wedding wednesday: it's back

Do you remember all of these?

After August 6th, I took a long break from the wedding world. I didn't read the blogs. I stopped following all wedding boards on Pinterest. I gave away the Brides magazine tower. Consider it a little wedding planning brain cleanser. It was a smart move - I didn't want to continue to be fed all these great ideas and wish we had incorporated them. Our day was perfect to us, and that's how I always want to remember it. The moral of this story is, after your own wedding, rid yourself of the wedding business for a while.

And fill the void with pictures of dream homes and difficult recipes. That's healthy, right?

But the truth is, I have always loved weddings and always always will. Not too long ago, I got really excited about being involved in the wedding process again when Audrey gets married. Again, she's four. I've also collected a couple of pieces of advice that one can only learn by going through the [awesome] process of planning a wedding. So Wedding Wednesday is back for a few weeks. This time I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite DIY projects that we cranked out with some amazing friends and family.

Surprisingly, we didn't plan for too many do it yourself projects because the hand-crafted look [which I still love] was not what we were going for. Here are my three faves:

My very handy Father of the Bride crafted these letters out of two layers of heavy duty foam board. The kind from Lowes, not Hobby Lobby. I chose the font, and he printed them on a ginormous printer they have at his office to print maps. You could easily have it printed in a poster size at Kinkos, use a projector, or freehand it. I chose a matelasse fabric and began the ultimate brain teaser of wrapping these suckers. Just think of it as wrapping a present but with lots of nooks and crannies to keep smooth. The trick to getting the fabric to stay was straight pins! They worked like magic. No glue. No tape. Just straight pins to the rescue.

Our florist attached ribbon and the clusters of fresh flowers before hanging them on the front doors of the church. Hopefully, they were a very pleasant welcome to our guests!

Our program inspiration came completely from this photo. It ended up being six pages long. Yes, six. I downloaded the fonts I wanted to use from dafont.com and created the monogram on Wedding Chicks. I designed the layout using Publisher because I have a Photoshop phobia that I'm slowly overcoming. Maybe it's some scarring from my not-so-nice adviser during my yearbook editor days.

I ordered the cardstock from Sams who has free shipping [!!!] and had them professionally printed. The Kinkos man was thankfully super patient with me as checked and double checked and asked to see his computer screen about eighteen times.  They have a small fee for cutting the printed sheets in half which was absolutely worth it. I would have probably paid $1,000 to not have to cute over three hundred sets of programs in half.

I rallied the troops to cut corners, punch holes, stick reinforcers, cut and tie ribbon, and stuff and glue envelopes with tissues. I dug out a program from our stack of wedding memorabilia [which is in terrible need of organizing] to show you my very favorite page: For Happy Tears. Yes, my family and friends stuck millions of little hankies into envelopes before gluing them on a page all because of my bright idea. Yes, I owe them big time. But isn't it adorable?!

Last but not least - the photo wall. I loved having it. I almost died making it. A word to the wise: have a handy fiance [which I did] and stay calm when the wallpaper won't stick for the eighth time because of the humid July air [which I didn't]. Instructions can be found here.

More Wedding Wednesdays to come. I'm back on the bandwagon. And loving it!