Navy, Yellow & Gray DIY Wedding Shower

I was really the first in my group of friends to get married. I graduated college a semester early and got hitched shortly thereafter! It was fun being one of the first as everything was new and exciting, and it's still fun because I can celebrate with some of my best friends who are preparing for marriage with a more experienced view now. One of my best friends from high school is getting married this June and I am happy to be a bridesmaid!

This weekend us bridesmaids hosted a shower for the bride-to-be and I thought I'd share a few pictures and some easy DIYs I did for decor!

Morgan (the bride) picked Yellow, Navy and Gray as her wedding colors so we piggy backed off of that for the shower theme.  We held the shower at a local homemade food shop which had a lovely event room for us to set up all of our goodies. 

I made a super easy Tissue Paper Bunting to hang on our dessert table (great tutorial HERE). This is the best decoration EVER.  All you need is like three packs of tissue paper and it looks so cute hung up!

We had some SERIOUSLY yummy desserts made by my friend and fellow bridesmaid Kellsie:  raspberry cupcakes, strawberry shortcake skewers, and Oreo & Cookie Dough Brownies (YUM!!!)

I made a couple fancy mason jars to hold flowers.  I spray painted them yellow and then added some glitter onto the bottoms using mod podge. (Little Miss Momma has a good tutorial for this!) They were such a cheery accent for the food tables - and fresh flowers are ALWAYS a good idea for parties!

 (Also, I have sucky flower arranging skills - one of my guy friends actually did the arranging for us! Hah!)

 We had a couple other salty snacks on another table like a veggie platter, pickle sandwiches and tomato, basil and mozzarella skewers. 

I made a cute little bunting with the bride & groom's names (cut out with my silhouette) and a washi tape bunting glued onto striped paper straws and stuck into mason jars.

We had a couple of small table set up with more plain mason jars and flowers as well as  some pretty table scatter: I made a little homemade confetti and cut out a bunch of the bride and groom's names with my silhouette to scatter as well

(This was done just a littttle last minute - morning of the shower!!!) I thought it would add a nice personal touch though. Tip for making name cutouts: make sure you use the "weld" feature on the silhouette so the name cuts out as one shape.  I also used the "fill the page" feature to cut a whole bunch of names out real quick! 

 We also had a little drink station set up with water, soda and sherbert punch.  Aren't you just loving the chalkboard backslash in the background?  So easy to customize for each season!

Lastly I made a little "Bride" bunting to hang above the guest of honor's seat.  Ok ok, I'm not the bride but I was excited to get the party started!!

Here's a shot of all of us bridesmaids pre-party:

And then our guests arrived. We had some time to mingle and eat and did a quick little shower game and then let the happy couple open all of their presents!

 The full bridal party!

All and all we had a great time at the shower and seemed like all of the guests and bride did too, so that's all that really matters :) Now that the shower is done I feel like I can actually get excited for Morgan's wedding!! She's had over a year engagement so now that the shower is done and summer is right around the corner its like the wedding is really happening soon! So excited for your Morgan we love you!!!

Elegant Pearl Wedding Necklace DIY with David Tutera Bridal

If you've been following me for over a year, you may remember that I recently got married! Just a couple days over a year at this point :) Hubby and I tied the knot on February 25th 2012.  I was fresh out of college and we did NOT want to spend a fortune on our wedding so I chose to DIY a lot and be smart in my planning.  (See a round-up of all my wedding DIY here)

So, when I was given the opportunity to try out some pieces from the David Tutera Bridal

line, I jumped at the chance! I had a great time planning my wedding and I'm at the age where my friends are getting hitched all over the place! I need to keep my wedding crafting skills fresh :) Here are some of the pieces included in the line:

 

So many sparkly things to craft with!!!!

Here's the project I created with my goodies:

DIY Elegant Pearl Wedding Necklace

What really stood out to me in all of the FABULOUS wedding supplies I received were the pretty rhinestone pins! This pair was super feminine and classy, and I just KNEW they were begging to be made into a pretty necklace (cause sparkly things talk to me, ya know?)

Now...I have to apologize for not having super concise steps.  I swear though guys, I have a good excuse!! My dog ate my homework! Ok. Actually my SD card. And actually only chewed on it. BUT STILL WHAT THE HECK now it's broken. That darn puppy........... So, I took more concise steps the first time around but those got slobbered up...so I tried to break down the construction of the necklace to show you how I did it. And as always, if you have questions, please let me know!

Supplies

Supplies needed for this project are David Tutera rhinestone pins, 8mm pearls, 6mm pearls, 4mm pearls, jewelry wire, crimp beads, split rings, clasp. Tools needed are wire cutters and needle nose pliers (or a crimper). All of these supplies can be found at Michaels!

First step is to string your pearls onto three separate strands of beading wire. I made my shortest strand the 4mm pearls, then the 6mm, then the 8mm pearls. After you have your desired length, crimp the strands onto a split ring.  You can also use a jump ring, but did not need the ring to open for anything else for I used a split ring for more stability. Here's what the ends should look like:

And here's the completed "bib" that will be created:

Next, string more pearls (I used 6mm) onto bead wire to make the necklace tails. Crimp one side to a split ring and the other side to a clasp.

I just used a basic toggle clasp:

Ok, now it's time to break out the rhinestones!!! Open up the pins like so:

 

 And then string on the split rings for each side of your pearl bib.

Next add on the necklace "tails" to the rhinestone pin as well:

Buckle the pin back up, flip over, and your done!!! These pins seemed pretty sturdy, but you could always add a little hot glue to make sure the pins stay closed so the necklace doesn't fall apart.  The nice thing about leaving it this way though, you could technically "borrow" a pin to wear with something else and later add it back to the necklace very easily!!!

Hello sparkle :)

I love how by just adding a little rhinestone pin it TOTALLY classes up the necklace. Elegance abounds from this baby.

Best of all? It's elegance on a budget :) The supplies were all very affordable!

So uh...who's getting married? Or going to a super fancy event. I think I need an excuse to wear this baby!!!

David Tutera DIY Wedding on Pinterest
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Want to see some more David Tutera Supplies in action? Check out the other projects made by my fellow bloggers!

 

I wrote this post as part of a sponsored campaign with Darice and The Blueprint Social. The opinions in this post are my own.

I'll be linking up to these parties:

Monday: CraftOManiac Monday, Making Monday Marvelous, Market Yourself Monday, Motivate Me Monday. Craftastic Monday, Just Something I Whipped Up,, More the Merrier Monday, Made By You Mondays, Tutorials and TIps,  Making the World Cuter,  Make it Monday,

Tuesdays: Tip Me Tuesday, Tutorial Tuesday, Take-a-Look Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, Talent Tuesday, Get Your Craft On,Homework, Ta-da Tuesday

Wednesdays: Your Whims Wednesday, Creative Share Wednesday, We did it Wednesday, Sugar and Spice, Whatever Goes Wednesday, Show & Share,Lil Luna, The 36th Avenue 

Thursdays: A Crafty Soiree, Strut Your Stuff, 20 Below Thursdays, Hookin Up With House of Hepworths, Catch a Glimpse

Friday: Friday Favs on Naptime Crafters, Weekend Wrap-Up Party, Frugal Friday, Sassy Sites, Show and Share Day, Fantabulous Friday, Simply Creations Friday, Once Upon a Weekend, Weekend Bloggy Reading

Saturdays: Whatcha Got Weekend, Saturday Night Special, Show and Tell Saturdays, Scraptastic Saturday,  Positively Splendid

Sundays: Sundae Scoop, Sunday Showcase, Think Pink Sundays 

Have a Cheap Wedding: Best Ways to Save

So it's coming up on three months since my big wedding day....and I thought I would do one last post talking about some of the areas I saved the most money in! Cheap weddings are possible: I believe it's all about picking and choosing where you want to spend the money most. 

1. Have an off season wedding.  This is the BIGGEST tip I can give you.  I know, I know. We all want out wedding on that Saturday in the middle of June on a nice, summer, sunny day. Well, because everyone wants a wedding then all the vendors will be more expensive then as well! I got a great deal on my reception vendor and photographer because my wedding was at the end of February and these places were not normally booked then.

2. DIY what you can and what you feel comfortable with. You can see all the Wedding DIY  I did for my big day.  Doing DIY for decor, flowers, favors, etc. helped me save SO much cash.

3. Cut back on flowers.  That bill adds up fast.  Analyze where you really need flowers, and only use them there. We nixed boutonnieres, corsages, and using real flowers for decor. The flowers we needed for the bouquets we got in bulk from Costco.

4. Use the people you know.  My uncle DJed my wedding for free for me, my old harp teacher played during my ceremony for free, and my old roommate from college put my bouquets together! Now, you may not all have DJ uncles or have taken the harp, but you may have family or friends who could fill in for free or low cost for some of the important wedding necessities.

5. Negotiate.  Vendor prices are not set in stone, contrary to what you might think! I negotiated to get a lower chair covering cost.  There was no way I was paying more than 2 bucks a chair for those puppies :)

6. Keep a smaller guest list. Most reception sites make you pay by the person, so the more people you have, the more it will cost! I had just under 100 people at my wedding. Yes, we didn't have any children and not all boyfriend/girlfriends were invited, but we kept a manageable and fair guest list that helped keep our costs low.

7. Use what you have....or what your friends have.  My wedding shoes were shoes I had bought for a college dance. My veil came from my sister's veil and my mother-in-law's veil. I found out AFTER I bought a puffy slip for under my dress from David's Bridal, that a friends had the same thing in the same size I could have just borrowed.  I mean, puffy wedding slips don't go bad haha. Certain things like shoes/jewelry/etc. can easily be borrowed.

8. Limit the hours of your vendors.  We only paid to have our photographer stay for part of the reception and had a friend cover the things like cutting the cake that took place towards the end of the reception. That way we did have a professional photographer for most of the important stuff, but were not in debt from it!

9. Be smart with the booze. We only paid for beer & wine up to $500.  (At the last minute, my new MIL decided to keep the tab going later into the night, but we ourselves did not pay for more than $500 worth!) Consider only doing an open bar for the cocktail hour or limit what is free from the bar.

10. Prioritize.  It's YOUR big day. Spend the most money on the things that really matter most to you.  I knew I wanted a gorgeous dress, but didn't really need extravagant centerpieces.  I wanted to be able to serve all my guests a meal but didn't need fancy invitations with tons of matching info cards and perfect calligraphy.  Figure out what you really want done nicely from the wedding, and allocate funds accordingly!!

The nitty gritty: hubby and I spent around $6,000 for our wedding of 100 guests held in February.  Affordable weddings can happen! 

 I'll be linking up to these parties:

Monday: CraftOManiac Monday, Making Monday Marvelous, Market Yourself Monday, Motivate Me Monday. Craftastic Monday, Your So Very Creative,  Just Something I Whipped Up, Inspire Me Mondays, More the Merrier Monday, Made By You Mondays, Making the World Cuter,Weekend Warrior

Tuesdays: Tip Me Tuesday, Tutorial Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Anything Related Tuesday, Take-a-Look Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, Talent Tuesday, Who's Got Glam, Get Your Craft On, Running With Glitter, Homework, Ta-da Tuesday

Wednesdays: Your Whims Wednesday, Inspired By You Wednesday, Creative Share Wednesday, We did it Wednesday, Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Design, Sugar and Spice, Tea Rose Home, Whatever Goes Wednesday, Show & Share, 

Thursdays: A Crafty Soiree, Strut Your Stuff, 20 Below Thursdays, Crazy Cute Thursdays, Hookin Up With House of Hepworths, Catch a Glimpse, Lesley's Super Sweet Thursday Par-tay

Friday: It's Fun to Craft, Friday Favs on Naptime Crafters, Weekend Wrap-Up Party, Frugal Friday, Sassy Sites, Show and Share Day, Fridays Unfolded,  Friday Favorites, Fantabulous Friday, Simply Creations Friday, Once Upon a Weekend, Weekend Bloggy Reading

Saturdays: Whatcha Got Weekend, Saturday Night Special, Show and Tell Saturdays, Lovely Crafty Weekend, Saturday is Crafty Day ,Scraptastic Saturday, Sweet Saturday

Sundays: Sunday Blog Love, Sundae Scoop, Sunday Showcase, Think Pink Sundays 

DIY Wedding Veil - Repurpose Two Old Veils!

I have my very last wedding DIY project to share with you all today! I will be doing a round-up next week of all the projects I made for our wedding with pictures of them in use on the big day :)

I knew I did NOT want to buy a wedding veil. I did not feel like paying over $100 bucks just for some tulle. 

Luckily, hubby's mother let me use hers! Isn't it great??

Haha, ok. Well, maybe not great for the 21st century. It wasn't actually even a veil, but more of a wedding cap. Check out that poof on the top of my head!! Apparently my new MIL spent more on this hat than her actual dress!

Luckily, she was very nice and told me I could do whatever I wanted with it.  Cut it up including! 

So here was my game plan: use some tulle from her veil and use the pretty comb from my sister's old veil:

Not the best picture, but the comb had lots of sparkle and some little pearls that matched the beading on my dress perfectly!

I was actually very worried about this project.  I saved it until like two weeks before the wedding and was like....I know it can't be THAT hard but I've never made a veil before!! Luckily, it really wasn't hard and I figured it out easily.  I didn't take pictures of the process (bad blogger) because I was in my how-am-i-ever-going-to-finish-everything-for-this-wedding panic mode...so I just banged it out.  Here's a quick explanation though.

I cut off the top layer of tulle from the puffy wedding cap. I trimmed off the ugly finishing it had on the end and just did a clean cut and left the end raw. The tulle was shaped was like a very long rectangle with a curved bottom. 

 I grabbed a long piece of thread and ran it through the top of the tulle, and gathered the tulle to the middle.

I then took the ends of the tread and used it to start sewing the tulle onto the comb.  This is what it looked like from the back (not really the prettiest, but hey no one saw the back it was in my hair!)

The end result?

A beautiful veil for my wedding day - that didn't cost me a thing :) Horray for repurposing! And a MIL and sister willing to part with their old veils. 

I'll be linking up to these parties:

Monday: CraftOManiac Monday, Making Monday Marvelous, Market Yourself Monday, Motivate Me Monday. Craftastic Monday, Your So Very Creative,  Just Something I Whipped Up, Inspire Me Mondays, More the Merrier Monday, Made By You Mondays, Making the World Cuter,Weekend Warrior

Tuesdays: Tip Me Tuesday, Tutorial Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Anything Related Tuesday, Take-a-Look Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, Talent Tuesday, Who's Got Glam, Get Your Craft On, Running With Glitter, Homework, Ta-da Tuesday

Wednesdays: Your Whims Wednesday, Inspired By You Wednesday, Creative Share Wednesday, We did it Wednesday, Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Design, Sugar and Spice, Tea Rose Home, Whatever Goes Wednesday, Show & Share, 

Thursdays: A Crafty Soiree, Strut Your Stuff, 20 Below Thursdays, Crazy Cute Thursdays, Hookin Up With House of Hepworths, Catch a Glimpse, Lesley's Super Sweet Thursday Par-tay

Friday: It's Fun to Craft, Friday Favs on Naptime Crafters, Weekend Wrap-Up Party, Frugal Friday, Sassy Sites, Show and Share Day, Fridays Unfolded,  Friday Favorites, Fantabulous Friday, Simply Creations Friday, Once Upon a Weekend, Weekend Bloggy Reading

Saturdays: Whatcha Got Weekend, Saturday Night Special, Show and Tell Saturdays, Lovely Crafty Weekend, Saturday is Crafty Day ,Scraptastic Saturday, Sweet Saturday

Sundays: Sunday Blog Love, Sundae Scoop, Sunday Showcase, Think Pink Sundays  

DIY Wedding Flower Bouquets & Accent Flowers ...With some Talented Help!

Oh wedding flowers.  You normally cost way too much money! Hubby and I wanted to keep our wedding budget as low as we could so I knew going the traditional florist route for flowers would NOT be in the plan for use!

Here's what we decided to do instead: 

-The only live flowers we had in the entire wedding were the bouquets.  I think boutineers are a little tacky. My mom said she didn't need a corsage. I made the flower girl petals out of fabric. I decorated the church with fabric flowers. The centerpieces at the reception were made from tissue paper. So really, all we needed was bouquets!

-I'm all about DIY, but flower arranging isn't quite my thang. Luckily, one of my old roomates from college Erin (and dedicated blog reader!) has experience working in a florist and she offered to make the bouquets the day of the wedding if I gathered the supplies! Here's a close up shot taken after the bouquet making party:

 -I used hot pink roses for the bridesmaids and white roses for my bouquet.  I got the hot pink roses from Costco - a hundred flowers for right around a hundred buckaroos. It worked out great only after a minor scare that the flowers were stuck in Equador due to the Mardis Gras holiday.  After a little hyperventilating and angry concerned customer service phone calls, everything was sorted out and they got here on time.

(Wedding photo sneak peak! Still hoping to get my copies this week :) )

-I got the white roses from the local grocery store - just pre-ordered them to make sure they would be in stock.  They were on sale when I picked them up too - I got two dozen for $30! In hindsite - I should have done a litttle more research for my flowers.  The roses I got were more of a cream and my dress was white and not cream. Wasn't my favorite match, but not something that really mattered at the end of the day :) 

Did you notice those little silver and purple flowers sticking out? They were my only DIY contribution to the bouquets :) 

  I didn't want to just have roses, but didn't want to shell out a bunch more mulah for some accent flowers. 

Unfortunately these little buggers took forever to make and it was getting down to the last-minute wedding crunch so I did not take pictures of the process.  Here is a picture an elementary-age kid drew of the process though: (ok soooooo I actually drew it. please don't judge me....I craft better than I draw haha)

Basically I cut out a bunch of little square with left over fabric from my pew decor flowers. After they were cut into squares it was easy to free hand cut the flower shape. I burned the edges of the little flowers so they would curl up a little bit and not fray. Then I cut a tiny hole in the middle of the flower and set aside to make the stem. The stem was made with a long strand of wire: string a crystal onto the middle and then bend the wire past the bead and twist it around itself all the way down. String the flower onto the stem and put a little dab of hot glue on the back to secure.  Voila! I little accent flower to add in your bouqeut.

Whew? Got that? I thought they were a fun little touch to break up the roses.

Thank you Erin (and Kristen and Caitlin too!) for your bouquet help. I think total I spend around $175 for all my wedding flowers and supplies. Good deal to me!

This post sponsored by:

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