Friday, December 28, 2012

Silver & Red Wedding Invitations

I have completed my wedding invitations and they have been sent out, I already have a few RSVPs back.....super exxited!!! Of course being a bride who loves crafts, I made my invitations myself. We don't really have a theme for our wedding but we are using the colors red, white, a little black and a touch of silver so I of course wanted to use some of those colors for my invitations. I was at first going to go with a red paper but I found this really shimmery silver cardstock, thanks to one of my favorite stores, Papersource! All of the cardstock is pretty cheap for a pretty good amount (as I am writing this I have decided to make a whole post dedicated to Papersource since I really recommend it to brides...lol). Anyways, here is my finished product....

 I found the red scroll on some free wedding scrolls website, and of course I cannot remember which one it was...lol. I typed this up in Microsoft word. i was at first unsure of how to word the invitations but there are plenty of websites on the internet that can help you with that. When I first made these, I had a rhinestone attached to the end of the scroll but when I sent one through the mail (it is so very important to do a trial run) it poked a hole in the envelope, so I had to abandon that idea :(. 

We also decided to write in the # of people invited to hopefully prevent confusion in regards to who is actually invited. As we are on a budget, we cannot afford to have extra guests showing up to our wedding! It is really important to make it clear to folks from the beginning!!!

These are very simple and elegant and I am very impressed with my work. Some of our guests have already commented on how much they like the invitations.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Wedding Venue on a Budget

My fiance and I were born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, which is where we still live and I must say a wedding in Philadelphia can be pretty darn expensive. There are tons of hotels, museums and clubs in the area that are absolutely beautiful but charge a per person rate of $50.00 or more (mostly more!) and we certainly do not have that type of money to spend. And you know people say "Well, I'll wait until I get enough money....blah, blah, blah". But my question is what is enough? We both will always have bills and living expenses so I am sure we will never have what we feel is enough! But I digress...lol.
Any who, we did some brainstorming and decided that we needed to find a fire or banquet hall because they would be the most reasonable. There were 2 things that were really important to us;
      1. We needed to find a place that would allow us to bring our own food.
      2. We also needed a place where we could have both our ceremony & reception since we do not   
          belong to a church.
We did some fishing and we found a banquet hall called "Park Avenue Banquet Hall" in west Philadelphia, across from Fairmount Park. The price for rental of the main ballroom on a Saturday evening for 5 hours is $1,500 which just includes the rental space, tables and chairs. I was very impressed with the room when I saw it. The room is completely covered in white drapes and they also have perimeter lighting which makes it look even more nice.
Picture of a wedding reception in the main ballroom.
And like I said before, we also needed a site where we could also host our ceremony as well. We first agreed that we would have both the ceremony and reception in the same room with guests seated at their tables for the ceremony. My mother and I really weren't to fond of the idea but we were going to just tough it out anyway. Then my mom came up with the idea of asking ParkAvenue if we could have one of he rooms upstairs (the Ivory Room) for our ceremony, she's so smart! We have the balance payed off so I figured we should be allowed to. They are letting us have it for an extra $200...nothing ever comes for free....lol. It is just a plain old room and I am honestly not too fond of the tan and brown walls but hey, I am a girl on a budget and I trust that my mom will work her magic on the room and make it look awesome. 
The Ivory Room (empty)
So now we are putting our heads together to figure out how we are going to decorate the rooms, we pretty much have finalized our decorations for the reception, we just need ideas for the ceremony room. I know that I am going to have an aisle runner and I am thinking about getting some small pillars or something. Still working it out but we obviously do not have that much time left. I will definitely post pictures of our finished product!!

Monday, December 10, 2012

Our Wedding Vendor List

I would like to share a list of our vendors. I will obviously continue to update this list as we find more vendors, etc. but here is what we have so far!

Bride & Bridal Party Attire - David's Bridal https://www.davidsbridal.com/HomeView
Groom & Groomsmen Attire - Men's Warehouse http://www.menswearhouse.com
Transportation -  City Wide Limousine http://www.cwlimo.com/
Bakery - Oteri's Italian Bakery http://www.oterisbakery.com/
Ceremony & Reception Venue - Park Avenue Banquet Hall https://sites.google.com/site/parkavenuemediacloud/



DIY: Bride & Groom Glasses (Take 2)

UPDATE:
(PLEASE excuse my messy dresser...lol!!!). If you refer to by prior blog about my wedding glasses, I mentioned that I may be changing the glasses. I loved the design but decided to change the font of our names. The glasses are still exactly the same except for the writing. I have yet to put these in the oven because I may change my mind again and need to wipe something away, who knows...lol. I am also thinking about making glasses for my MOH and BMs as well as my mom and his mom to give as gifts at the rehearsal dinner.

DIY: Hot Chocolate Cone Favor

So, I did say before that I would be using these for my wedding favors. And they actually turned out much better than I expected. This really is an awesome idea especially for our winter wedding and as I said before, you can switch the hot cocoa off for a tea. So here is my tutorial!!!

Supplies:
  • Wilton Decorating Bags (3 boxes for 150 favors)
  • Mini Marshmallows (# bags is up to you)
  • Clear rubber bands (300 for 150 favors) 
  • Hot Cocoa Mix
  • Scissors

Optional*
  • Ribbon (I used red) or Twine
  • Crushed Candy Cane (you can put whatever else you want inside, I used this because it's red & white)
  • A cute label and/or tag





Tutorial:
1. Each favor requires you to use 2 bags. Fill one bag with your choice on the amount of mixture and seal it with a rubber band. The other bag will contain the hot cocoa bag and all of the other ingredients (marshmallows and peppermint, etc.). 

2. Place the hot chocolate bag into the second bag (I already placed the label on the outside bag but you can of course do it your way.

3. Now you fill the rest of the bag with your ingredients (marshmallows and candy, etc) and place another rubber band on this bag as well.

4. Lastly, add you beautiful ribbon and there you have it, an awesome wedding favor!!!!

***Our labels read "A&T....The Perfect Mix....2.23.12". I made them myself, purchased some round labels from papersource and created them on microsoft word.


Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Long Overdue

So I am just 80 days away from the big day and to answer many people's question, yes I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by it. Well, anxious more than anything! The Mr. says he isn't but he isn't really doing much, except for spending $$$, which is important but I am in charge of all of the details...lol.
 I have been neglectful. I haven't blogged since sometime in October but I have been fairly busy. Dealing with wedding stuff and plus I started a new job!! My fiance also suffered a tragic death in his family in early October, which took a toll on both of us.
I do have much to share! Invitations are done so look out for those!!! Working on my hot chocolate favors and I will be creating a tutorial for those. Lots of fun DIY projects that I will be sharing and much more site  make sure you come back and visit soon :)