Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Cookies, and Centerpieces, and Banners, Oh My!

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
~ G. B. Shaw
(Is it bad that all the quotes I find on marriage are extremely cynical? That is, if they're not incredibly corny.)

With less than three months to go, we're officially neck deep in wedding projects (hence Arts and Crafts Night earlier this week). I've spent the last year and three months or so with DIY wedding projects flying around in my head. I even have a "Wedding" tab on my bookmarks toolbar with various inspirations, and spent countless hours pondering: do I like these favor boxes, these favor cookies, these favor cookies, these centerpieces, or these centerpieces? (You can see that I spent an awful lot of time on marthastewartweddings.com. I even started referring to her as my friend, Martha.)


Although I didn't end up replicating any of those models exactly (Martha doesn't seem as concerned about budget as those of us in the real wedding-planning world), I did use some of my friend Martha's ideas.


For example, from this banner, I'm creating these banners (they're a work in progress--see ribbon order details below!):





I have yet to add the ribbon, but it's coming--actually, more than 175 yds. of ribbon are currently in transit to our doorstep. Mom found some awesome bulk-ordering websites this week, and for less than $40 we scored all the ribbon we need for the entire wedding.

Instead of cutting or punching out each of the circles individually (like Martha suggests), I paid a visit to our neighborhood Paper Source (my latest obsession!) where they sell pre-cut circles and circular labels in coordinating colors. I was able to download a template from their website, then easily print the labels right on my home printer. Honestly, I usually avoid anything printed at home with a template--but these were so easy! I just wish I had found Paper Source earlier in the wedding planning stages...


And, from this centerpiece and this one, we created our reception centerpieces, replacing the lemons/limes with oranges:





The actual ribbon for these pieces are expected in the tremendous ribbon shipment later this week. Also, the drooping flowers are not in the plan--we were playing with these arrangements so much that these daisies were a few days old.


In order to cut costs, we've decided to order our own reception flowers from Sam's. Even though our florist is incredibly reasonably-priced and easy-to-work-with, flower arrangements just plain add up. So, we're going the DIY route on this one. Hopefully we won't regret it the day before the wedding when we're slicing bushels of oranges and defrosting packaged Gerbera daisies.


We had planned to go DIY in one other area of the big day--our favors. We decided awhile ago to give decorated sugar cookies to our guests at the reception. And, at the time, my mom, future-MIL and I had fond images of time spent happily baking the afternoon away. But now, with a to-do list a mile long, we're all about delegating. After some price shopping and time-managing, we decided to send this project out to the pros. We were referred to Shari at Smart Cookies Bakery, who was able to offer us a fantastic price for 260 heart-shaped, pink-glazed sugar cookies. And, the icing on the cake cookie was that she individually wraps each cookie, complete with ribbon in our colors. (This ribbon is separate from the 175 yd. shipment.)

1 comment:

  1. Paper source sells pre-cut circles?!?! I wish I had known that before I cut out all the circles by hand for Charlotte's birthday banner! Well, now I know. Love your colors, and I think the centerpieces with the oranges are super cute!

    ReplyDelete