You Can Stand Under My . . .

One last wedding post. This is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding. The paper parasols are from the very cool Pearl River which, if you haven't discovered, you must do soon! Pearl River is a brick-and-mortar store in NYC, but I have ordered from their website several times. They have a great selection of paper parasols, paper lanterns, bamboo blinds, bento boxes, restaurant supplies and thousands of other goodies. I got the lanterns for something like $4.50 each, and the color matched the dresses perfectly! My photographer (who was awesome!) had a lot of fun with these props. Parasols and paper lanterns would make great additions to a summer party! Pearl River carries them in a lot of different colors, too.

Centerpieces

Remember those centerpieces I promised? I am posting a picture from Rebecca Thuss' site. This is the image from the article in Martha Stewart Weddings where I saw this idea. They are branches (which I clipped from family and friend's yards!) with tiny crepe-paper blooms attached with brown floral tape. The little millinery birds (available at craft stores) are then glued to the branches. These were horribly labor-intensive, and my mom, husband and I made most of them in the days leading up to the wedding. I put the branches in clear glass vases ($3.00 each from A.C. Moore) and put white stones in the vases. The picture below doesn't show them well, but they looked exactly like the image above. They were so lovely, and so inexpensive, and I just fell in love with them. My aunts and relatives all ended up taking one home, and I now have one in our bedroom. These would be equally as lovely for a bridal shower or ladies' tea. Instructions are available here.

In case you were wondering, the table numbers are made from wooden fans (scored on Ebay!) which I hot-glued open. I then covered the glue strip with an orange ribbon bow and added the table number, which I had printed onto orange card stock. The reception venue had the little mounting things. These really accented the flowers well.

This Day In Crafty History . . .

Since this is an artsy-crafty blog, and since tomorrow is my second anniversary with my awesome husband, I thought I would post a few of the crafty things I made for our wedding. Easily the biggest (and some would say craziest) undertaking was doing the bouquets and such. About 11 pm the night before my wedding I started assembling them and wasn't finished until like 3 in the morning. I probably could've done them earlier, but I am a big procrastinator.

I ordered all of the flowers from Costco's website and had them delivered the Thursday before the big Saturday. I ordered about $300 worth of hydrangea, orange roses and daisies. I ended up only using about half of them.

They were delivered in perfect condition. Seriously. All but one single daisy was in mint condition.

I had a binder of magazine clippings for inspiration. Then, when I ordered the flowers, I just sketched out what I wanted the bouquets to look like. When arranging flowers, remember that odd numbers of blooms always look best. Each of the bridemaids' bouques had 3 hydrangea, 5 orange roses and about 5 (I think!) daises.

I got these butterfly pins from Macy's and I attached them to a long, stiff wire and incorporated them into the bouquets. I love the way these ended up. The photographer really caught the beauty of the jewelry. I also added orange dupioni silk around the stems.

My bouquet was pretty special. I used the pink daisies from Costco, but those lovely pink peonies (my all-time favorite flowers) were cut from a bush in my parents' yard. This made my bouquet extra sentimental. They were the exact color of the bridesmaids' dresses and in full bloom the day before the wedding, when I cut them. I added a dragonfly pin to my bouquet, and also a really long, beautiful silk ribbon tied around the base of the flowers. The ribbon hung down a few feet and looked awesome in the pictures.

For about $350 in flowers, pins, ribbons and silk, I was able to create 5 bouquets, several nosegays for the moms and grandmothers, 10 or more boutonnieres, aisle decorations, a flower girl's basket and still had half the flowers left! I would totally do this again, and I highly recommend it. It would've been a lot less stressful if I had done them earlier!

Later on this week I'll show the EXTREMELY labor-intensive centerpieces and a few other special touches. For now, I'll link to the the lovely Rebecca Thuss, who was style director for Martha Stewart Weddings, and provided loads of inspiration for my wedding two years ago through that awesome publication. I think I may have linked to her before, but she's worth a second look.

As for me, I have a whole day of picnic-ing, movie going and museum visits planned for tomorrow!