Thursday, May 19, 2011

Real wedding photos

Walking down the aisle with my dad.


Dancing down the aisle :-)


Introducing: Mr. and Mrs. Sean Kelly!!!


Saying vows.


Sean's dad giving a speech.


Getting ready with my bridesmaids.


Wood letters made by sister-in-law Jenny and brother-in-law Mike Kelly.

The final centerpieces, boutonnieres and brides bouquet

Here are the moss wrapped mason jars with paper roses hot glued on to sticks. We made river cane cross beams and hung wood burned numbers from each table. Each wood burned number is on a homemade cut out heart with hemp string and beads from old necklaces. :-)


The groomsmen and groom boutonnieres were made just out of paper, sticks, twine and moss! We dye cut out paper leaves for the back of the boutonniere, in between is filled with moss and the flower is a paper rose. We made these flowers just the how we made the flowers for the bridesmaid bouquets. Both the paper leave and paper flower are hot glued onto sticks and the sticks are wrapped with twine. Using cardstock for the paper flowers and leaves works best.


Here is my bouquet all finished! There are 26 iris flowers, lots of tissue paper flowers, paper roses from all the other bouquets, and a handful of yarn ball poofs. On a previous post I added a link as to how we made this whole bouquet. Iris flowers are my favorite blue flower, so we made origami ones in many hues of blue. The last touch we added was having a stick for the bouquet holder. :-) I fell in love with this bouquet.


Monday, May 9, 2011

The start of my bouquet...

Styrofoam on a stick....
add yarn ball flowers....
now we added some tissue paper crisanthenams and navy paper roses.

After filling in some more of the gaps....

Final pictures of my bouquet will come soon! We added paper irises to it as well. :-)

a couple finished projects

My ring pillow ended up upside-down... but i added ribbon, grapes and grapevine leaves! The green ribbon that hangs down is for our rings to tie onto. I also added some extra green ribbon to my flower girls watering can.

Here are the polaroid cards for the photo booth. We will have a sign that says, Write or draw a message for Sean and Katie. Get excited for our polaroid photo booth!!! This is gonna be sooo much fun!
Here are some stamped thank you cards! There are actually 5 different stamps used on this card, and I used left over paper from the envelopes we made for the save the dates! All about using up these scraps now. :-)

Monday, May 2, 2011

A Royal Wedding

What an elegant dress for a beautiful princess and bride. Yes some people say they feel she should have gone a little bit more crazy on the bling, truthfully she is so beautiful she doesn't need it. I love Kate's lace sleeves.

wedding websites

I started here-

My sister-in-law's page-

I just found this one! Wish I found it earlier.

Bamboo canopy

The bamboo canopy my fiance made! It only cost $35 bucks for everything, minus the ribbon. That is because the ribbon was sent to us from family and friends. My sister-in-law, Jenny came up with the idea. And seriously, I love all of the ribbon so much. Especially how some of it is from family and friends who can't make it to the wedding. It's so sentimental.

Sean used cement to hold the bamboo in the pots because we may use this canopy inside or outside. Also, it's can break down a bit to be portable too.

All of the ribbon from family and friends. Our aunt Leslie sewed loops on one end of the ribbon after we cut them all about 9.5 ft long, because I wanted them to puddle. All the widths and colors are pretty different that I got in the mail, but looking at them all on the bamboo, they look like they were all made to go together. :-)


This DIY book is amazing. Khris has three of them, but I could only afford the first one to own.
The bamboo canopy was from here! We just changed the directions around a bit and made it our own. Love it. Her blog is a "must see." I check it daily, DIYbride.com

tree table assignments

I used fake Grapevine leaves from Michael's Craft Store. I punched holes in each leaf, tied some cute ribbon at the top to create the hanger, and then I wrote guests names and table numbers on them.
For the wedding party, I wrote their names on birds that will go in the trees as well.

I really like how simple and eco friendly this centerpiece is. I also really love the table number and how they are just simply written on card stock and sitting in a slit of wood. So rustic and elegant.

This is the idea I had in mind. I plan to have two or three large trees that I can hang seating assignments on. I will alphabetize by last name.

Ring bearer and flower girl accessories

This is the flower girls hair crown I made. I actually found long and wired flowers, leaves and berries. Then I just wrapped it up and made the crown by overlapping the strand three times. I then tied some green ribbon to hang down the back of the flower girl.

I found this cute watering can for 2 bucks used. It was a forest green color, so I painted it white, and painted the tip blue. Just deciding if I should add any moss to the top or anything...

or maybe ask my mom to tool paint flowers on it. Or another idea I was thinking would be to tie ribbon inside the tip and have it hang down like water is coming out.

I can't wait to see my flower girls dress. Her grandma made it for her! It's going to match this watering can real well. Here is the moss wrapped ring bearers pillow before adding the ribbon tie onto it. I used left over moss from m centerpieces.

Wood burning decor

This project took me a few hours, but I love the results!!! I found a beautiful tree for inspiration, and went to town with a wood burner. The medium width, round tip was the best for me. After drawing my swirly tree, I went back and added shading and texture. This is my second wood burning project ever!

The tree quote I found online, and the song "I Wanna Grow Old With You" Sean sang to me when he proposed!
I wood burned hearts with our initials K + S on the front side, and 5-13-11 on the back. I was originally going to do these for favors, but after decided they would be cute as part of the table setting.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Paper flower bouquets!


Here are a couple pictures of the bridesmaid bouquets I finished! Found sticks and bamboo trimming for the stems, tied them with ribbon and hot glued the flowers on the ends. I used green felt circles to keep the flowers connected to the stems.

We had such great success, my family and I, we are now making more flowers of our centerpieces! Such a great money saver.




Some great flower bouquet ideas. This one even uses newspaper! Love it!


What amazing paper flowers this company makes! Wish I could afford them, but They have some beautiful work. Check them out!


Like round bouquets? Check out this blog above. They used a stirafome ball and made paper flowers. Then attached the flowers to stick and stuck the pins into the ball! Perfect idea!


Learn how to make a paper iris flower origami style! Love this idea, might use it for my bouquet :-)

Ribbons


http://www.designmom.com/2011/04/ribbon-party-decorations/

We have been getting ribbons in the mail from friends and family. So many beautiful colors and sizes.... Sean and Leslie cut the ribbons yesterday and sewed loops in the top of them so we can have them drape at the back of the canopy! The canopy will be made out of bamboo from Sean's parents yard.


Thursday, April 7, 2011

Wedding favors

I found some recycled bamboo coasters :-)


A candy table is in the works with brown paper bags stamped. Planning on incorporating some moss and maybe some tree bark as well. Might add some homemade cookies to the buffet as well.

Bridesmaid dresses




My two highest points of criteria when shopping for bridesmaid dress:
1. Cost
2. Multiple styles to fit everyones body type

Since I've done dance costumes all my life, I know what it's like having to wear something that doesn't really fit right, isn't flattering on your figure, or is just uncomfortable material. When shopping for my dance costumes for the kids I teach, I remember these factors and try to find costumes that they will hopefully be comfortable in. I had the same ideas when shopping for my bridesmaid dress. You want them to look "In Sync," but what about feeling comfortable and confident? I hope that with this multi-way dress from Victoria's Secret that I found, my bridesmaids can feel this way. At $73 bucks a dress, I thought that it was a pretty smokin' deal.

I'm obsessed with cowboy boots. They are comfy, and just soooo dang cute! When my sister-in-laws "to be" mentioned... bridesmaids in different cowboy boots, how could I say no!!! Half of my bridesmaids already have brown boots, the other half always wanted a pair. It's such a great idea. <3

When shopping for a venue...

Make sure you like both the indoor and outdoor option for a wedding in Seattle. You never know when it's gonna rain here, or snow. It just snowed yesterday, April 6th. Crazy weather in the Seattle area.

Also, besides first off finding a venue that your size wedding will fit, you also need to find a place that allows for you to have some freedom is decorations and expressing your "feel" of your wedding.

Lighting in the venue, and the amount you are allowed to have inside/outside is one of the most important factors for a wedding. I didn't know this until recently... but you need lots of candles. Even if they are flameless, that's ok you can still get the ambiance and it really helps soften pictures as well.

Find out all extra charges before hand. We found out at our venue if we use the chairs outside, we have to pay $1 per every chair they set up. That's fine because my family is very helpful, but it woulda been nice for them to clarify this matter before. Then they changed the amount of the venue on us from $2,800 to $3,500 for using our own catering. Lastly, they changed our 1 hour rehearsal price from $100 to $150. I love The Manor, it's so beautiful. But I'm upset with the owners and management for changing prices on us.

What it comes down to is you still have to make it work. And, in the end I get to marry the love of my life.


Mason Jars

Sean filled 50 mason jars half full with dirt. We are putting candles in them for the ceremony. Hoping for an outdoor ceremony, but Seattle weather in unpredictable.

He also added wiring to hang 22 jars if we need to at the edge of the chairs at the ceremony. We will also use these jars at the reception.
I wrapped 21 mason jars with moss and tied them with raffia. My sister-in-law Jenny and aunt Leslie helped me. Buying table runners of moss was the easiest way, we just cut the table runners to wrap around the jars.


An enchanted forest reception. Love how many mason jars we have just laying around to use for the reception. Can't wait to dec the venue out with mason jar centerpieces wrapped in moss and mason jars everywhere else with candles and dirt inside.

I also really like the idea of putting old pictures in mason jars of family. I want to put a picture of Tanya Guseva in a mason jar. She is a friend of mine who passed away two years ago from a horrible car accident. Wish she could be there for our special day.

The invitations





Momental Designs makes some beautiful tree invitations that are all individual pieces are art. They even paint on some of the flowers after they design your tree invites and put whatever you would like next to your tree. If you can afford $9.75 per each invitation set (envelopes, invite, RSVP), then by all means, they are beautiful. But with a tighter budget, we decided to make our own tree invites.


I got packs of 50 ivory invites with envelopes and RSVP cards for 3 bucks each. We bought 5 boxes because since we were printing them ourselves, might as well have room for mistakes and such. So $15 later, we had our invites. Jen Kelly is sooo wonderful, she designed our tree invites and we printed them at her work for a small cost. The stamps were the most expensive part. In all, I probably spent $150 for 250 invites with the stamps and everything! At momental designs i would have only gotten 14 complete invites for that price... crazy!

Save The Dates





Jen Kelly and I found this idea on the Wedding Talk blog.
We loved the idea of the heart push pins on the date of the wedding, but decided to create the hearts on the computer instead to save some time.