dressing up wedding invites

Early on in wedding planning I told my fiance, "I don't care about paper, please remember that I said that. Please remind me that I said that when I am tempted by all the pretty, customized, unique, beautiful shiny invitations and programs and escort cards that people will be trying to sell me."

(as with pretty much everything wedding, this was my personal decision, and I am in no way judging anyone who put lots of time and money into their wedding invites, I just knew it wasn't a priority for me.)

We ended up finding some very cute black and white invites from  www.123print.com, Our wedding was starting to develop a bit of a black and white polka dot theme and these fit right in (and cost less than $1 each). As well as they fit with our wedding, they didn't seem very beautiful or special. I had a plan to add pops of color to the invites to echo the pops of jewel tone color we were planning to have in the wedding decorations. 

I got out my pack of crayola "Bold" markers and started experimenting (we had about 20 extra invites to play with).

I tried filling in some of the larger cirlcles

Using my hole punch to punch out circles, 

tracing hollow circles

filling in tiny circles, 

partially tracing circles, 

adding a colored border around the text, 

And tracing the large circles, 

Eventually we decided that we liked the filling in of small circles and tracing of large ones, we combines them and then I spent a very long time duplicating the design over all 200 invites. 

I was proud of the result, for some time and the price of a pack of markers I was able to get a great effect for very little money. The only thing I regret in retrospect is that I didn't invite friends over to help. The whole project would have been more pleasant and gone exponentially faster (it took me about 6 hours) if I had a bit of help. 

*note: 123print.com had amazing customer service and reprinted our invites at no charge when I realized there was a typo and I had listed the wrong time on the invite.

Wedding Centerpieces

The centerpieces for my weddings weren't so much a craft project as a shopping project, but they did seem to tie right in to work.

I have a thing for stemware and glassware and decided that I wanted to use that for the centerpieces at the wedding.

The decision was made early, so for over a year leading up to our wedding I shopped. Because I was in the thrift stores so often anyway, the glasses were acquired fairly easily.

 I'd start each visit to the thrift stores by shopping for the props I was currently needing for work, but before I left I would swing by the glassware and pick up anything in a saturated color. 

 I had a spreadsheet where I kept track of how many glasses I had of each color so that I would be able to create a good mix.

 A couple months before the wedding we pulled all of the glasses out in my parent's kitchen, washed off labels and arranged the glasses into mixed sets of eight. 

 We re-wrapped the glassware in newspaper and bundled each set in an individual bag.

 On the day before the wedding, as we were decorating the hall, all my helpful aunts were able to open one bag at a time and arrange it onto each table.

 We put a tea light candle into each, which added to the warm, colorful glow of the room when the lights dimmed.

 On each table we left a note inviting people to take glassware that they liked with them at the end of the night.

 Everyone seemed to love the glasses and some even turned choosing glassware into a game for the night, walking around the room and scoping out the glassware on other tables, trying to find matchign sets.

 The best part was that  ended up with centerpieces I loved, which doubled as wedding favors that our guests loved and I spend and average of $1 a piece. 

Wedding Guest Book

When I got engaged over a year ago I wrote that you would likely be seeing multiple wedding projects here on the blog mixed in with the theatre projects. As it turned out the wedding was a lot of work and took up more of my time than planned (who knew?). Now that the wedding is over though I would love to share with you a few of the projects I took on. Some are just for fun, but I think that some may have applications in theatre as well.
This first one is just for fun. We were looking for something interesting to do for a guest book and I was coming up empty until I saw a pinterest page where someone had all of their friends sign a Monopoly board. Board games are one of my favorite things and I decided to steal the idea.
Monopoly didn't seem to be super appropriate for a wedding, but The Game of Life seemed appropriate. The only problem is that the board for The Game of Life, looks like this.

It's very busy looking. There would be very little place for people to sign, and where they did it would likely be difficult to read. 

 My solution was a delicate hand with a tiny paint brush and two very thick coats of blue craft paint. 

 I loved that many people signed next to squares on the board that related to life events we had shared or hoped to share together. 

We added a Jenga game because I was nervous about there being enough space for everyone to sign. 

 And now we have these wonderful mementos of all of our friends that we can see and enjoy whenever we play games together with our friends and family.

Becoming a Wedding Assistant

Ever since I started planning my wedding, I've been thinking about how lucky I am to already have all of these organization, shopping, budgeting, planning and crafting skills. More recently, after reading about a woman in New York who offers "craft concierge" services along side her wedding planning, and after talking to two Chicago stage managers who have translated their skills into wedding coordination, I started to think maybe I could make a business out of this. Then, when my fiance told me "this is what you should be doing" after a day working on wedding stuff, without me ever having mentioned the idea to him, I decided that I should go for it.
So here it is on my blog, an official announcement that over the next year or so I am going to be launching a wedding and event assistant business.

Some of the ideas I have about what I want my business to be (in illogical free writing, brainstorming order):

• I am not a wedding planner, I am calling myself a wedding assistant, because this is not my wedding. It is the wedding of the two people getting married and I am there to help them.
• There was a comment recently, on one of the blogs I read, from a bride who had the idea that she would do her own bouquets, from flowers she would buy at a grocery store or wholesaler. Unfortunately she had an aunt who was sure it would be a disaster, told her that it would be too difficult and that she would regret it. The bride was convinced and hired a professional florist, now she was wishing she had stuck to her guns. It dawned on me that I would be the perfect person to bridge that gap for people. I am not a professional florist, and will not charge you florist rates, but I have done DIY wedding flowers before, I know what I'm doing, we'll do them together. Having that extra set of experienced hands could give you the confidence to shoot down the nay-sayers and stick to your guns (and not just on flowers, that goes for DJing your wedding with an I-Pod, writing your own ceremony, making your own dress or veil or jewelry, baking the cake, or any number of other projects).
•  One of my life philosophies, that I think I could bring into the wedding world well is, "You can have anything you want, you just can't have everything you want." Everyone is going to have something special that they want to splurge on for their wedding, whether it is the cake, the food, the dress, the band, the venue or any other number of things. My mission will be to find you enough savings in other places through some creative sourcing and DIY craft projects, that you will be able to afford that one special thing. 
• I'm an awesome mediator (I'm pretty sure that comes out of growing up the middle girl between two brothers). I am a rock star when it comes to dealing with difficult family and friends and finding compromises. I am great at helping people see one another's side of a problem, and I will be great at heading off any and all possible disasters on a wedding day or leading up to it.
• Included in my prop designer skills, I am a carpenter and can build special tables, card boxes, alters, centerpieces etc. 
• I can sew. Not enough to create your wedding dress, but certainly enough to repair last minute rips and tears, make a veil, help you create custom table linens or any number of other projects you might dream up. 
• I know all the antique and thrift stores in the Chicago area and I visit them regularly. If you're looking for something (vintage jewelry, vases for centerpieces, mismatched china for the place settings etc) I can be on the lookout for you, buying what you need for reimbursement later. 
• I am great at making spreadsheets, lists, budgets and such, and will be excited to help you make yours. 
• In addition to all of this, what I could offer to brides would be a listening ear, a brainstorming partner, a voice of reason and calm, someone who will never get tired of hearing about your wedding, and someone who will more than likely show up with ice cream on a really stressful day, because ice cream always helps. 

What I need now is a bit of confidence and some references, so that I can convince people I don't know to hire me. If you know of anyone who might be interested in some wedding or event help (from small projects up to entire events), pass along my information. Right now I would be offering my services at VERY reduced rates in an attempt to build a bit of a portfolio. 

Hopefully, with a lot of hard work and a little luck, I'll have to start another blog soon. This time with wedding projects.