Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts

Monday, August 2, 2010

Happily After All: The Church Details

I decided to do a quick recess from the order of recaps, and instead of jumping right into the processional and ceremony, like I had promised, I'm going to take you on a tour of all the church details.  This way I can go into depth about them a little before you get a chance to glance at them during the ceremony recaps.  I gave you guys a glimpse into the decorations when I set up the week of the wedding, but there were things that weren't quite finished yet, and detail pictures always look better when taken by a professional with great lighting =]

We'll start with the outside of the church and work our way inside.
The wood sign I made pointing our guests in the right direction.  You'll see this sign again in future recaps...

The new wood sign a member of the congregation made just a couple months before the wedding.

The wreaths and painted letters I made.  These wreaths recently underwent a transformation and were used for the wedding of family friend.  She added some purple flowers into the mix and took off the letters.  They were gorgeous, and now the work is done for me for my cousin's wedding in October.  I was planning on adding in purple for her, and now I don't have to!

The "Quaker Marriage Certificate" that I designed and had printed through UPrinting.com  They offered me a poster print when I hosted a giveaway awhile back.  I touched on it briefly here.  You can get a glimpse of it fully signed in the picture below.  It was a nice alternative for a guestbook at the church.
This picture worked out nicely too, since we don't have any pictures of us signing our marriage certificate.  Our pastor had us sign it the night before at the rehearsal and we didn't think to take any pictures.  I really wish we would have done it on our wedding day, all dressed up, and gotten a couple pictures.  But that's okay!

 Here is the finished program.  Even though I hated them at 2 o'clock in the morning the week of my wedding, I'm really glad I put in the time and effort to pull off what I initially wanted.  Our guests loved them, I got to keep one, and the back page actually ended up being extremely helpful in getting through our family portraits.

These are the two baskets of bubbles we used for our exit.  I bought all of the bubbles from the Dollar Tree and tied little green bows around each one.  The baskets were on sale from Hobby Lobby and the ribbon tied around it was left over from other projects.  It was very easy, just a little time consuming!

These reserved signs were another last minute project in the week leading up to the wedding.  I think I might have done them on Thursday possibly?  I stuck them on the first four pews on each side of the aisle.  Since the church was so small and we were expecting such a large turnout, I wanted to make sure that all of our family members got a good seat up front, and didn't end up standing or in the balcony.

And here is the altar with our unity candle, altar arrangements, and the "table runner" I made as well.  I never did do a DIY post on that, but it was very easy.  I printed out the design on my printer and laid it under a piece of white material.  Then I traced and painted the design.  Then it was just a matter of hemming the white material and attaching it to the green material, and then hemming those edges as well.  I actually used Heat N' Bond instead of sewing it together.  It held up wonderfully throughout the day, but it never made it to the reception hall like I was originally thinking.  It just wasn't worth the hassle of taking it over there and finding a spot for it.  Anyone have ideas of what I should do with it now?

And as a sneak peek to our ceremony, here is a picture of the whole church decorated and filled with our friends and family.

Next up:  This time I'll actually do the processional!

Unless otherwise stated, all pictures are by Brandy Swartz of Photography by Brandy.

In case you've missed anything...
Heading To The Church
Slipping Into My Dress

Monday, October 5, 2009

DIY: Letters, Part Two / Wedding Wreaths

Well I finally bit the bullet, and decided what I was going to do with the letters I painted.

Remember these?

The original plan was to come up with something that could go on the two front doors of the church.
.
I decided just hanging the letters with ribbon would be too boring. And...now this is being a little anal so just bear with me... the ribbon would come off the top of the "K" in two places, but only one from the top of the "J" and I know that would have driven me crazy!!


I was at Hobby Lobby for the third time last week and their flowers and wreaths were on sale.  So I picked up two large wreaths, I believe they are either 24 or 28".  (By the way, I busted out my adorable Vera Bradley tape measure I carry around in my purse.)  I needed the inside of the wreath to be larger than 12" to fit my letters.

The wreaths were on sale for $2.99 each and I picked out a shopping cart full of white and green flowers.  I brought it all home with me for the weekend and got to hot gluing.  I forgot how bad hot glue burns hurt.  I'm in the process of healing a blister on my third finger as we speak.  But anyways, here's the nearly finished product.



(click to enlarge)
I still need to hang the letters inside with clear fishing line and make bows to put on the top of the wreaths, but other than that, the flowers are all glued on and secure and I love the way they turned out!

I didn't take any pictures in the process because there really isn't anything to show.  I took the flower heads off of all the stems and just started laying them out around the wreath.  I moved them around until I was happy with the way they looked and then glued them on one-by-one.  The wreaths are mirror replicas of each other.  The J will hang on the left, and the K on the right.

If you're planning on doing this, I would definitely buy some hydrangeas or other small filler flowers along with the larger stems.  They made a huge difference in the outlook of the wreath than if I had just had the big roses, etc.

Price Breakdown:
2 Wreaths (50% off at 5.99) = $5.99
All of the flowers (50% off) = $46.43
TOTAL = $52.42
cost of one wreath = $26.21

This came about by mixing inspiration pictures.  What have you mixed together to make your own?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

DIY: Letters, Part One

Here's a quick post for you while I'm in between classes, and by in between I mean I'm throwing this together in about 5 minutes for you all to enjoy!
I got the letters I ordered from Joann's at the end of last week and I made a little bit of progress on them yesterday.  Remember the post from a couple weeks ago with me being super indecisive about what I wanted to do??  If not here's a refresher.

Well I still don't know what I want to do, but I decided to go ahead and paint them the same way as my chair signs since I had the paint, and no real direction I was heading.

I won't go over the process again, but here's how they turned out.

Not the prettiest picture, what with the newspaper and all, but you get the idea.  I really like how these cracked different from the signs, and you can see more of the black coming through.

I still have no idea what I'm going to actually do with them, but it's a start.  I don't know if I'll hang them from the church doors and then maybe at the front of our table at the reception, or if I'll try and incorporate them with a wreath.  Only time will tell.

But they will make some pretty sweet decorations in our house for after the wedding!

What do you guys think I should do with them??  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
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