It's all starting to happen...

I have booked the church (yes, I said church!).  We have decided to have a traditional church wedding at the Grace Baptist Church, with our reception at the Legion Hall in Hope, BC!  I've even gone so far as to get a couple of quotes from caterers and photographers.  I guess those will be the next things that I'll have to book, but they're so bloody expensive.  I got one quote for catering that was in excess of $10,000.  For that price, they should have people actually spoon feed us on little silver spoons whilst giving us foot rubs!

So now that we've actually secured our date, we need to start planning our engagement party!  It'll just be a more intimate gathering of our families (so that they can all meet!), and our closest friends... But seeing as how my crazy parents bought us each a flying lesson in a Cessna for Christmas, we figured that would be an awesome day to get everyone together, and to get some amazing engagement pics (why not throw that in there too!  Haha).  So hopefully around June, we'll have some great pics and a few good laughs with our families.  I can't say that I'm not nervous about getting in a plane though.  Heights terrify me!!!

Oh, here's something else.  I went through all of the pictures that I'd pinned on Pinterest and deleted the ones that are definitely not happening.  It's funny what a year can do.  I had posted so many chalkboard/mason jar/lace/burlappy ideas on there, but it's all so overdone that I had to giggle a bit about even posting them in the first place.  Now all my ideas are being kept on my super secret facebook group that only my wedding party is privy to... I'll post the odd tidbit here though.  ;)

A Girls Gotta Have Somewhere To Hang Her Dress!

I've been seeing a lot of the wire-wrapped coathangers that spell out "Mrs" or "Bride" or something close to that effect, and now that they're super popular, I needed to "make it my own" so... I grabbed me some ribbon, and a coathanger, and some beads and got to work!  It's not done yet as I want to add the wedding date and some pearls to the wood, but I love it so far!

 I love how my fairy figurine looks like she's giving it a bit of a kick!

The picture doesn't actually do it justice, but at least it's a bit different than all the wire-bending hangers out there!  

Bottle Cap Wine Charms

Meet my little wine charm prototypes!

I want to make personalized wine charms for each guest at our wedding so I set out on the Google and found a few tutorials on how to make these little beauties.  These ones are crappy and only made with spray adhesive and Mod Podge, but I wanted to see how they'd look when they were finished and I pretty much love them.

The trickiest bit was finding a way to create the names so that they'd print out the right size, but the Avery website was my best friend again with all of their sticker templates.  I played around for a little while and came up with the purple/turquiose tags.  The most wonderful thing about the Avery website is that you can customize everything on the stickers from the colors to individual text on each label.  It's so easy to do!!!

Now all I need to do is order a few hundred epoxy stickers, flattened bottle caps and a bunch of wine charm rings and our guests will each have something personalized to use for the evening and take home with them.  I'm thinking about using these as decorations on the fronts of each cracker, that way they'll double as name cards!  Win-Win!!!

Ring Boxes

I decided on ring boxes over ring pillows as I can DIY up something unique and we will always have somewhere safe to keep our rings if we're not wearing them.  Lance is an electrician and will only be able to wear his ring when he's not working... Work hazard or something like that... Bah!  My box will go unused for the most part, but it'll still look pretty as a set!

Here are the two finished boxes

 And the inside view.

I still need to make little satin pillows with tie-up ribbons for the inside, but Lance decided to tell me that he doesn't like the purple color and wants me to re-do them.  It's a bloody good thing that I love him.  So... Now I have these two little ring boxes that will have to find another home, and I'm starting on making a couple of new ones.  The new boxes are more square, and I've already started painting them, and this time I think I'll stamp the words on the top rather than try to paint them, as I'm shaky with a paint brush at the best of times!  New pics to come soon!!!  

I have an Etsy store now!

I figured I'd better put my creative abilities to some good use and opened a store.  My first item was the wedding wands that I'd made this afternoon while watching the series finale of Dexter *tear*.

Aren't they just ridiculously pretty!!!  They're not my colors, but it's the only ribbon that I had on hand to play around with, so I went with it.  Anyway... if anyone else would like to open an Etsy store, click on this link and we both get 40 free listing!  Woohoo!!!

http://etsy.me/16RUYFV

You can also visit my shop at http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/BeadsByMarie

=D

Say "NO" To Chalkboard Signs!!!

Everywhere I look there are chalkboard signs at weddings!  I want signs at my wedding, but I don't want them to look like all the other ones.

I have found a blank wooden heart sign at Dollarama last Winter and it's just been hanging around in all its wooden glory waiting for something big to happen.

This isn't my heart, but you get the picture... Just a lovely wooden canvas!

I grabbed some metallic paints from Walmart and some brushes and decided to have a crack at hand-painting my own sign... This is how it turned out...

Pretty impressed, am I!  I'm going to paint an arrow just under where it says "Photo Booth" but I have no idea where the sign is gonna hang yet, so that'll be done after we book the venue (which might be tonight as I'm going to check out a cute hall later!).  

I've now decided to change my plans from lazing around the house watching TV to heading to the dollar store for more blank signs.  I have visions of the drive to the hall scattered with "nearly there" and "this way for the I Do's" signs!  Perhaps I'll even make my own "Mr & Mrs" signs for the backs of the chairs, and then hang them above our bed after the big day has come and gone!  

I just love DIY soooooooooooooo much.  

A Brides Rant!!!

I have been engaged for exactly 273 days, and I am officially "pinned out"!

When I first became engaged I decided to be super sleuth and create a secret board for all my wedding inspired pinnables, but as that became out of hand I graduated myself to a whole new fake Pinterest account.  This was a place that I could pin freely without any of my friends seeing every pin and wondering if I was going to somehow incorporate that into my wedding for the ultimate Pinterest-Inspired wedding.  I pinned day and night!  If I couldn't sleep, I'd be perusing for unique ideas or decorations.  I found myself pinning at every moment I could.  And what did I discover?

Every bride wants the same thing.

We all want a unique never-been-seen-before wedding filled with cutesy mason jars, cowboy-boot wearing brides and bridesmaids, groomsmen adorned in super-hero cufflinks, shirts, and socks, pictures of the groomsmen fawning over the ring in a girly fashion, secret vows whispered to each other, twinkling lights strung throughout a barn, personalized wire-wrapped coathangers ... Well guess what, Ladies... It's all been done before... and done, and done, and done.

Pinterest is ruined for me.

Don't worry, I still love going there and poking around, but you won't find my wedding filled with the whimsy of a Pinterest wedding (with the exception of the backdrop photobooth... I am soooooo doing that!), but rather an inspired collaboration of all things wedding-y.

I have stopped pinning each and every idea that I think of to Pinterest, but rather to a folder on my computer that I won't be sharing until after my wedding so that no one can accuse me of having another cookie-cutter, burlap-wrapped,  bedazzled flip-flop wedding!


I have also decided to ixnay a chandelier above my washer & dryer!