Thursday, August 29, 2013

Our Decor - Advice Cards, Guest Book, Card Briefcase & Place Cards


Photos by Five By Five Photography & Design

The advice cards I made were a fun, easy, CHEAP idea from Pinterest. Using an online template I simply used cardstock to print the cards out and we had a colourful box nearby for guests to put their completed cards in. We had SO much fun reading these cards after the wedding and seeing similar themes and responses come up...apparently people were really ready for us to get married!! So good to have these as a keepsake as well!


To contain our cards and bring some colour to our gift table, I took a $4 briefcase from Goodwill and gave it a quick facelift. Some burlap covered the bottom and a 'cards' sign made from cardstock and twine dressed things up (and I hid a few dryer sheets in the pocket for the month leading up to the wedding, to get rid of the musty smell it had from being out of use for so long). One of my favourite parts about this briefcase was that at the end of the night, we just had to close it up and everything was nicely contained inside, with no worries about losing anything!


Jermaine & I both grew up loving Sade, and even danced to her song "By Your Side" for our first dance, so using her albums Promise & Stronger Than Pride, along with The Ray Charles Singers' Something Special for Young Lovers, as our guestbook was a perfect fit! We found scratched up vinyl copies at yard sales and used book stores, and bought vinyl display frames to hold each record - this was one wedding errand that Jermaine really enjoyed!! With scrapbook paper lining each frame to add some colour, we put out several metallic Sharpies at each record to do the trick. As vinyl collectors, we now have beautiful art work to display on our walls among our featured records, and can see a daily reminder of the amazing family members and friends we have in our lives.




For the name cards, I knew I wanted something simple that would make a larger visual statement when together. Using cardstock, I printed out each guest's name as they RSVP'd 'yes', and then punched a hole in the corner, either above or below the name. Using spare edging from the burlap table runners I made, I took two or three short pieces and tied them through the hole to add a bit of interest. Clothespins held each name to some twine we hung in one corner of our cocktail hour space and I loved how they looked! Our friends also made a game out of clipping clothespins to the backs of guests' shirts or dresses all night, and at one point I had about 7 on my sash!!


What fun ideas have you found for your decor?

xoxo mrs dobbins

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Servingware

Whew!!! It turns out that going straight from planning a wedding into planning a green card (involving thousands of pages of paper and photos and documents and...) makes for a VERY busy year!! Throw in Jermaine's brother getting married in Florida the week after my happy Canadian self received said green card, and you've got a blog with a ton of drafts and no posts in months. Sorry for the delay, and I'll get back to posting more fun details from our December wedding!

We went with higher end disposable options for our plates, glasses and cutlery. This option worked best with our budget on many levels, especially as we did not have to keep our serving staff to clean the dishes afterwards and only had staffing there for the meal portion of our evening. I found recycled paper plates & recycled plastic glasses on sale and we used faux-silverware that was also purchased at a discount. The green napkins came from Ikea and were the exact shade of green I had been looking for! I wrapped the cutlery sets ahead of time with some friends and tied each set with twine to keep them in place.

Photo by Five By Five Photography and Design
Since we had a buffet style dinner, we placed each cutlery roll at the place setting as the plates were at the serving table. The pops of green on the muslin tablecloths I made looked great!
To make our set up quick & easy, I arranged things up at home and took photos so that our family and friends could see how things were to go. As we had about 20 people help us the night before our wedding, things were finished very quickly!!

We bought PLENTY of supplies and were able to return several unopened packages afterwards, which was great. The opened sets have been well used at our home when guests are over, making clean up a breeze while living with a broken dishwasher!

xoxo
mrs dobbins