DIY Wedding with Papel Picado

This is why I love DIY weddings, they are so darn sweet and homey. How cute are those centerpieces? And so simple... Ideas are brewing...

Absolutely in love with the all white papel picado banners and twinkley lights.

Ay Mujer! handmakes these in Indo, CA and you know I'm going to be ordering some. They also have some beautiful photogrpahy from the Coachella Valley. Check it out!

DIY Wholesale Florals

Something about how much of a sucker I am for beautiful flowers is making decisions regarding bouquets and centerpieces for this wedding pretty impossible.

Take for instance how much I love tulips. In fact, yesterday I received a beautiful bouquet of gorgeous yellow buds that this morning are wide awake and smiling at me. So simple but so insanely beautiful. Now tulips say spring like no ones business AND they come in coral, peach, and ivory. Why didn't I think of this before? Maybe because they are so delicate and I am afraid of them standing up against the heat... But just look how pretty!

So of course, because I got a new idea and it was a potential end to the NEVERENDING floral nightmare that is our wedding, I did some research. Fiftyflowers.com has some great deals on tulips and really they wouldn't require much maintenance, right? Just cut the suckers and stick em in the mason jars we already have and voila!

Er... maybe that's too simple. The wholesale-to-you flower website also offer these mixes of peach roses and orange lilies. I think these are so sweet but way too orange with that wacky vase. I could imagine these mixed with some succulents in a low box centerpiece though...

Fiftyflowers.com also offer every kind of peachy-coral-ivory flower imaginable. For example: viburnum, garden roses, peony-tulips (yes, those do exist!), and of course coral rose petals! Is this making you want to DIY some centerpieces as much as it is me? I could imagine if it weren't my wedding and I weren't a stress-case that this would be so much fun, but as awesome as it sounds now, just paying someone else to do it sounds pretty awesome too. I guess I'm still in never ending flower decision land for now...

Oh peach colored flowers, how I do enjoy you. Is this garden rose bouquet gorgeous or what? To see more scrumptious peach inspiration and some very cute J.Crew Juliet bridesmaid's dresses, clicky.

Old Photos in My Inbox Make Me Happy

If there was a job that was simply "look through old photos, mess around with them in Photoshop, and make things like books out of the photos" I would be a bazillionaire. Because I am industrious when it comes to that stuff. I don't want to give away all of our secret wedding surprises, but what the heck...

For our wedding guest book I wanted to incorporate all of our guests, you know, the ones the book is named after. So I have asked all of our invitees to email us a few old school pics of us and them which I am going to Blurb (or use some other fantastical photobook generator) into a fantastical book! I also secretly am using this tactic to get as many cute pics of my fiance as possible, since I haven't seen that many of him as a kid (before the age of 14 when we met anyhow... awe!).

I didn't, however, really realize the burden of this little project would fall directly on the moms, but so far the only responses to my request for pictures have been, "I'm sure your mom has a good one of us somewhere" ;) That's ok... She does. And so does my Future Mother in Law. And so does my awesome Stepmom who took the project on in full-force and has started scanning old photo albums in their entirety and emailing them to me! YES.

How cute is my family?! OLD SCHOOL!


Thanks Shells ;)

I know this project is kind of asking a lot from our guests but I am so stoked about it. It will get finished in the long run I know, I was just hoping I could get it done in a shorter run.

It Must Be A Sign

I'm seeing signs! Everywhere!!!! What's happening!!! Actually, I just looove the idea of hanging romantic placards around our ceremony and reception sites. It's so literal, I know. But I think it's sweet. There has been great inspiration around the internet lately, and I thought I would throw some out there. What do you think?

We're thinking of making a "Just Married" sign like these to hang by our cake table for some cute decorations, aren't they adorable?

J and I sing "You Are My Sunshine" to each other all the time because we are extremely corny (usually we change the lyrics depending on what we are currently doing. I can picture it now... You are my husband, my only husband... ahem, sorry). Anyways! I was pretty darn excited when I saw this picture and I could steal the idea. I know she's just holding it in this pic, but it would make a good addition to a guest book table, eh?

Super cute use of photos and cards for guests to write words of wisdom on...

My flowergirl can dance herself down the aisle but I thought this was too precious, I couldn't resist.

Yum Sticks

I don't know if it's just all of the pink in this pic or what, but how cute is this Stir-stick DIY project? Loves it.

Signed Sealed Delivered

YES! You have officially been told. This wedding is on, baby!

Now save the date, please.


I hope you like our homemade DIY Save the Dates. They were very DIY and after a certain point I got a little... fast-paced... with my crafting. Sorry if you got an especially home-made one, it just means yours was made while I was rocking out to Sam Sparro.

How did we do all that magic in your mailbox? We ordered magnetic sheets, paper and envelopes from http://www.fridgedoor.com/ and from http://www.paperandmore.com/. Both of those companies rock, btw.


Then, with ninja magic I PhotoShopped our pics and our paper backers. Thank you mom for supplying the printer, because the ink must have been a tad costly. Finally, we adhered the magnets to the backers with photo corners via spit. I can still taste them... not so delicious.


Our fridge mid-project (go badgers!):


All of the final pieces awaiting their trip to the post office.


It feels so good knowing that the first official wedding jazz has been entrusted to you, our favorite people.

It was amazing writing all of your names on those envelopes and realizing that people from all of the different parts of our lives will be in the same place at the same time.

I seriously can. not. wait. YES!

Stolen Details

My brain buzzes. Like... all the time. It is like "FEED ME" and so I look around the interwebs and there are just so many beautiful weddingy details to oogle. SO MANY. Like, in every style imaginable, one more beautiful than the next. I think I could plan a wedding a month in a different style and still... there would be more to plan because there is always more to be inspired by.

But you see, Jon and I have a very certain aesthetic that we are mostly sticking to. So the interwebs is my friend, because there are just so many ideas to steal, and yet it is my foe because there are so many amazing ideas.

Thus, this smattering of images. Most of which, I plan to steal in some form or another.

Pretty much one of the most gorgeous centerpieces and bouquets of big pink peonies that I have ever seen from A. Hana Design. Don't you just want to eat them, they are so scrumptious!!!
Yes, yes those are a bit like our wedding colors...

Two sets of lovely green paper joy.

This first one is beyond adorable, they called it a "relationship timeline" but that seems a bit clunky to me. We were planning to do something along these lines in our ceremony programs (like a "did you know" section), but this is too perfect with the little logos... i heart this.

These response cards crack me up. Their whole paper suite was like an rrrrrr me matey salty-water theme done with class.

This whole wedding was stunning, you should check it out, but in particular, isn't this wall of photos behind them so sweet? I likey.

Such a beautiful little table of love with a DIY wishes banner.

I thought this seating chart was really cool because it was a) made on Adobe Illustrator and b) for long banquet tables like we will be using and I haven't seen too many of those.

I have no idea where I found this photo but it is ridiculously wonderful. I loooooove these bride and groom embroidered chair markers. Anyone know how to embroider?

Table Letter Centerpieces

Remember these? I forgot to show ya'll the final product in use! I made these lovely table letters for my girl Aimee's wedding this past June and they turned out so cute! Check out the DIY tutorial here.


They look dang cute, right? She had a wine theme for her centerpieces complete with homemade wine that she and her hubby Adam made for us. Isn't that awesome?


Love the purple overlays. Each guest got a bride and groom wine stopper :)

DIY Table Letters

Just finished these lovelies for my wonderful bride friend Aimee who is getting married in exactly 17 days! Eeeek!!! I'm so excited to see her and feel so honored to be a part of her special day. She asked if I could make the table numbers for her reception, but so that no one had to sit at unlucky table number 13 we opted for table letters instead. Aren't they so cute?


I started by buying this pretty floral paper from Michael's and these sweet cardboard letters that have a positive and a negative pop-out. I lucked out too because they were on clearance for one dollar! I still have the positives and plan to put those puppies to use soon.


Mod-podge was definitely my friend during this crafting project. I popped all of the letters out and glued the cardboard negative side circles down to the back of the craft paper.


Like this:


After they were all glued, I cut each letter from the sheet, and using a thin x-acto blade, cut each letter from its little circle. This took a bit of work (especially because I used too much glue. I love you Mod-Podge) but it was fun to do while J killed bad guys on Call of Duty...

Next I used a vase of ours to trace out circles on green stock and I cut these out as best I could.


Once I had all of the essential pieces, I glued the letters to the green circles and voila!



I initally bought some cream colored paper for a third, bigger circle behind the green but we decided they look good just as they are. I like them so much I might just steal them back to use on my own reception tables next year :)