Wedding Wednesday: DIY'ing our Centerpieces

It's been awhile since I've done a wedding update!  I have something fun to share this week as my mom and Chicago SIL were here this past weekend to help me make the centerpieces.

Let me start by saying that I NEVER expected to do many DIY projects for our wedding. But when I started to talk to people who've gotten married about the (high) cost of the flowers, I decided that I needed to move outside of my comfort zone and do some serious crafting.  Plus with our book theme, it was easy to come up with decor ideas that use a limited number of flowers, thanks to pinterest. Luckily my Chicago SIL is super crafty and was thrilled to help me translate our vision/theme into decor. I hate asking people to help with things so it was great that she offered to help without me asking. I did use some Delta miles to fly her in for the weekend, though, to make it inexpensive for her to come.

We had a long list of projects to tackle but they all turned out great!  Here is what we accomplished!

First off, we needed sustenance for our busy day! I made this egg bake but substituted chicken sausage for ham. I had to put mushrooms on one side since Phil is anti-mushrooms (gasp!). You can assemble it the night before and just put the cheese layer on top before baking!  I'll be making this again!

My sister-in-law brought her cricut machine with which was sooo helpful. It's a machine that you can program to cut things. We used it to cut the book pages for our candle projects (it trimmed the pages to 5" x 5" and we also used it to cut hearts in some of the pages). It was a huge time-saver!

My mom and sister-in-law Emily working on the book pages!

I don't have a lot of action shots because our hands were often covered with glue and/or glitter when we were working on the candles!  My mom snapped some action shots when we were working on putting glitter on wine bottles and votives. 

The bride getting her glitter on!

My sisters-in-law, Julie and Emily, working on the votives. You may notice flutes of champagne in the photo - we needed a treat for all of our hard work!

We worked from 10 in the morning until around 5 so it was a long, full day. We did have to make a stop at Joann Fabric's in the middle of the day for more supplies and we of course took a break for lunch.  But it was a very busy day!  Here's a picture of the finished products from Saturday!

Next up, we mocked up the 3 different centerpieces. I decided to hire a day-of wedding coordinator to handle the decorating and all of the last minute details that pop up on the day of the wedding. So I wanted to give her pictures of how the tables should be set up.  Here's what we came up with! We only made 5 glittered wine bottles to use on the guest book and escort card tables, so they won't be used in the actual centerpieces (instead we'll use gold-painted bottles). But they at least give the coordinator an idea of what the centerpieces will look like

The next day, after fueling with a breakfast of sweet potato hash, we headed outside to spray paint a whole lot of stuff.

Wine bottles and table number holders

 Luckily the weather was very mild so it was the perfect day to be outside!

After all that spray painting, we had earned some lattes!

But first, coffee

We headed back to the house to apply glitter to the "YUM" letters, which will go on the dessert table!

And then we were DONE!  In total, we worked about 10 hours on all of these projects. It was a lot of work but I'm so happy with how everything turned out!

We capped off the weekend by going to my good friend Courtney's mini-golf birthday party. It was great for my SIL to meet some of our friends, including one of the best men and 2 of the ushers!

Emily and me

I'm so grateful for all the help I received from family over the weekend!  I couldn't have done this without them!