DIY Flowers

Hi everyone,

A common item that people DIY for weddings is apparently flowers.  While beautiful, florists are costly and it often gets cut in favor of other items.  A lot of people order flowers in bulk, either by the stem or as pre-prepared bouquets, boutonnieres, and centerpieces.  We briefly considered DIY flowers, but luckily got some additional funds and elected to use them for the flowers.

I did do a DIY flowers trial with some grocery store flowers from Harris Teeter.  For the wedding, I have chosen hydrangeas and babies breath for the bouquets and centerpieces, with roses in my bouquet and the fiance's boutinniere.  Harris Teeter had all of the flowers I wanted in the appropriate colors, blue and white. 

First I tried the boutonnieres.  We decided to do babies breath only for the groomsmens, carnations and babies breath for the best men and fathers, and a rose and babies breath for the fiancee.

First, I took 2 to 3 stems of babies breath and taped them together.

        

 

Then I taped them together, either two bunches to each other, or two bunches with a carnation or rose in the middle.  I then put burlap, yarn, and ribbon around the bottom of 3 options.  The fiance went with the ribbon.

            

            

Finished products - I like options!

I also did some practice bouquets and centerpieces, smaller than real life.  Hydrangeas are huge and take up a lot of space, so the babies breath was mainly filler.  I started with taping together 2 to 3 stems of white hydrangeas.

Then I added in babies breath (for the all white bouquet) or blue hydrangeas and babies breath, for the white and blue bouquets/centerpieces.  I finished it off with the grey ribbon again.

Things turned out ok, but it did take a few hours to get the hang of things.  All in all, I am glad we found a florist who does beautiful work for reasonable prices.  I don't need this headache before the wedding.  Here is a look at some of my wedding flower pinterest inspirations I sent to my florist.

             

More soon.

DIY Save The Date Magnets

Hi everyone,

As wedding planning has taken over my life, I wanted to share some projects with you that we've been working on.  Both the fiance and I wanted a Save the Date magnet, but I also wanted a classic Save the Date card with our engagement photo on it.  We were able to get a great price on the card using Vistaprint, but the magnet was just out of budget.  Pinterest to the rescue! (I imagine some superhero music in the background when I say that now.)

I was inspired by these STD (yup, that's what the wedding forums call them) on Pinterest:

And this one on Etsy:

 

We read several tutorials and they all had similar instructions.  First, we bought business card sized magnets off Amazon.  We bought 250 magnets for $20.  The magnets had a magnetic side and a sticky side.

Several tutorials offered free polaroid templates, but we just did it ourselves in Microsoft Powerpoint.  Easy and customized.

I then printed the template at FedEx in color on a slightly shiny paper perfect for a magnet.  I actually just said to the Fed Ex guy "I want some slightly shiny paper that will work for a magnet" and he printed it and brought it to me to approve. Thanks Fed Ex!
 
The fiance and I then cut out the pictures and stuck them on the magnets.  They took up about 55% of the magnet and we used some hardy scissors to cut the magnet edges off.  It was easier to place the paper on the magnet as straight as possible and then only have to trim one side of the magnet rather than place the paper in the middle of the magnet and trim 2 sides.  The first few looked a little janky, but we learned fast.

Finished product:

On the fridge:

So great! Our family and friends seem to love both the card and the magnet.  And we hope the magnet will be on the fridge for a while - long after the card is thrown away.

More soon!