding colors and a nice design that I could use for the cover of my favors. The first thing I did was scrapbook the front of the favors. I made sure to cut the paper a little larger than the actual size of the album so that it could fold over to the back without leaving any extra space. On the back side of the favors I cut 6 by 6 square pieces of aqua cardstock  to fit perfectly on each of the 3 inside squares.

 

On the first inside square I put a sticker with a wedding theme at the top left with an engagement picture centered on the left square. In the middle I had my husband write the name of the songs that were on the CD. On the right I put the CD.

 

For the CD I got a Luau CD that had Hawaiian theme songs. It was Drew’s Famous Luau CD. I then bought some CD labels from Wal-Mart and printed our monogram and info on the CD label.

AHR (At-Home Reception) Invites

Since we had a small destination wedding we decided to have a big at home reception in our hometown about a month and a half after we got married. 

Here is the wording we used for our at home reception invitations:

           The parents of ____________ and ___________ proudly announce that their children were married  on (date) in a private ceremony on the tropical shores of Hawaii.

           Please join us in celebrating their joyful union with dinner and dancing  (Date of AHR), 5:30 in the evening, (place), (town).

Once again I decided that I wanted to “save” money by making everything myself (and making my hubby help). Even though we saved a ton of money these took a ton of time to make. I used black 7 1/2 by 7 1/2 cardstock (Hobby Lobby), 6 1/2 by 6 1/2  aqua cardstock (Hobby Lobby), and 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 white cardstock with aqua writing.

Along the left side of the white cardstock on the invitation I dry embossed the invitations using a palm tree stencil and aqua stamping pad.

Instructions on dry embossing:

1. Line up stencil where you want it on the cardstock.

2. Tape the stencil on the front of the invitation where you want it to be

3. Turn the cardstock over onto a clear light table (I made a DIY light table by using a flashlight and a piece of glass from a picture frame I was not using at the time)

4. Using a dry embossing tool and the flashlight on use the dry embossing tool to emboss your stencil onto the invitation.

5. Turn invitation over and using a foam stamper use the color of the ink you want and lightly ink the embossed stencil

 

 

 

 

Following the same format as the at home reception invites we also dry embossed the RSVP cards as well.

OOT Bags- Water bottles and luggage tags

Since it is rather warm in Hawaii we decided to create personalized water bottle labels for all our guests. We included these in our welcome bags for each guest. We put our monogram in the center and included love facts and “ingredients” on the sides of our monogram.  I just used sticker paper and printed them on my printer.

I thought it would be a cute idea to create luggage tags for all of our guests that attended the wedding as a little thank you for coming. I created these on My Publisher using our monogram, On the back of the luggage tags I put the names of the guests and then attached them to their welcome bags.  I found badge holders at Wal-Mart and used those as luggage tags.

OOT Bags (Out of Town bags)- Overview

We decided that since everyone was traveling a long distance and spending a good deal of money to be at our wedding that we would put together a little welcome bag for each person/couple that made the trip.  Included in each bag was the following: Welcome letter with optional activities ( pretty much telling people what our plans are and if they would like to join us they are more than welcome or they can do whatever they want, because it is their vacation as well!), beach towels (which we bought on sale at the end of the summer season), sunscreen packets, water bottles, candy, and Postcards from Paradise ( we bought postcards while we were in Hawaii).

Thank You’s- Wedding

While I was wedding planning I was constantly on TheKnot. This website both gave me a lot of great ideas and also a lot of getting made fun of by my husband. (In our house theknot/nest/bump is just known as the cult site as he likes to call it). Well, anyways my thank you’s for the wedding came from an idea one of the fabulous ladies on there had.

I bought two white parasols online and bought some aqua acryllic paint at Hobby Lobby. I freehanded writing the word Mahalo (which means thank you in Hawaiian).  Then when we were doing sunset pictures on the beach right after the ceremony I had my sister go grab the parasol and bring it down so that way we could take our thank you card picture. I then ordered the print using a fold style card so that the picture was on the outside and we could write our thank yous on the inside.  Please see top picture for what our thank you’s looked like.

Thank You’s- Bridal shower

For my bridal shower Thank You’s and any other pre-wedding thank you’s that we needed I created and ordered these from Shutterfly.

Favors

For favors in Hawaii we gave our guests cookies from the Honolulu Cookie Company. We placed them in these boxes that I found at a Wal-Mart while we were in Hawaii. We tied an aqua ribbon around the box and placed one at each seat for every guest. They were very delicious!

For favors at our at home reception we had a bucket of lei’s on the guestbook table for each guest to take. Sorry I don’t have a picture of that.