Wedding Rehearsal Memories

One year ago today Brandon and I, surrounded by our close friends and family, were rehearsing for the most exciting event of our lives.

   I was full of butterflies, nerves, excitement, joy, and thankfulness. I believe Brandon was too :o)

  This year has flown by, in a really wonderful way.

My wedding planning keepsake

   It's summer break friends! Oh, how sweet it is. I slept late this morning, went for a walk with Brandon, finally washed all our dirty dishes, emptied our coat closet of all the recyclables I've been meaning to take out, and I'm now just lounging on the couch.
   I love looking back at this time last year. On this day last year our wedding was 9 days away and I was super stressed, but the most excited I've ever been for anything in my life.
   At this time last year I didn't go anywhere without my wedding notebook. I thought it'd be fun to give y'all a peek into my special notebook. It contained my ideas, visions, purchases, receipts, fabric samples, ribbon samples, shower invitations, measurements, and all kinds other information related to our special day.

My inspiration dress and the card from where I found MY dress.

I had a lot of food ideas.

And a lot of reception decor ideas.

   I love that I now have a special little keepsake to flip through and remember all that special planning and excitement.

Lovely DIY Boutonnieres

  Friday! Oh what a blessed day. Another week of work accomplished and a whole weekend to look forward to. Knowing that the weekend is so close always makes Fridays enjoyable.  Friday is also prize box day in my kindergarten class as well as a reason to sing a few more silly songs in the morning. Today was especially good due to the fact that none of my students threw any temper tantrums and we had no cases of lice. Perhaps someday I'll feel safe enough to wear my hair down again.
   I was struggling with what to post about today and then I decided that I must share something else from our wedding since I said I would and so far have shared very little. I don't wanna look like a liar after all.


   I know little to nothing about flowers and flower arranging but I was so pleased with how the wedding boutonnieres my mom and I crafted the morning of the wedding turned out. I found the inspiration and instructions on Oncewed a sight that I viewed daily while planning our wedding.

Photo from Oncewed

   When I saw these and the instructions they seemed so easy and so much more personal than having a florist tie a rose and baby's breath together and charge 10 bucks. 

   To get started on mine I cut some small daisies, rosemary, and an identified plant (I just knew it wasn't poison ivy) from my grandmother's garden, and my mom and I got to work. We made little bunches for each. Every bunch contained one daisy, one sprig of rosemary, and some of the unidentified leaves. We then wrapped florist tape around each, and put them in water to soak. While I got ready at the church my sweet mom tied green ribbon around each bunch and attached them to all the men in the wedding party's coats.

They really turned out so beautifully, If I don't say so myself.

Desserts and Weddings

"Love and marriage, goes together like a horse and carriage. Weddings and desserts, go together  like love and marriage." Heard this before? Yes, I added the second part, but I feel it's just as true a statement as the first.
I'd like to share my thoughts on including desserts at wedding receptions.
It seems nearly every wedding has cake,  punch, and other delightful things like fruit, veggies, dips, crackers, you know the spread. Tragically, very few wedding seem to include more desserts than just the cake. Cakes are indeed delicious, but you can't just give your guests cake and be done with it. When I go to a wedding I want good food and this includes scrumptious desserts! Candy bars seem to be a big trend right now and I think that's fantastic. Why stop at a candy bar though? When guests attend weddings, many of them have to travel a distance, sometimes they have a bad attitude because well, lets face it, this wedding is taking up a huge chunk of their weekend. Not only do wedding guests have to travel and sacrifice their time, they also have to find a nice gift, wrap it, etc. Please don't think I'm saying weddings are terrible. I love them! I'm just saying that weddings guests often have to go to a lot of trouble to be at a wedding so they should be rewarded with sugar, lots of it.
While planning the menu (we made all the food) for our wedding, these are the thoughts I had. To reward and thank our guests for their trouble and show our love to them all we had a wonderful dessert table with cookies, bars, candy, and chocolate. Our guests were lucky ducks :o)

  Our dessert table

Oh yes, we had Jelly Beans

Lemon Bars

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

I can't think of anything on this Earth more perfect. I plan on dedicating an entire post to this delightful treat in the very near future.

Gingerbread Cookies

Photos by Jeff Scott of J. Darren Photography 

Crafted Charm

Have you ever taken on a craft project that you thought you would NEVER finish? You were excited about it in the beginning, you know it's going to be beautiful, but the more you work on it, the longer it seems to take and you start to despair that it will never be done?

That is exactly how I felt about the garland I used at our wedding reception.

Pretty isn't it? I was inspired by a seller on Etsy who made garland with book pages and other papers. For our reception all our food was inside. Main food was the dining room and desserts and cupcakes (pictures coming soon) was in the living room. The house is so pretty as it is, so there was no reason to go over the top with decorating. I felt that using this garland would add some whimsy and make the house look special. It was a special occasion after all.

To make the garland I used:

• A heart shaped hole punch 
• A small hole punch
• Two shades of green scrapbook paper
• The pages of a dictionary I found at Goodwill
• Dental floss (yes, dental floss)

I began by using the heart hole punch to punch tons of green and dictionary page hearts. After I had heart hole punched to my heart's content, I used the small hole punch to put a hole in the upper corner of each sweet little heart. Then the really delicate part of the whole project came, stringing each heart onto the minty dental floss. For each heart, I strung one on, tied three knots in the dental floss, then added another heart and did the same. Though it sounds horribly tedious, I actually became like a garland making machine and could crank that garland out like it was no one's business. The more I made though, the more I felt the need to make more. First I was only going to hang it over the fireplace mantels, but with each strand I though of a new place to hang it from. The day of the wedding it was on each fireplace mantle, over each doorway, down the banister, and hanging overhead in the dining room. 

   I won't even share how many times it got tangled or the story of walking into my grandparents a week before the wedding to see my aunt and mom at the dining room table with a huge wad of tangle garland in front of them. "Elves did it" they told me. 

   In the end I was so pleased with how it turned out and in the end I only regretted that I hadn't made more. Who knows what all would have been covered in garland if I'd had just a few more months ;o)

My sweet Maid of Honor and the banister garland.

Photos by Jeff Scott of J. Darren Photography

Candle Light

Hello and happy Monday! My Monday was tiring, but very good and I'm so excited to write my second post. Today I will be sharing a lovely little project from my wedding.

My wedding was truly personal and I, along with my family, created nearly every aspect of it.  The reception was in the front yard of my grandparents old family farm house. I had dreamed of having it here since I was a girl. With this stately white house in the background, fields of green grass, overflowing flower pots, and a gently rocking porch swing, very little decoration was needed.  The only really necessary decoration was candle light. After all, how could anyone have a romantic and whimsical wedding reception without candle light?

This was truly one of the easiest projects I undertook, but made such an impact.
For each candle holder I used:

• a mason jar from Goodwill (or any jar I could find in my mom's cabinents)
• floral wire
• needle nose pliers
• sand
• a candle

For each one I simply wound the wire around the top of the jar, made a loop from one side of the jar to the other, and wound around more wire until it felt secure. This was the perfect, mindless project that allowed me to just sit and watch TV or stare at a blank wall with a dumb expression on my face. The night before the wedding I put about an inch of sand in each jar and a small white candle. Some of these I hung from the tree branches surrounding the reception area and others I hung from black plant holders (like the one pictured above) that I found at Goodwill. I placed the plant holders on either side of the walkways leading to the big, welcoming, wrap around porch. The twinkle of all these candles truly added a magical feeling to the evening.

Well, right now I have cottage cheese and spinach stuffed chicken cooking in the oven. It's a new recipe that I'm so excited about. If it's good I will share it on here in the next few days. If it's not good, well, I guess I'll hang my head in shame, give my husband a bowl of cereal, and pretend I never mentioned it here.