must do pics

from Ela's Inspirations

from apple_green

and from Veronabrit

some from Megan and Michael

and these from team136

a list in progress started from a list on Ela's planning bio

Groom
- with all groomsmen/officiant
- with each groomsman
- with his parents
- with Annie (bulldog)

- with flower girls/ring bearers
- with all bridesmaids

Bride
- with all bridesmaids/bridesman
- with each bridesmaid/man
- with her parents

- with grandma Lenna
- with entire immediate/extended (with and without siblings inlaws) family
- with flower girls/ring bearers/train carriers/ushers
- with all groomsmen/officiant

Bride & Groom
- with entire Wedding Party
- with each set of parents
- with both sets of parents
- with both immediate/extended families (annie included)
- with flower girls/ring bearers/train carriers/ushers
- "Thank You" parasol or sign
- signing the marriage license
- random artistic shots

Details:

Getting Ready
- bride's gown hanging on a monogrammed hanger

- still-life shots of the bride's shoes, jewelry, etc.
- mother and bridesmaids helping with wedding gown
- candid shots of bridesmaids getting ready
- groom getting ready with his groomsmen
- groom and groomsmen putting on boutonnieres
- groom's mother helping with the boutonniere

- bride putting bouts on dads and brothers

Items (at the ceremony site)
- wedding invitation, program, directions cards
- detailed shots of the bride's and bridesmaids' bouquets
- rings (ring boxes with ring bearers, on the invitation/program, on newspaper, brides inside of grooms etc.)
- picture down the aisle

- close up of aisle runner, and altar arrangement

Ceremony
- exterior and interior shots of the ceremony site before guests arrive
- pictures of mothers and grandmothers being seated
- groom entering with groomsmen
- close-up of groom's expression while waiting for the bride
- bridal party walking down the aisle
- flower girls/ring bearers walking down the aisle
- bride with her dad before walking down the aisle
- close-up of bride just before she makes her entrance
- bride and her dad walking down the aisle
- groom's face when he first see bride walking down the aisle
- bride's brothers giving her away
- bride and groom at the altar
- both sets of parents watching the ceremony
- wide shot of the altar, from the guests' point of view
- wide shot of the audience, from the couple's point of view
- shot from the balcony

- close-up of bride and groom as they recite their vows
- close-up of bride and groom's hands as they exchange rings
- the kiss
- close-up of newlyweds immediately after the ceremony
- pictures of families and bridal party walking back down the aisle
- candids during receiving line
- bride and groom leaving the ceremony site

Reception
- decorations
- centerpieces and table decor
- guest book and pen set-up
- sweetheart table
- card box, gift table (after filled)
- cake and cake table set-up
- food set-up
- exterior and interior shots of the reception site
- guests arriving and signing the guest book
- close-ups of friends and family making toasts
- bride and groom speaking with guests
- bride and groom's first dance
- bride and groom cutting the cake/toasting
- bouquet toss/garter toss
- lots of candids of people mingling
- bride and groom hugging their parents

you are cordially invited to look at this post

this was much less work than i thought it would be. i simply googled invitation wording and came across this website which has like a million samples. i copy/pasted a bunch into a word doc and Mikey and i went over them together, tweeked this one a bit and agreed we like it.

i considered doing die cuts for the flourish on the sides, but after finding this swirly curly thing and being able to edit the color. i think it would be easier to have it printed on the actual invite.
the swirly was solid black with no shadow, i really havent used microsoft word for image editing before and i kinda just figured it out as i went. i doubt i could recreate the steps though.







i am thinking of something like knottie lovebuddies did and attatch the print-your-own-kit invite card onto a cardstock bi-fold card to add something more fancyness to it.





i like the ribbon on the side of card also, i can slip the information card under it.





i wanted to include just our first names somewhere on the invite, i think i can do a little card on the front of the ribbon, like a belly band buckle type thing.






i also love the envelope liner that knottie squirrly did with one of her engagement pics. she gave me another idea for the belly band buckle thingy, by putting the invited's name on it instead of using inner envelopes. the kit i bought didnt come with inner envelopes so this is a good alternative. my handwriting is not good enough for this so perhaps i will print the names on printable cardstock and use my handy dandy paper cutter after printing....









~

invite costs so far: $12 Joann had some Wilton "Keeping with Tradition" invite kits on clearance for $4 (normally $25) a box not long after we got engaged. they only had 2 boxes of white. i bought both and a box of ivory so i would have plenty to test and work with for prototypes. each box has 50 invites/ envelopes / rsvp cards / envelopes and 3 tester sheets. its possible that i will have to pay full price for another box of invites or send some out in ivory. i am ok with that.

~~~

SOOOO i thought i saved the invitation but i hadnt saved it after i got it how i wanted so i had to redo a bunch of it and this is how it turned out the 2nd time around.

i like the swirlys mirrored rather than flipped again and the & and 101010 orange better. i also bolded the words so they would be closer to the boldness of the swirlys.

( just realized the screen shot i took to use paint to censor out our names/address shows the grammer checkers underlining marks!, it didnt when i saved as pdf for printing)

just got off the phone with kinkos and printing 100 invitations will only cost $30ish thats sweet!

next step, find 8.5x11 cardstock for the cover like lovebuddies did above... already got a bunch of ribbon on sale at Michaels a while back.

Shirts and Hangers, check!

So I always thought that it was awefully silly to spend so much money on "bridesmaid" tshirts, $23 each, really? Like they will really want to wear them, right? Well shopping with my sister, my MOH, she like the idea and we found some iron-on silvery letters on clearance at Joann's. so I bought them. I needed 6 sets but they only had 5 of one style letter and 1 of another, so i decided that the MOH can be slightly different from the others. She liked the idea of being special. I told her she was already special to me. Short bus special, lol.

The personalized hangers for their gowns was another silly idea that I fell in love with. Read an inspiration blog post here.

I was able to make 5 shirts plus hangers for $32.32 so about $6.46 each person. I also had enough letters leftover to make myself a hanger and a shirt later if I find a shirt that will fit the pregnant me for a while.

I am opting not to include a step-by-step tuturial because I would basically be copying the instructions on the back of the iron-on letters package.

One tip though, it says to move the iron back and forth, not a great idea, the letters shifted slightly when I did that, it worked just fine to hold the iron in one place. For the rhinestone letters, I used the side of the iron without the steam holes so that the rhinestones wouldnt be bothered by the holes. not sure if this was nessesary...

Price breakdown:
I thought about doing tank-tops or camis but the wedding is in October in Oregon, and not all of my ladies will want to wear tanks. these shirts are large enough to wear a long sleeve shirt under also.

The 4 girls' shirts were $1.50 each on clearance at Wal-Mart. They were originally $8, then clearanced to $5 then $3 then $1.50 they are just a plain thin tshirt. Now, for my bridesman (yes he gets one too!) I bought a 3 pack of Hanes tees for $5.50.

subtotal: 4 shirts x $1.50=$6 + pack of 3 for $5.50 = 11.50

the silvery glitter iron on letters shown were $1.97 for the ones I used on the BM shirts, the MOH letters were $2.97, down from $9.99.

subtotal: 5 x 1.97 + 2.97 = 12.82

I bought 2, 5 packs of velvetty fuzzy hangers. My inspiration was done with wooden hangers, but Wal-Mart didnt have white wood hangers, and when I saw the velvety ones, i realized i didnt know if the iron-ons would even work on wood, and the silver would stand out better on the black. I opted to do all 3 initials because I have 2 L's and the letters were small enough to fit all 3.

They worked great on the velvet, just follow my tip about not moving the iron.

I wanted to have extras in case I messed one up, if I didnt mess any up, I figured I could return the 2nd pack., then I realized it was worth the extra $4 for me to have one too.

subtotal: 2 packages of hangers were $8

Grand total: shirts $11.50 + letters $12.82 + hangers $8 = 32.32 / 5 in the bridal party = $6.46 each.

And I have a hanger for myself, bunches of iron-on letters left, 4 hangers and 2 Hanes tshirts leftover. I have some ideas for the extras... I might iron-on my 4 flowergirl's initials or names onto ribbon for their baskets. or try to do "I DO" on the bottom of my shoes.

Napkins!

so here are the napkin/silverwear rolls.
I thought wrapping the silverwear would make things prettier and more convienent for our guests.



here is my supplies list.

~the ink was from Joann's its a la mode brand dye ink pad in royal blue. I also got an orange one but i dont know what brand it was. The blue one i got at Michaels kept smearing, so I will use it for something else.
~the stamps were on clearance at Joann's I wasnt sure what I was going to use them for but they were only $4 and I was in a shopping mood. There are bunches of wedding quotes but we only really liked 2. the one we stamped in blue says "to love and laughter and happily ever after"
~ I already owned the stamp block but I have used the ink pad cover before when I was using more stamps than blocks I owned. So its not nessesary to buy the block. Also, I have seen the blocks in the dollar bins too.
~ I have used 2 10-yard spools of ribbon so far, i have only made about a quarter of the napkins though. the ribbon spools were on sale for 0.20 each at Michaels
~ The little charm things were included in a lot of wedding stuff I bought from a woman on craigslist. Everything I bought from her was from the Dollar Tree and it worked out that i paid .67 each item and each package of 24. What I got from her wasnt enough however so i picked up a few more packages at $1 each.
~The napkins and plasticware were from Cash&Carry

now for the steps:


stick the stamp to the block and ink, press firmly to the napkin, without rocking back and forth, then let it dry for a bit.

I found the best way to stack the silverware was knife, fork, spoon. lined up on the center of the diagonal.


fold up the bottom corner then the right corner, like a burrito.


then roll somewhat tightly, but keep it pretty. then I cut a length of orange ribbon, tied in a knot on the front of the roll.

these are the little charms i got from craigslist/dollar tree. they were tied on with the knot in the back. they came pre-tied together and on a longer ribbon that fit perfectly around the roll. initially I thought I would only use these, to save time and money, but they needed some color, and I wanted to incorporate our wedding colors so I added the orange ribbon. its worth the extra time and (very little) extra money.

When I am half way done, I will switch to orange ink with a blue ribbon. Then alternate them on the tables. This will do 2 things: A: dress up the table and 2: be more convienent for guests not to remember or carry them through the buffet line.

COST BREAKDOWN:
ribbon/ring things bought from a girl on Craigslist 6 packs of 24 $0.67 each = 3.99
ribbon/ring things bought from dollar tree 4 packs of 24 $1.00 each = 4.00
napkins bought from Cash and Carry 3 packs of 125 for $ 1.79 each = 5.37

ink pad for stamps from JoAnn's =2.79
stamps bought at JoAnn's on clearance 3.97

1/4" ribbon spools bought at Michaels 8 x 0.20 = 1.60
ink pads for stamps bought at Michaels 2 x 4.19 = 8.38
$30.13 for 350+ dinner sized napkins and I have ink and stamps that I can use for other things.

we are only going to roll up about 200 napkins, the rest will be extras.

This is the cost for just the napkins, the plasticware isnt included in the price, but they came in packages of 100 for $3.67 at Cash and Carry