In my final recap post (sniff! sniff!) I wanted to highlight some of the DIY projects we did for the wedding and give you some basic instructions on how I made them all. Crafting projects can be daunting and a little overwhelming at times, but I am so glad we powered through and got most of our original projects finished for the wedding. I believe it made it that much more personal to us and our guests. It was also hella fun having crafting parties with our bridesmates and random wedding folk!
The Ring Book
The front of the Ring Book
We wanted something our ring bearer could carry that was large enough to actually carry (and not just hold). It also needed to have some kind of thing that detached so the rings could be passed around for our guests to bless the rings during the ceremony. In the end, I bought a cardboard book from the craft store Micheal’s, some scrapbook paper and pulled out my handy-dandy modge-podge glue. Voila! In about two hours time, I had our ring book. For the detachable part, I cut some styrofoam and covered it in leftover fabric. Then I modge-podged a tinier box (with a tinier section of fabric covered styrofoam inside of it) for the rings themselves!
Now, our book serves as a place to hold cards from friends and mementos from the wedding.
Congratulatory Flags and Streamers
This was super simple and only took one evening to complete.
We displayed them in a vase and had our flower girl and ring bearer ask guests to take them as they arrived at the ceremony.
Supplies: Dowel Rods, Ribbon, Scrapbook Paper, Stamps and Ink, Hot Glue, Hole-Punch, Scissors
The ribbon streamers were easy to assemble and quick to make. Simply knot the ribbon on the dowel rod and add a drop of hot glue to keep them secured. The flags were a little more difficult. I cut the scrapbook paper into triangles and rectangles. Then we stamped different words onto each. Once the ink dried, we made two holes with the hole puncher, thread the dowel through and secured with hot glue.
Huzzah, Woot and Yay made the final wording cut. The second 'O' in 'Woot' is actually an upside-down Q with the tail cut off!!
The Programs
I mentioned in the Details recap that I printed the program at a local copy store. We used the ‘Jane Austen’ font from dafont.com and Eccentric from Microsoft Word. I went a little… um… unnecessarily crazy after they were printed though. I thought they were too plain. Cue: final trip to Micheal’s to buy a die-cut and an assembly line of friends punching those fleur-de-lis out of the sides.
We also made the stamp design from those removable stamps you can buy at any craft store. I would recommend getting one of those if you are planning on doing any kind of stamping for your wedding! You can see through the top of the stamper and re-arrange as needed!
The Bouquets
This was by far the most labor intensive DIY project we did. Way way back in my early blogger days for SYE, I posted about the saddest attempt at fabric flowers ever. It really was bad. The trial and error on this project was insane. However, the price point was beyond worth it. I think, and I say think because I’m sure I’ve lost some of the receipts, but once we figured out how to make the flowers, I only spent about $125 on the fabric, beads and floral supplies needed for our bouquets, the bridesmate bouquets AND corsages for the flower girl, ring bearer and my step-mother. And the result was gorgeous.
One of the wrist corsages
A bridesmate bouquet
I cannot take credit for the paper book flowers. Those are by etsy vendor Danamazing, who is truly amazing. She got those suckers to me so fast and they were never damaged from shipping! Oragami is not my thing and I was so lucky to find her! Deborah’s bouquet had more book-flowers than mine. Though we both love literature, she is definitely the more avid reader out of the two of us.
Deborah's Bouquet on left. My bouquet on right.
Supplies: Fabric (silk and tulle), beads of some sort (we used faux pearls mainly), glue gun, scissors, floral wire and tape. The key is to trace out tons of circles in varying sizes and shapes. I ruined one of our cooking prep bowl sets by endlessly tracing them around the fabric with a sharpie marker. Once cut (a rotary cutter or scissors) lightly move the edges of the circle around an open flame. This prevents the edges from fraying. Then stack different sizes and fabrics together and hot glue each piece. Attach the floral wire on the bottom and then tape the whole thing up! We would have flower parties and spend hours tracing, cutting and burning the edges. Then on another night, we would assemble. Finally, when it was getting closer to our wedding day, we created the bouquets. I added a little extra tulle around the bottom to hide the stems.
You can see the 'underside' of the bouquet with the tulle. We did not make those adorable cake toppers. Those are from the great etsy vendor The Girl In Yellow!
A word to those thinking of making their own fabric flower bouquets: this takes a lot of time. No, Seriously. I can’t even tell you the hours logged, but I know we started working on these six months before the wedding! Daunting, yes. Rewarding? More than I can tell you! Heck, these bouquets will still look gorgeous years and years from now and Deborah and I will be the ones all shriveled up and grey in our old age! I am so happy that our wedding bouquets will always look the same as on the day we got married.
Next Up: So Long, Farewell…
The rest of our wedding recap posts can be found at the links below:
Our Reception
Married and Ready to Party!
Our Ceremony, Part 2
The Ceremony, Part 1
Post-Portrait Shenanigans
Group Photos
Our First Look
Deborah Getting Ready
Michelle Getting Ready
All photos from our photographer, Katherine O’Brien.
The bouquets and cake toppers are amazing. You two look beautiful!