18: The Guest Book

18 days to go!

I am a huge picture person. I take photos of everything. I always carry my camera with me. We have photo frames all over our house. So, when it came to make a decision about what kind of guest book we would have --- the answer was simple A CUSTOM PHOTO BOOK that our guests can write in "yearbook" style.

We used some of our engagement photos that my cousin/maid of honor took of us shortly after we were engaged. We used our monograms. We included our vows and the readings from our ceremony. And we filled in with photos from our relationship.

The book turned out sooooo great! I want to share a few photos with you!

The front of the book with a line from our invitations, our married monogram, our names and our wedding date

The spine of the book

The back of the book with our math monogram and a math quote that I discovered on a fellow bloggers Stefanie's blog .

Front inside flap with the date again, our wedding date, one of our engagement photos, and a excerpt from our vows

Black flap with more vows, another engagement photo, and the location of our wedding

AND HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITE PAGES

A monogram and our favorite engagement photo

Playing in the snow on our first anniversary and our first photo together at my college graduation party

Just some favorite photos ... I miss my short hair!!!

Engagement photos (again) and our math monogram (again)

New Years Eve 2009 and a photo in our new home the day we closed escrow!!!

Here is the last page ... with another one of our monograms!
And on that blank white page we are going to tape a photo of our kitty cats :)

I'm looking forward to cherishing the loving words our family and friend will write in our guest book for many many years to come!

19: The completed memory poem & candle

19 days to go!

A couple of weeks ago I wrapped our hurricane vase with black & white ribbon and just last week we purchased the frame to put the memory poem in with the names of our loved ones who will be celebrating our wedding day in spirit.

This project is very dear to my heart. Between the two of us, Jon & I have only one living grandparent. My grandma, Gladys, will be traveling from Wyoming to celebrate our wedding day with us (I'm her first grandchild to get married) but the rest of our grandparents will be celebrating with us in spirit. There are also some very dearly loved & missed aunts and uncles listed on our poem. We miss them all dearly and decided this was a perfect way to keep their memories alive on our wedding day.

The vase will have black sand, just like the centerpieces, and a white pillar candle

The memory poem and our loved ones listed below it

20: How sweet it is

20 days to go!

We've got quite a little theme growing using "how sweet it is ..." beginning with our cake cutting song, "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" by the Jerry Garcia Band and ending with our favors and the giant martini glass filled with candy on the bar top!

We kinda have a little obsession with Hershey Kisses. They may very well be our absolute favorite go-to candy. So, when we were deciding what to "give" our guests as favors ... it was pretty easy to decide what type of candy to go with!

Putting the favors together was definitley labor intensive. We had to remove the favor tags from their cardboard backing then punch holes in them. The ribbon had to be cut. Then it was a two person job to tie the ribbon around the tulle. We started these on a Saturday night and ended up only finishing 25 ... but then we sat down on a Wednesday and finished them up while we watched American Idol!

They look good enough to eat :)

All 150 completed!
(We have a few extras)!!!

21: Table for two, please

21 days to go!

Jon & I opted to have a sweetheart table at our reception instead of a standard head table. We did this for several reasons. We wanted our bridal party to be able to sit with their husbands/wives/significant others AND we wanted to be able to have a few moments alone to bask in the newness of being husband and wife while being surrounded by our family & friends.

So, we ended up with 17 tables ... and 19 centerpieces! We have 18 of the centerpieces that I blogged about previously and a special centerpiece for our sweetheart table. I think we will end up putting the extra centerpiece on the guest book table.

And for our sweetheart table we purchases this cylinder vase for my bouquet! I wrapped it ribbons matching our wedding colors and attached our married monogram!

I think my red rose bouquet (our third wedding color) will look beautiful in this vase sitting on our sweetheart table during our reception!

24: Candle light is romantic!

24 days to go!

Before I boxed up all the supplies for the centerpieces I did a trial run and took some photos so that Rhiannon (our go-to girl for decorating the day of our wedding) has an idea of what we want them to look like.

We are using 5" round bubble vases, filled with black sand and a white candle. These will be placed on a 12" x 12" square mirrored tile (supplied by our venue) and then silk red rose petals will be scattered around the vase.

All's that's missing from the photo below is the square mirrored tile ... but overall this is the look we are going for.

You can't really see the black sand because of the black coffee table. We decided to use sand to "catch" the wax as the candles melted for an easier clean up! We used the black sand, white candles, and red silk rose petals to tie in all our wedding colors!

25: Being an organized bride!

25 days to go!

On our wedding day I will be spending my morning at a local salon getting my hair and make-up done, along with my bridesmaid Linsey and my mom, and by the time I get back to the venue/hotel I will have just enough time to grab some lunch before its time to start getting ready because we are doing all our photos before our ceremony! With that being said - I had to find someone who would be willing to set up our venue with our DIY details (our favors, our ceremony reserved signs, our "in memory" candle & poem, our guest book, our centerpieces, our programs, our photo sharing instruction cards, our reserved tables signs). Luckily my maid of honor's best friend said she could fill this spot for us and take care of these little decorating details. We only have one hour to get all these details in place - and during that one hour I will be busy taking photos with our bridal party and our families and then getting ready for our ceremony - so I'm very relieved to have Rhiannon stepping in to take care of this for me. With that being said, I'm working very hard to get everything ready for her and organized so that it's easier for her to get all this accomplished in only one hour! This past weekend I spent some time removing stickers from our centerpiece vases, then washing & drying them. Then I portioned the out the black sand for each vase and the silk red rose petals that will be scattered around the vases.

Portioning out the sand

I then placed all the vases back in their boxes, and put the portioned sand and rose petals in each vase along with a candle - that way on the wedding day everything is ready to go!

All boxed up and ready for The Big Day!

A close up of all the centerpiece items inside the vases ready for assembly!

29: Reserved signs

29 days to go!

About a month ago I spent one afternoon tackling as many wedding projects and I could get my hand on. Some of those projects included finishing up our birdcage card box and working on some of my bridal shower decorating details among other things.

One of the other projects I worked on were our reserved signs for the chairs during our ceremony. I choose to only make reserved signs for our immediate family members so they would feel special and so that our divorced parents and their new spouses or significant others will know where we would like them to sit.

I used some left over card stock from our invitations and the same black ribbon I used on the birdcage. They were very simple to make and they turned out great!

50: DIY Birdcage card box

50 days to go!

A while back I blogged about finally completing a long awaited to-do list item of painting the birdcage that we purchased to use as our card box . Well, not only was it finally painted black to match our wedding colors ... but I also finished decorating it and it has officially become my 1st completed wedding DIY project!

Here is the birdcage is all its black glory!
A big THANKS to Jon for spray painting it for me! xoxo


And here it is all wrapped in ribbon and with the little card I made attached


A close up of the card

*The design mimics our invitations and our RSVP cards and other upcoming DIY projects - and even some completed DIY bridal shower projects too*

I am very pleased with the way this project turned out AND I'm super excited to be able to hang this birdcage on our back porch after our wedding :) *yay for being able to re-use a wedding related purchase*

It was relatively simple to decorate, I just weaved the ribbon, printed the card, cut to size, and attached with hot glue! *yay for my first completed DIY wedding project - see a previous post for already completed DIY bridal shower projects*

82: Another DIY project

82 days to go!

Another DIY project I just decided to do (since we have some left over invitations mats) are reserved signs to hang on the chairs at the ceremony for our immediate family members. It's definitely not a necessity to have - but just another way to make our day personalized. They will be simple signs that mimic our invitation mats and will say Reserved Mother of the Bride (or another family member) that I will attach to ribbon and then have my day-of person (my cousin's best friend is standing in for this role) attach them to the chairs for the ceremony.

Just like the memory candle - this project is still not complete, but as it also comes to life I will post pictures.

83: In memory

83 days to go!

One of the many wedding DIY projects I am working on includes an "In Memory" candle that we will have set up at our reception. The candle will be in a hurricane vase that was purchased at Michael's Craft Store and will be wrapped in ribbon in our wedding colors (black and white). We will use a white pillar candle and fill the bottom of the vase with black sand (to mimic our centerpieces). Next to the candle will be a poem and a list of names of people celebrating with us in spirit.

Here's the poem we are using:
Those we love don't go away
They walk beside us every day
Unseen, unheard, but always near
Still loved, still missed
And always held dear

*I found the poem on someone's planning bio from theknot.com - but I can't remember who (I actually know that I saw it on several people's bio's when I first started planning)

As soon as I saw that poem, I knew this was something that I wanted to incorporate into our wedding. Unfortunately, our list of loved ones is quite long - but I know they are all in our hearts and will be watching down on us as we become husband and wife.

This project is still in the early stages and no where near complete yet - but I will add photos as the idea comes to life.