Monday, August 21, 2017

The Details

Save the Dates

I love playing with paper so of course I wanted to make my save the dates from scratch. I found a template on Pinterest for DIY Instagram Save the Dates that was easy enough and got to cutting, taping and gluing. Putting together 130 save the dates was a lot, but this was just the beginning of the cutting of the papers so I enjoyed every minute of it. 

The Invitations

I wanted to make my invitations from scratch as well, but everything I found was way too time consuming. These DIY Wedding Invitations weren't exactly made from scratch, but I already had my hands full so they were about as close as I was going to get to making them from scratch. The color scheme was perfect and I also found them on sale at Target! Yeay!!

Image by Danfredo Photos & Film

Escort Cards, Favor Tags & More Favor Tags

Surprisingly I couldn't find any templates that would fit with our wedding favors or any templates that I loved where I could just plug in the names of our guests and print, so I designed my own with an Avery label template. When I start something, I have to finish it, so I sat on the living room floor for hours with my paper cutter, slicing 130 escort cards, then 130 favor tags, then 130 tags stating what the favors were, which I ended up not using because anyone in their right mind could see what the favors were. Like I said, I love playing with paper, but this was beginning to stress me out. I should have asked for help, but I never do, so I didn't. 

My original idea was to attach the escort cards to mini bottles of champagne, but our budget didn't call for this champagne type of expense so my Plan B was to go with mini bottles of sparkling water. Groomsman-Randy ended up gifting us with cans of Bruce Cost Ginger Ale, the best ginger ale I have ever tasted in my life. The ginger ale ended up working out perfectly especially because the color of the ginger ale can coincided the color scheme of our wedding.

Maid of Honor-Giselle and Bridesmaid-Daisy came over to help me put the favors and escort cards together. At this point I stopped trying to do everything by myself and began accepting help wherever I could get it. Edward could see that I was becoming a bit frazzled so he offered to help and I gave him the task of snipping 130 pieces of ribbon.

Image by Danfredo Photos & Film

The Flowers

I'd read an article that suggested Costco as a good place for purchasing flowers in bulk. This ended up being a very cost effective recommendation, but it involved more work. I would have to assemble and arrange the flowers myself. Bridesmaid-Daisy came over to assist with that task. I ordered three hundred stems of babies breath which was more than enough to create the bridesmaid bouquets, the table setting arrangements and serve as decorations for the ceremony. There were so many flowers that, sadly, I ended up having to toss a few bunches at the end of the wedding. Two hundred stems would have been enough.

Image by Danfredo Photos & Film

The Cake

... was fake. Kevin, Maid of Honor-Giselle's hubby, is extremely crafty, so I asked for his help with quite a few of the decor items that we used in our wedding. I purchased the cake shaped tiers of Styrofoam from Michael's and handed them over to Kevin so that he could work his magic. Our edible wedding cake came from BJ's which was also cost effective and delicious! Two sheet cakes were enough to feed all of our guests and we still had a third of one cake left untouched.

Image by Danfredo Photos & Film

The Wishing Well

I also asked Kevin for his services to paint our wishing well, welcome sign and table numbers. Our wishing well came from Michael's and our table numbers (among other items) came from IKEA. Since I don't have any wheels of my own just yet, Mr. & Mrs. Maid of Honor were awesome enough to make runs to IKEA on my behalf. I will forever be grateful to them for actually humoring my ideas and having a huge hand in bringing them to life.

I didn't find a template for the table numbers that worked for me, so I designed my own template in a word document which meant more cutting of papers. I found mini envelopes on Amazon for the wishing well notes, but I couldn't find any mini note cards that matched our color scheme (or maybe I was just too cheap to buy them). I ended up buying a ream of card stock and commenced the cutting of the papers...

Image by Danfredo Photos & Film

Although it was a bit overwhelming, I still thoroughly enjoyed all of the creative projects that I burdened myself with. I could have spent the money to have most of these details taken care of, but there was an inexplicable thrill of satisfaction in handling most of the projects myself. I'm so looking
utilizing some of these ideas when the times comes for planning a baby shower - but for that event I will be shelling out the loot so that someone else can do the bulk of the handiwork ☺.

Up Next: Danfredo Photos & Films

Monday, August 7, 2017

The Wedding Planner


I suffer from a severe case of RBF and I have a reputation for being antisocial. This is true and not true. When I don’t want to be bothered with socializing, I’m absolutely fine enjoying my own company while being in the midst of normal people mingling with each other. But at work I can’t isolate myself in that way so I fake the funk; and in that faking of the funk, I end up meeting people that I actually like, enjoy talking to and who end up becoming my friends.

What I like about being forced to socialize at work is that I end up having the best, most enlightening, deep conversations with people I otherwise would never cross paths with. Some of these conversations with random coworkers have really encouraged and uplifted my life – another blog on that later.

One of the regular visitors to my desk was Daniel who had just moved over to the US from Australia with his wife, Karina. I’m not at all good with small talk, but some people just have a knack for making good conversation with weirdos like myself. Daniel possessed that wonderful conversation making skill and because of that he quickly became my friend. When I shared the news with him about my engagement and confessed that I had no idea how I was going to pull everything together by myself, he suggested that I reach out to his wife who was an event designer and planner.

Wasting no time, I reached out to Karina immediately and set up an appointment for a consultation later that week. Karina was an absolute delight and of course she became my friend as well.

After showing Karina the venue and rambling off a few of my out-of-reach ideas, Karina asked me sensible questions that got me thinking about what really mattered. The answers to those sensible questions kept my expectations reasonably at bay. In the end I realized that a lot of the things that I wanted were totally unnecessary. The venue was already a lovely space on its own so any additional adorning would have only created excess work for me.

I could have surrendered some of my control and allowed Karina to design my wedding completely, but I didn't spend days of my life Pinning obsessively for no reason. I'm not the most artsy person, but I do consider myself to be creative and I was looking forward to adding my own splash of creativity to the wedding. I wanted to have a hand in every single detail, I just didn't know how some of those details would come to fruition. Even though I needed Karina mainly for day-of-coordination, she (thankfully) still consulted me throughout the entire wedding process and helped my visions materialize.

I know that Karina was just doing her job, but there is no way the day would have gone as smoothly as it did without her. Coordination of the wedding day was a lot for one person to handle on their own, and if Karina felt overwhelmed, I couldn't tell. She completely maintained a sense of cool, calm and control throughout the entire day which is exactly what the bride and groom need on their wedding day.

Because we are such a silly bunch of grown-ups, I found it amusing that Karina took us serious. I so appreciate her dedication to making our day as wonderful as it was. My only regret is that in all of the mayhem of the day, Karina and I weren't able to get a photo together - I have a tendency to become attached, can you tell? But as Karina wonderfully stated, "We’ll have the rest of our lives to create memories and take photos together..."

Up Next: The Details