Wedding Recap: Card Box and Gift Table

As you remember, I made our card box out of a gift box we received for our engagement party. My dad helped me cut a slit into the top for cards to be inserted and that was all we had to do! I made a sign that said "Cards" that I placed on a small easel on top of it.

deja vu studios

Then I had a Thank You banner placed in front of the box.

deja vu studios

My "Thank You" Banner was super easy to make. I followed a great tutorial that Jill put on her blog at Strawberry Blonde Bride, that you can find here.

I printed out the letters in word using "Romantiques" Font that I downloaded.

Source

I bought a Fiskars Circle Cutter from Michaels and got to work cutting out circles around the letters - using one of my mom's cutting mats from her sewing room so I wouldn't cut through anything.

Then I cut even bigger circles out of black paper and glued the circles together. Finally, I glued each circle to a green ribbon.

Here was my mock up of how I wanted the display to look:

And here's how the finished product looked near our sweetheart table!

deja vu studios

Thanks so much to Jill for giving me such a great idea, and for making this such a fun and easy project! This was so easy, I can see myself making many banners like this in the future for various occasions!

Don't forget to enter this week's Giveaway here!!  

Wedding Recap: Groomsmen Gifts

Before I get to our rehearsal dinner, I want to let you know what we got our bridal party as far as gifts since we ended up handing them out that night.

For the Men: We got them these etched beer mugs and a bottle of their favorite alcohol to go with it. I ordered these personalized beer mugs which each groomsman's name on it from Discountmugs.com.

discountmugs.com

They actually shipped me two "Matthew" glasses instead of two "Christopher" glasses. Seeing as we received this order a mere three days before the wedding, we were very lucky that the only person who was affected by this error was the groom himself, and he didn't need to be gifted his beer glass right away. I sent a complaint to the company and they immediately corrected the problem and said I can keep the extra "Matthew" glass, and they'll send me a new glass that reads "Christopher".

Well, one week later, I received a shipment of SEVEN beer glasses that read "Christopher". Unfortunately, 4 of them were broken in the shipment..so now we have three "Christopher" mugs and one "Matthew"! haha, oh well, they certainly fixed the issue, and by the time I got the replacement order I didn't really care that half of them were broken. They were easy to deal with, but I wouldn't say this is a top of the line company, they didn't even bubble wrap the glasses in the shipment!

We placed the glasses in these gold gift bags from Michaels and wrote their names on each one:

 

Here's Chris handing out his gifts, and clearly excited by this:

 

 Matt is very eager for his beer glass and gin:

  Next up is Chris:

Then Michael gets his glass and his patrón:

 

 Billy seems happy with his gift!

 James seems pretty satisfied as well!

 And last but not least, Chris' Best Man, and Brother, Michael:

Tomorrow: You'll hear what we got the Bridesmaids!

Wedding Recap: Parent and Reader Gifts

Before I get to the rehearsal dinner, I want to outline the gifts we got for everyone. For our parents, I had a really tough time coming up with something to give them. How do I possibly thank them enough for all they have done for us? Everything I came up with was either tacky, or just not right. So we decided to wait and get them something nice in Italy. Who doesn't love a gift from another country?! I didn't want to show up empty handed to the rehearsal dinner, so I wrote out this poem for them:

We tried and tried to think of the perfect gift for you
But after all you've done for us-not just any old gift will simply do
So we must go to Italy to find a gift that's just right to say
 "thank you" for all you've done in making our wedding the perfect day
So know that a gift of thanks is on its way
from your new daughter and son (daughter and new son)
We love you and can't thank you enough for all that you have done.

I printed these on creamy card-stock and backed them on either a green or black card-stock, then added them to nice envelopes. These pics came out really blurry!

For our readers, we got Ben a Ralph Lauren Blue Bathrobe. Here's Ben modeling it...just kidding ;)

I didn't want to take the robe out of the sealed packaging, and I SWEAR somebody has a picture of Ben modeling this at our rehearsal dinner, but I can't seem to find that picture anywhere. So I wrapped the robe up with some hot tamales and Good and Plenty's for him since those are some of his favorite candies.

For Kerry, I found this adorable leaf with green stone necklace. I found this on Etsy...I think this necklace spoke to me A) because it was green, B) because of the leaf, and perhaps I was thinking of Kerry's upcoming Fall wedding more-so than my own, but I just really liked it! I found this on Alexandra Cabalerro's Etsy page.

Both readers also got a bottle of wine in wedding fabric wine bag and Kerry got a bag just like my bridesmaids which I will be sharing with you on Monday along with another fabulous giveaway!!

Honeymoon Series: Bridesmaid Gifts Part 1

Part of my Bridesmaid Gifts were the flip flops I included for them to wear during the reception. I saw a tutorial on Once Wed on how to make these adorable flowers HERE and tried my hand at making them over the Christmas Holiday.

However, I had to make some changes for them to work with these flip flops.
1. I used a spice bottle to measure the circles rather than a spool of thread. This gave me a bigger circle to work with and resulted in a bit of a bigger flower.
2. I had to use 10 circles per flower instead of 6 in order for it to look full.

I bought green fabric that matched their dresses and layed it out on a large cutting board (Note: We bought something called batik fabric because it's the same on both sides. The flowers I made using non-batik fabric, didn't come out as colorful, and didn't look as good. Batique is more expensive, but it's worth it for good flowers)

Then with a pencil and spice bottle, I drew 96 little circles!

Of course, this was difficult when I kept getting interrupted by a certain puppy who wanted to lick my face!

While I drew circles, my mom cut them out:

We put them in rows of ten so we could visualize how many more we needed to make.

When I was done tracing, I started to assemble them and eventually had 12 flowers done!

Next we needed to glue them to the flip flops. I found that the flowers weren't keeping the exact shape I wanted, so I first glued them to a harder fabric as backing. This made them keep their open shape. Then we hot glued the flowers to the middle of the flip flop. (I discovered later that the hot glue wasn't working, so I had to reattach these with Gorilla Glue in order to keep them on!):

And made a cute little decorated set of flip flops!

 Then we tied the pairs together with a green with white polka-dot ribbon to add to their bags:

For me, I made myself a white pair in case I can't wear my  heels all night (though I'm going to try!)

Don't have a picture, but it's the same thing in white!

I can't wait to see my girls wearing these the night of our reception!