DIY Wedding Flower Petal Aisle Runner

This project was completed with the help of 5 Superman movies, numb butt, trigger finger syndrome, several bags of flower petals and a few large sticks of glue. I also used several feet of tulle (80 feet total). The project included some early lessons learned. I'd seen a tutorial that said it would be fast to use adhesive spray and place the petals on top. The two cans I got was a waste of funds, IMO. I would have done better to just go the hot glue gun route right from the start. To make it easier to pull up the tulle without tearing, I use a cookie sheet flipped over as my work area. The silver and blue petals were all dumped into basket and shaken so that I could randomly pull and glue. I kept the white ones separate so that I could use them as the back drop.

 After each pan length would cool, I'd gently pry up the tulle from the pan and start the next section.

Randomly I placed the silver and baby blue petals all over the whites. I also made sure that the petals overhung the tulle so that the final produce actually spanned about 8 inches.

 I liked looking at my progress as the aisle runner took shape. But slowly I started to run out of space.

 The plastic on the floor was my first failed attempt using the adhesive spray. All I got for that was a sticky plastic and time wasted.

 When I ran out of space, I rolled up the finished portion and kept working. I completed everything over a few days, but took breaks in between. And Superman can be quite distracting. Even the bad ones like with Richard Pryor as a computer geek.

 At the end of the long hallway and into our bedroom, I placed a piece of tape at the 40 foot mark and as my roll increased, I'd go out and unrolled it out and measure.

 After nearly 18 hours total (with breaks in between), I completed two 40 feet by 6" role of flower petals.

The final product in the church filled me with pride. Since one of my MIL's coworker was so generous in letting us borrow some of her columns and artificial flowers for the church (you can sort of see them at the end of the aisle), I gave her the runners as a trade. Initially I'd planned to sell it, but the trade was worth it and we saved a bundle.

Wedding DIY: Foil Envelope Lining for Invitation

Here's a quickie tutorial. I ordered my invitations and envelopes from Vistaprint. The invitations were beautiful, however the default envelopes that came with them were really thin. 

I saw somewhere in the Wedding Wire forum where someone did the lining with colored paper. I wanted to keep with my silver and ice blue theme so I got a silver gift wrap and cut to the shape of the envelop. Sorry I'm missing some pictures, but hopefully you can get the gist. 

First I cut a rectangle the size of the envelope using my mat with ruler, I then sliced off a tiny bit so it could fit in the envelope. Then I put the rectangle in the envelop and folded it to the shape of the envelope flap. Since it was my prototype, I didn't care if it was crinkled. I used that and my paper cutter to mimic the sample and cut all that I needed (110).

After cutting up all of my lining, I stuffed them into the envelopes.  

 Then I used glue stick to stick the flap of the lining to the flap of the envelope. I didn't bother to glue the inner part of the lining. Placing the invitations in there kept it in place. Yes this cost me time, but I had that during my planning and it saved me some more dollars.

Wine Bottles Peel and Paint

This was a fun but dangerous project. When we decided to go with the grape and wine them, it was partially because I'd seen some postings on Pinterest of painted wine bottles. I loved them and thought that would be such an affordable way to have center pieces.

First I asked my friends and family to please give me their empty wine bottles. My mother-in-law was awesome help. She contacted her book club and since they were avid wine drinkers and one of them was dating a guy with a wine store, I had more wine bottles than I needed in no time. With the bottles she got and the ones my then fiance had emptied, I had over 90 bottles in various sizes and colors. Then I had to figure out how to peel them all.

I looked online and some methods said to soak the bottles in hot water and then peel. That was not working out so well for me. Another said to bake the bottles and then peel the labels. that worked for some bottles, but what really worked was a combination of the method. I dipped the bottles in a sink full of water and left about a teaspoonful of water in each bottle and placed them in the oven and set the oven to 350F.

 Note the oven was cold when I placed the bottles in. I cooked the bottles from cold to hot. When the oven was at temperature, I let it stay in there for another 5 minutes the removed and peeled the labels off. The adhesive was loose and the labels peeled off easily for most of the bottles. For those that were difficult, I scrubbed it with a scour pad to removed all the residue.

By the way, this project took a while to complete. Since I started the peeling process in October, I had to wait for another warm day for my now husband to paint the bottles.

 He also cut off the bottom of a third of the bottles to be used for the artificial candles. Then before he painted those I used painter's tape to make different styles on the bottles to allow the light from the candles through.

 Using a cardboard box as his paint station, he spray painted a third of the bottles in blue, the other third and the ones with tape were all done in silver.

 Following the Christmas Holidays, we went to Michael's and bought out all of their silver tings at the 70% discount and used them to stage the centerpieces for the reception.

 For the final look at the wedding, we placed the bottles on a mirror and used corks with slices in them to put the table numbers at each table. If there's anything I could have done differently, I would have maybe used ostrich feathers for the fillers. Something more eye catching, but I still loved the final look.

Goofed on first big order

I ordered a bunch of supplies from the Webstaurant store, but didn't pay attention to the guest towels. They were supposed to be plain (so I thought), but it turned out to have "guest towel" written across the front so there's no way for me to stamp the monograms on them. I'll have to order a new batch since I'd be out $20 by returned and ordering the new set. I'll make sure to read carefully this time.
The forks, dessert spoons, wave plates, cocktail napkins, wine goblets, tumblers and spoon straws all came in. I hope I'm still sticking to the budget.

Save the dates.

Mailed out the save the dates on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. I'm so excited because everything turned out well. People have received and have been visiting the site.
Ordered the napkins, flatware, etc from Webrestaurant on 10/6 and can't wait for those to get in so I can stamp our monograms on them.
We also went to the wine festival yesterday afternoon and had fun, but I can't repeat that for a while because that will totally mess with my losing weight in time for the wedding.

From Engagement until 10/2

Wow it's been about 6 weeks since I got engaged, August 17th, two days after my birthday to be precise. How time flies. On our website I shared the story of how it all happened, but even though I knew the proposal was coming it still caught me by surprise. As soon as I got back and shared the ring pictures with everyone and wanted to get right to trying on dresses to figure out my silhouette before going in for surgery. I was going to be getting a sessamoidectomy on my left foot which had been bothering me for well over a year. Almost as long as Brian and I have been together.
We selected our venues: Church of the Ascensions and Bay District Volunteer Firehouse.
We took our engagement pictures on September 14th at National Harbor...thanks to Garrett James of Capital Media.
Designed our monogram  and order a stamp to put or monogram in various places where possible.
Designed and ordered the save the dates.
Completed collecting the addresses of my A-Listers and plan to mail things out tomorrow.
Chose my caterer today, 10/2...Quality Street Kitchen and I'm excited with the way she tailored the menu to what we envisioned. Now I can start with the rest of the planning.

As for my dress, I did a fitting of my muslin on 9/28 and we decided to wait until February to start because I want to drop a few more inches and don't want to have to alter the dress later. In the meantime, I've got plenty of other projects.
I'm in the process of collecting wine bottles from everyone I know for the centerpieces.