Invite from Desera

This is a wedding invite from our friend Desera. It is homemade (it says so on the back) and very cute. It has a fall theme ~ her wedding is in September. Just thought we might like to see another example of a nice, homemade invite.

Centerpieces/favors

Hi everyone, Adam and I talked to his mom and she said she would be happy to make the favors and use them as centerpieces. She uses two hershey kisses, attaches them to a green "stem" and covers them with paper/wrap in the colors of the wedding (e.g., purple). She also has something with petals. I'm sure I'm not explaining it well, but it sounds pretty. Then Adam and I sign a little card saying "thank you for coming" or something similar. She said she would also take care of buying the vases. So the centerpieces are taken care of - yeah! I guess now we can focus on invitations.

Non-Floral Centerpieces

We haven't discussed non-floral centerpieces yet - is this something you'd consider, Nicole? Mom said candles inside glass containers would be ok. And, that would be easy because the waitstaff would probably light them. Also, fruit bowls seem to be popular. To go with your colors you would need green apples, pears or limes. Here are some photos:

More Simple Centerpieces

Here are examples of bigger vases with only a few stems in them. Very artistic and probably not to hard to arrange. (PS - sorry about the bad cropping on the top one).

Centerpieces from Lacy's email

Another alternative to a large arrangement or several small ones, we can do short squat ones (my favorite). Those are much easier to arrange, you can just cut a few flowers short (like daisies or roses) and stick them in. This one is a little more fancy and square, but it's the general idea.

This one is also pretty, and hydrangeas would be easy to do because they are so large, you wouldn't need many.

Centerpiece Flowers

Here are some very poor quality pictures taken with my cell phone camera of some grocery store flowers. The colors are a bit off, because in the store they were the right color purple. Anyway, this is just to show we could easily pick up bouquets of flowers to do the simple one flower Martha Stewart centerpieces Nicole likes. The bouquets are 3 for $10 and when going with the smaller flowers, there are about 12-15 per bouquet. The bigger the flower, the less you get. I don't know if buying flowers like this is less expensive at a flower shop, but I doubt it. Someone could check into that. Also, we should start collecting small vases and glasses because we will need a lot of them. Assuming one next to each setting, we would need about 200? Or, one between each setting (1 per every 2 settings) we would need about 100 (I think that would be a little sparse, though). The Martha Stewart pictures show 2 per setting, I think. Then we would need about 400 glasses/vases. I know it sounds overwhelming, but when everything is divided by table and broken down it is really quite manageable. We don't need all the same kind of vase, or glass, after collecting them we would separate them into similar styles and group them that way. We would also need some sort of racks or boxes with dividers (like the old beer bottle boxes) to set them up in. Then on Friday we could get them set up ahead of time and store them in Grandma's basement.

Melanie, do you know...?

how to make comments visible all the time instead of having to click on the comments link? I always click the comments to see if a new comment was added. It would be cool if the comments would always display so we could just scan to see if there are new comments. Just wondering...I couldn't figure it out.
Renee

Dresses - just a few I found browsing

Bridesmaids Dresses from Mom's Magazine

Here are the dresses we liked from the magazine Mom had. Nicole, did you have some emails of similar dresses? I really like this look, too.

Bridesmaids Dresses

I'm not sure how you feel about short dresses for your bridesmaids (or how the other bridesmaids would feel about them), but if you do go with short you could look for something at Target or other stores with a lot of Wisconsin locations. Just a quick search for party dresses on Target.com came up with this Isaac Mizrahi dress (I didn't look beyond the first purple dress I found due to time constraints), but this gives you an idea of what's out there. These dresses are only available online so each bridesmaid would have to get their measurements and order accordingly. Then when they arrive if they need them altered they would have to find an independent seamstress (many dry cleaners have seamstresses). Just an idea, because a summer wedding lends itself well to short dresses and I've noticed they've become trendy. Of course, this would make the wedding a little more casual, so if you're looking for traditional you may want to stick to a long dress. Link for above dress: Issac Mizrahi for Target Taffeta Couture Bodice Dress - Milan Purple

Flowers

Here's another example of a simple flower arrangement in a simple "vase". Also, a bouquet of just lilacs - really pretty, I think! I wonder if it is less expensive to have bouquets with just one type of flower? Lacy, do you know?

Centerpieces

Here's one idea (from Martha Stewart Weddings) for simple and inexpensive centerpieces - basically one flower in a glass or small vase and have them grouped together.

Invitations - from emails

Here are the invitations Nicole liked from my email, and also some (sort of) similar ones from Target.

Martha Stewart Pompoms and lanterns

Here are the photos I sent via email previously, I really love these and could see the green ones above the reception table and the purple above the cake table, like the pictures. Both are from Martha Stewart Crafts website and can be bought at Michaels Craft stores. The green ones are about $20 for a kit to make 7 and the purple lanterns are about $15 for a kit to make 6.