Category — camerin

Big thanks goes to Camerin for being kind enough to share all of her DIY goodness with us last week!  She is a wedding goddess. 

This week, we welcome to EAD Julia from It’s A Long Story.  Julia is planning a Sept ‘09 wedding and has lots of goodies up her sleeve!  Also, look forward to many more DIY contest entries and some wonderful real DIY weddings.  There’s still time to send in your entries for our contest - see all the details {here}.

E.

To end the week, a few last DIY tips and ways to personalize your day.

Look for sales and specials wherever you are. Hobby Lobby was my personal favorite for great bargains and fun décor elements. I purchased plant stands, candles, baskets, wreaths, picture frames, and more all for next to nothing. There are many other unexpected places where you might find the perfect pieces to incorporate including antique stores, yard sales, ebay, and thrift stores. Also consider your local party rental supply store. My mom was able to rent votives for $.20 a piece, green table linens, and some other odds and ends that the reception venue and florist did not have available. It never hurts to borrow or reuse either.

Personal elements were very important in many aspects of our wedding day. I will share a few with you and hope that you too find some little ways to make the day only yours. Involve things that are important to you and your future spouse.

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Nearly six months after the fact, it is fun to look back on the day and see what still stands out. Thomas and I each made a list of a few of our favorite things from the day. Maybe you could use some of these ideas as well.

My List

Greeting guests

Rather than having the guests go through a formal receiving line after the ceremony, we asked them to be seated in the church. We then re-entered the church and greeted all guests row by row for dismissal. This was a great way to personally say hello and thank you to everyone before the fun of the reception began.

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Photography was the first area where Thomas and I decided we would really place a large portion of our budget. Both of us have dabbled in photography as a hobby since high school so it is something that has a high level of significance to us. We appreciate a good eye for composition, saturated color, and rich black and whites. We also knew that after everything was said and done, photos would be all that remain.

Of all our vendors, choosing a photographer took the longest. We poured over blogs and websites, emailed, debated, and weighed the pros and cons. It was a big decision for us. In the end, we definitely made the right one. Nicole Green did an outstanding job. She was everything we wanted and then some. She was very flexible, open to shooting locations, and interested in the types of photos we wanted. Her work speaks for itself.

Some engagement photos to mix it up a bit and capture the essence of fall.

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When you are carrying out a wedding on your own with many DIY projects, the more help you can get the better. We were very fortunate to have ready and willing friends and relatives (our VIPs) who were up to the challenge. All of the personal time and effort each of them put into making our day special gave it all that much more significance. Hopefully my list will give you some ideas of ways to incorporate VIPs into your own wedding day.

Uncle/Godfather - served as our marriage preparation counselor and officiant. A very special person indeed.

Grandma #1 - sewed her fingers to the bone for months. She sewed the maid of honor and bridesmaids’ dresses along with the two flower girls. Each dress was custom fit and they all chose different strap styles to suit them best. These five dresses alone seem like a great undertaking and she had also been planning to make my dress as well. A few things went awry with that at the last moment and I purchased a dress 10 days before the wedding but that is a whole different story.

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Today Thomas is going to share a little bit about how he and his friends put together our personal DJ set-up.

The music:

For months, we compiled great dance songs. A few days before the wedding both the bridal party and the groomsmen went through the list and determined the best and most dance-able songs. The songs we looked for had beats and rhythms that people of all ages could enjoy dancing to. Rock classics, plenty of 80’s dance music and a little bit of techno made up the list. Of course, Miley made an appearance as well!

The system:

We rented a PA System from a local rental shop. It came with a microphone, PA, and 2 speakers. We went to a music supply store called Sweetwater and purchased a 5 channel mixer (we only needed 2 channels). During the wedding, one of the my friends acted as the DJ/mixer. He had his laptop computer and i-Pod programmed with play lists we had already created. We connected the computer and i-Pod to two different inputs on the mixer so that we could fade one song into the other in order to keep dancers happy and on the dance floor.

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While there were some areas where we knew we wanted to try to save, there were others where we decided we would spend. Our cake was also one of the areas we decided we would spend. From the moment we saw the cakes by Alexis from Elegant Indulgences, we knew she was going to be able to carry out our vision. The best part is that not only is she an artist when it comes to decorating, she is also an artist when it comes to baking. The cake was so good that we actually took the top tier with us on our honeymoon and ate it! We weren’t about to risk leaving it in the freezer for a year and having one of our brothers tear into it.

Alexis utilized a high level of design in creating the cake. Thomas and I were also very hands on in the process. She submitted three initial designs to us after going over what we wanted. We then took those designs into Photoshop, cropped some things here, changed colors there, and voila! A cake was born.

This is the inspiration board of cake ideas we presented to Alexis when we first met. We also provided her color samples and a copy of our invitations.

These are the three designs she created based on the above board and our ideas.

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Somewhere in the planning process, I decided that 2 six year old boys would not be very fond of carrying ‘girly’ pillows down the aisle. A fun DIY project quickly emerged in my mind to go along with our bird theme and a trip to Hobby Lobby ensued.

While planning, I did not have a blog so unfortunately I do not have step by step photos for this project. I can tell you how I did it and show you the final product which turned out to be one of my favorite details from the day.

Supplies:

• 2 medium sized birds’ nests (approx 3-4 in.)
• 1 bag reindeer moss
• 2 small birds or doves
• Hot glue gun

Instructions:

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Along the way, I did a great deal of online research to find the best prices on a wide range of items. For your own planning and projects, here is a brief list of my favorites. Maybe you can find a few bargains yourself.

Denver Fabrics

My grandma made the bridesmaids and flower girl dresses with the perfect shade of 100 percent green, silk charmeuse that I found here. When I purchased the material, you could order up to five swatches at a time for only a penny each. Unfortunately, over the past year the outlet has changed ownership and they no longer have the same promotion. The site still offers a fabulous array of bridal and special occasion fabrics for all of your projects at a fraction of the cost of some retail outlets.

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One area where we decided we could save money was in all of the print materials. I had a pretty specific idea of how I wanted the final invitations to look and knew we could create a simple look on our own.

We completed the Save the Dates before we actually had our professional engagement session so they included a photo we took on our own with the help of Thomas’s aunt. The color palette was already set at this time so they began to set the tone for everything to follow. The postcard was created using Adobe Photoshop and simply had to be dropped in the mail.

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