Show me a sign!

This week has been full of the final DIY projects. Only a few more days to go!!!

I blogged a few months ago about how we are trying to reuse several items we already have or only buy new things that we can use after the wedding as a way to be more ecofriendly. I finished up all of the signs for the Fiesta reception using frames we already have as well as left over paper from the invitations. This was also very budget friendly in addition to being green!

The Buffet Menu:

The Bar Menu:

The Candy Table:

Christmas Projects

I am home for the holidays, hence the lack of posting. First we are in Houston with Matt's parents and next in Nebraska to see my family. From about 70 degrees to -30 windchill. Yeah winter! Just because we are on vacation doesn't mean the wedding planning takes a break. We spent a few hours having a great time looking though old photos for a blast from the past album to display at the Fiesta and NE reception. Instead of a wedding slide show we are going to have a couple of photo albums - M & M In the Begining, M & M Fall in Love, and M & M Get Married. The last one will have photos from the ceremony for people to see because they won't be at the actual vow exchange.

Aren't we cute? Always the academics.















I found some great albums in our wedding colors for only a couple of bucks. They have space in the margins for labels and comments. I also will add a pen and a note to the albums instructing our guests to feel free to leave comments - facebook style. Hopefully we get some great insights from our guests. I am also excited since this isn't a traditional slideshow we can have the albums on display in our house. Since I spend so much time on the computer it will be nice to have actual, tangible, non-digital things to look at.

Project REUSE: Ex. 2 and 3

Continuing along the green them this week I will share two more wedding projects highlighting how we are "reusing" some of our decor.

I wanted to make several signs for Fiesta recpetion such as the bar menu, Bienvenidos sign for the guest book table, and a few others. I thought about a dinner menu for each table but then weighed the pros and cons. Pros - they would look awesome and "classy". Cons- only about 3 of my friends would notice (you know who you are Martha wannabes), and with less than 3 months to go - they gotta go. So one dinner menu at the begining of the bu

I am turning these frames already displaying artwork from a recent trip to Vancouver

into this sign for the candy buffet. After the wedding we will transform all the signs back into wall art. The cost was basically 0 because I already had all the paper for the invitation projects. Ahh, green and budget friendly.

Also for the candy buffet I purchased a few apothecary jars (only $6.99 from Ross!!!) which I am also reusing for Christmas decorations.

Other things from our wedding I can use every year and pause and reminise. I love being sentimental. But do you think it is kinda weird that I am anticipating the memories attached to these things before the wedding???

Project REUSE: Example #1

In an effort to make our wedding a little greener, we plant to reuse several items. I really didn't want to end up with 500 votive candle holders or other wedding related crap...eh I mean decor.. after the whole thing was said and done. So every new purchase for the wedding I try to think of how I will reuse it later or if we already have something that could work. This is really cutting down on our consumption and is also great for our budget. :)

I hope to transform our Card Box from this

into a ribbon box (like this from Martha Stewart Crafts at Michaels).I originally purchased the fuchsia box from IKEA for $1.20 on clearance. The ribbon and paper were already on hand for other projects and I can't wait to have a cute place to store ribbon! I am an extreamly sentimental person so I hope to surround our home with all sorts of wedding keepsakes. I prefer these more sublte keepsakes and everyday items. You don't really need a set of engraved champagne glasses gathering dust to remind you of a special moment.

So what do you think? I realize the giant Card Label may be a little much and pretencious. Our venue has this adorable metal cart for gifts. Since we are not expecting many gifts I wanted jazz up the cart somehow.

More Project REUSE to come!

Going Green without Spending Green

After seeing this post on Earth Friendly Weddings about a giveaway for a new book called "The Green Bride Guide", I got to thinking about how we are trying to green our wedding. My graduate research focuses on issues of sustainability and human impacts on the environment in the prehistoric past so naturally treading lightly on the earth today is how I like to live. Having a Green Wedding or Eco-Wedding is definitely a big trend in weddings and there are numerous resources and blogs out there for tips and tricks. As I started looking into how to green our wedding I came across all sorts of ideas from hemp paper and soy ink for invitations, biodegradable confetti, and organic champagne.

To be honest, most of the ideas I have seen on how to green your wedding just seem to be encouraging couples to consume more and spend more money. As if the wedding industry doesn't try to suck you dry enough as it is, they have to capitalize on popular social movements. Whatever happened to the good ol' fashioned REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE?

We are going to try to green our wedding by just trying to consume less, forgoing many of the unnecessary (although some would argue essential) things found in many weddings. Today I will focus on ways we are trying to REDUCE and the next few posts will be about how we are REUSING and RECYCLING. I am not claiming that we we have a zero-ecological footprint wedding by any means. The mroe you investigate any choice the more environmental impact do you uncover. But we are trying to do our part by making smarter environmental choices where we can.

1. Less Paper. Why is there always an inner envelope in wedding invitations? This always seemed to be unnecessary, wasteful, and now that I am addressing our own invitations - time consuming. We are forgoing the inner envelope, large pocketfolf invite, place cards, and return RSVP notices to reduce our paper usage. We are asking guests to RSVP via our wedding website rather than send us back an RSVP. Not only is this less money for us but saves an envelope and the ecological cost of delivering mail. Our webiste service Nerlyweds has a built in RSVP feature. I thought about forgoing the invitations altogether and exclusively doing email invites, but I have too much Martha in me.

2. No Wedding Party. This may seem like we are missing out but it also means we are saving $$ as well as resources by not having to dress, primp, and gift a wedding party. We just want to have a good time with all of our friends at our wedding. By treating all of our guests as special, we are not playing special treatment as well as consuming way less.

3. Less Fresh Flowers. The flower industry has numerous environmental as well as social implications. (see this article) The pesticides and herbicides get into water supplies and are also extreamly bad news for the health of the workers. Many of are banned in North America but not in South America and Asia where most flowers are grown. Then there is also the environmental impact of shipping the flowers to the US. We are not cutting flowers out all together but are reducing. We will just have a bouquet for me and a boutonniere for Matt.

Photo from Flowers by Jodi. This is my inspiration bouquet. Mine will be made with different flowers, unfortunately still not local. But I am in continued talks with the florist if there can be more earth friendly options.

Our reception will be decorated with a few tissue paper flower bouquets which goes great with our Mexican theme. Okay so we are using paper which is cutting down the rainforests. Not ever choice is without consequences. The point is that there are small better choices that can be made that still give us the wedding we want while also trying to reduce our environmental impact.

4. Two Receptions. I see what your thinking. Having 2 receptions isn't exactly REDUCING the number of resources we are using. But in a way it is. We have a few friends from out of town flying in to Arizona for our party. (insert cringe here - HUGE carbon footprint). But having a recpetion in my hometown means that by ginormous extended family wiill not be making the flights to Arizona and staying local. Our immediate families and us will be making the treck to all the receptions but all of these trips is still far less than all the traveling that would occur if we were just having one event. If we just had one event in AZ or in NE there would be alot of travel and therefore increases in carbon emissions, jet fuel, etc. Hosting two events locally means travel impacts are cut way down. Although there are increases in other resources. Argh! Tradoffs.

5. Outdoor Ceremony and Recptions. Okay so this may be a silly way of REDUCING our resource use. But being outdoors for our ceremony and both receptions means we will be using less electricity.

So I don't think our wedding is deserving of any 'Outstanding Green Wedding' nominations. But reducing our impact is something we have tried to incorporate both for the environment and our budget.

Success!

So the last two weeks have been the most successful of the entire wedding planning progress. I am so excited to share all of the progress and completed DIY projects. If you have been following along I took the last two weeks off of blogging and blog reading (well sort of) to actually get some things done. We are at the 4 month mark to the ceremony and Fiesta reception and I was panicking. I love reading blogs of other brides because they give me such inspiration but they also make me feel like I am completely behind!

So here is a short list of what we accomplished and a sneak peak of what is to come over the next posts.

1) Ordered my dress!! So excited about this one. Dress shopping has included lots of stress, anxiety, and tears. Now that I found it I couldn't be happier and can't wait for the 8-10 weeks until delivery to be over.

2) Decided on cake order. Sprinkles Cupcakes it is! I also celebrated a birthday during my hiatus (along with Matt the day after mine) so there was lots of opportunity to try out different kinds.

3) Decided on photographer, flowers, and the specific location within Red Rock Crossing for the ceremony in Sedona with the wedding planner.

4) Finished Invitations for Fiesta! This was a big job and included lots of design and working decisions for all of the inserts. Here is a sneak peak including my DIY custom map design. I am so excited about this map and am considering going into business. Sorry about the poor quality photos - camera was having issues.













5) Completed all sorts of DIY projects including a "Just Married/Thank You" banner for photos and later announcement and thank you cards, stamp for candy favor bags, started photo albums for reception (instead of slide show), card box, and some serious list making toand supply shopping finish up everything else.

More regular posting and updates to come!

Weekend Projects

I have been crazy busy over the last month and have been really looking forward to this weekend. Even though I still have things to do I promised myself that I would take the weekend to relax and work on some wedding projects.

Guestbook
I found this guestbook a couple of months ago. The cut out design goes great with many of the other decorations and papel picado theme. I added some of our favorite engagement photos using cardstock in our colors. I am calling our colors turquoise, fuchsia, lemon, lime, orange, and plum. I wonder if there are food related terms for turquoise and fuchsia?

Agave Favors
I made a couple of tags for the Agave Favors. I hope this project works out because about half of the agaves look like they are dying. I wanted to work on this project so I could submit an entry for the Martha Stewart Weddings creative favor contest. You can view my entry here. Take a look an rate my entry! I hope Martha will like it. It is sort of my secret dream that she will see it and I will get to go to the show. Fingers crossed!


Papel Picado Banners
I did some work on more Papel Picado banners. I think for the maximum color I will probably do most with just a decorative edge using craft punches. I think the hearts are a little cheesy.


Invitations
I made a first run at the Fiesta Reception invitations. I want to do a mini papel picado banner in our colors. I think they turned out pretty well. The photo is a little blurry to to fully appreciate the details but I love them. I love the font too. It is called Merceed and makes the Ms of our names look really cool. Matt likes it because it looks like a pirate font.


So even through I didn't finish any projects to the point I could cross them of the list, I did make decisions about alot of things. On the list for the rest of the month include:
1) continue dress shopping (spent all afternoon looking and even was about to place an order for one I LOVED - only to find out it was discontinued!!!)
2) print and finish Save the Dates for Fiesta
3) order cake, think about design

Cupcake Wrappers

It must be a cupcake kind of week. I found these incredibly cute laser cut cupcake wrappers on the Fancy Flours website which is full of baking goodies. Not really materials for baking but rather materials for decorating your baked goodies. The cutouts fit with our papel picado theme and I was already planning a similar thing for the cake stands. Unfortunately they are over a $1 a piece so a little pricey but they are fabulous! I think the filigree design is my favorite.

Click to enlarge

Our Very Own Papel Picado

Thanks to our friends Julie and Angela we now have our very own papel picado. Julie was working in Mexico and offered to see if there was a local paper store that could make our own custom design. Matt designed it incorporating our names, agaves, hearts, and flowers. Angela transported them back to Arizona. We have some in turquoise, yellow, and fuschia. I am very excited to make some of my own and string them together with these.

Agave Favors

I worked on our favors for the Tempe Fiesta and Nebraska Reception tonight. In keeping with our Mexican theme and because we love them the favors are small agave plants. I found some really cute small metal planters at IKEA. The agaves are from a plant that was blooming on campus. Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out what species but it doesn't have any spikes so it will be more user friendly. I am keeping my eye out around town to get other species in the mix. I know in Jan I can find Agave Murpheyi - the species grown prehistorically by the Hohokam.



My hope is that 1) they don't grow too big for the pots by April/May and 2) I don't kill them by April/May.

I am going to print out a small tag with information of how to care for the agave and to say thanks. Matt's duty is to come up with a clever pun or rhyme about agave and our fiestas.

They are going to act as double duty as the table decorations for the Tempe Fiesta.

Papel Picado - Attempt 1

I did my first papel picado pattern. Results were okay, however I am not thrilled with my ability to hold a steady hand. But I now have a better idea what tools and techniques are going to work. Having a stencil made from a thick transparency would be better than the paper printout I used. When I went to the craft stores I didn't care for any of the stencils available. Also I think using craft punches is going to be alot easier and quicker. I used a small heart punch on the outside of this one.

Great Colorful Ideas

Here are some more great colorful ideas from Martha.

Papel Picado Banners

I got the necessary supplies to make our very own papel picado banners this weekend. Papel picado is a Mexican tradition of tissue paper banners with intricate cut out designs. When we were in Mexico we saw these banners everywhere and I wish I could hang them all over. This is a photo from a church in Oaxaca we visited.



We will see how I do at trying to create my own. I am taking some design clues from cut-it-out.org. They have a training workshop in San Antonio and sell some strands online if all else fails. Here are some patterns I hope to recreate.