A labor of love

These are cell phone pics, so sorry in advance for the poor quality. Our favor boxes are complete after my aunt slaved away over her Cricut for a couple excrutiating hours. I couldn't really find any large brown favor boxes so we instead bought jumbo sheets of cardstock and made our own with a scrapbooking Cricut machine then my wonderful aunt took on the time-consuming task of folding said boxes and gluing the corners so that they're sturdy. Add a little quote to the front and some ribbon on the top and voila! So what's going in the boxes? Well I knew I wanted to do edible favors for guests but didn't really have an idea as to what kind of favor to provide, then FI and I got to talking about the moment we knew we were head over heels in love with one another. My FI and I grew up together as friends so when he decided to ask me out I was initially surprised and put off since I didn't want to ruin a perfectly good friendship. Well he was persistent and kept up for 3 months until I agreed to be his girlfriend. To be honest even when I told him I'd go out with him I really wasn't sure about us working out. I didn't ever imagine it would be serious and things got awkward for a bit when we were making the friends-to-relationship transition. So what changed and set in motion the events that led us to where we are today? He kissed me; and he kissed me good. It was pretty much the greatest first kiss in all of first kiss history and that's when I found out I was falling and he knew his hard work and patience had paid off. So together we decided on Hershey's kisses for favors to symbolize that very special moment in our relationship. Yes I'm aware that may seem cheesy, but really who doesn't love the straight-up chocolate goodness that is a Hershey's kiss? And they will fit perfect in our custom-made boxes :)

Get with the program

With my wedding being in August and it being so hot and humid that time of year, I decided if I was going to do programs they would double as fans. The cardstock was printed out, ribbon was purchased, and they were all ready to assemble...until I realized my mother, love her heart, had not only misspelled one of the groomsmen's last names, but assigned him an entirely new last name. This posed a problem as we didn't want to offend anyone by actually distributing them and letting people see the error so that labor of love went into the recycling bin and we nixed the idea of programs altogether (or so I thought). I figured it was one less DIY project we would have on our plate but for some odd reason my mom thinks that programs are completely necessary, so here is a picture of the very basic programs we decided on to appease her needs for having some information on a piece of paper. They're tri-fold so they fit a lot of print and they match the invitations quite well and will get the job done of telling the who's and what's of the wedding day.

DIY Invites

Invitations are the one detail of the wedding that I really wasn't very concerned about. I don't get excited about paper products like some other brides do, so I of course jumped on the opportunity to buy blank invitations at Wal-Mart for $12 and print the wording out on a home computer to save some money. I wasn't at all interested in pocketfolds, embossing, or invitations with inserts since all the info that guests need is on our wedding website. All I really wanted was a sheet of cardstock that told people where and when the wedding was. What I got is a pretty sheet of cardstock that tells people where and when the wedding is :) My mom has access to a heavy duty quality printer at work so she kindly offered to print the invitations for me. She's been a huge help throughout this whole process! I purchased the ribbon and little square rhinestones at Michael's to spruce the invites up a bit and I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I'm even more pleased that they were so cheap!

Our for real save-the-dates

I know I posted a blog on here before where I had a picture of our concept for our save-the-date magnets. Well, things change frequently in the world of wedding planning and our save-the-date design is one of them. We went a totally different direction (although still DIY because I think projects made on your own add a nice personal touch) and utilized my mother's help as well as her plethora of scrapbooking supplies and gadgets. It's tri-fold made with brown and pink and orange glittery cardstock. We also used a bit of vellum for the wording in the middle. I think they turned out pretty darn good! My mom deserves praise for working so hard on them :) The bottom portion is actually a magnet and I'm hoping that our guests will realize that they can take them off and put them on the fridge!

STDs

No, we're not talking venereal diseases here. I'm talking about our save-the-dates! FI and I are getting married in a month when lots of people try to sneak in those last minute vacations before school starts, so we decided we needed to send out save-the-dates to ensure our guests know about our big day well in advance; especially since many are out of town. I've always loved the convenience of save-the-date magnets and I didn't think it was one of those tasks that would be too hard to do myself. I considered using vistaprint.com because I've heard they offer business cards for free, but my OCD got the best of me and I decided the STDs need to match our wedding colors. I bought some magnet sheets from Michael's and downloaded a free trial of Microsoft Office Publisher to get the business card template and then FI who is a bit more computer literate than me actually designed the two different options above that I love! One has little polk-a-dots and one is striped (both with our weddings colors of pink, orange and brown) and I really can't decide which one I like best because they're both cute in my opinion!