The Sash

Oh the drama that is the wedding dress. In this case choosing the dress was a relatively easy and pain free experience. It took one day, two? or three? shops, I found the dress I loved, and that was that!

The sash, on the other hand was not that simple.



On the day I bought my dress, I tried on a gold/champagne/tannish sash {the photos in this post provide a good example}. When our lovely saleslady approached me with the sash, I made a face of slight displeasure ~ it was a color that never crossed my mind and I didn't expect to love, but after it was on, I loved every bit of it! The only question left was whether or not it would match the yet-to-be-decided bridesmaids' dresses, so I decided to wait and order it when we got the dresses.



Fast forward a month or two, and we're shopping for bridesmaids dresses. We pick out a fantastic yellow dress that will look good on everyone {and it has pockets!}. We ask our current not-so-lovely or with-it saleslady to bring out the "champagne" sash, and wouldn't you know it, as she approached with the sash, I made yet another face of displeasure. This was definitely not the same champagne sash we tried during our first visit, this one was a very light, almost white pinkish color... maybe the color of a baby's bottom? Questions were asked, it was denied that our "champagne" sash ever existed, or maybe it was no longer available, who knows when you're as ditzy as this sales lady was. Then she made some reference to Christmas, I made some retort about Christmas in Russia ~ who knew if either of us were making sense?

Oh the drama of the sash.

Bottom line, the awesome sash was no longer available. BUT it looked so good, and looked great with the bridesmaids dresses, AND maybe, just maybe, my mom was up for the challenge of making the sash...



So that is what we/she did. We bought a swatch fro the dress shop that was the same color and fabric as the sash we loved, found a near-perfect match at the fabric shop, and the fun began! The dress came with a white sash, so she took that apart to figure out how it was constructed and to have the templates necessary for cutting out the fabric. I wish we thought ahead and took pictures of the whole process for sharing.



It was a full family affair ~ my brother drew the vine designs on the bottom of each side. He did a great job of making them slightly different but balanced. My mom hand-stitched the embroidered design and added the bed detail. Looking to other beaded sashes, we realized that the key to a nice sparkly piece was to put a sequin under each bead or crystal.



The final sash was amazing! So much more personal and unique than anything we could have bought, and it looked lovely with the wedding shoes!


A number of buttons and loops were added to both my dress and the sash for bustling, but on the day of, we moved from ceremony to party so quickly that I never too the time to properly bustle anything. Instead, the sash was tied into a big bow, and off I went to socialize.



Unfortunately, in all of the merriment, we never slowed down to take a full detailed picture of my back to show the sash. For example, if you're curious what the back of the bridesmaids dresses looked like, I have it::

Back of the wedding dress and sash? Not so much, but like the day it was perfect.

Gifts for the girls in yellow.

And we're back to the wedding. I put together little boxes of goodies for the bridesmaids. And yes, before even discussing the contents, I was ecstatic with my "wrapping". Just a plain brown box, wrapped in baker's twine with a tag attached. You'll see both the twine and tags again in a future post! I'll pause while you gag on the matchy-ness of it all.



Quick note before I dig in ~ This post is heavy in pictures and links to some of the fantastic Etsy shops I used for supplies. One of the things that really made me happy while planning the wedding was searching out the artists and local or small shops for supplies.

Inside were a combination of purchased and handmade gifts. Each girl received a different botanical necklace from Elizabeth Scott Designs. I love her shop, and she was so patient as I deliberated on my choices! Since you never know what the weather will be like, and since the dresses were sleeveless, I included a white pashmina scarf. And then... I wanted to take the time to make something special for inside the boxes.

I've always wanted to make clutches with the metal frame opening, and thought the wedding was a perfect excuse to give it a shot. I was also hoping that the little purses could come in handy the day of the wedding for storing any odds and ends that the ladies were carrying around. These were made using the pattern and hardware for 5 inch clutches from this shop.

Inspired by the bee and honeycomb touches that we were incorporating in to the invites and wedding decor, I began the process looking for some sort of modern-honeycomb fabric. I started this project in January, and at the time, I wasn't excited about any of the designs I found. That said, I did a quick google search this afternoon and found a few nice options. I thought about designing something myself and getting it printed by Spoonflower, but, as it usually happens with projects like this.... inspiration struck, and I went in yet another direction.

Using the hexagons from our save-the-dates, I embroidered a honeycomb design and each girls' initial on the front of the purses.

Here were my key supplies {minus the needle and thread}::


The following was done before sewing the pieces of the purses together::
~ Using an exacto knife I cut out hexagons in three different sizes from the card. In the end only the two larger sizes were used for this design.
~ With the magic disappearing ink pen, I traced one large hexagon and surrounded it by a hive of the medium hexagons, making the hive slightly different on each one. The pen really is magic ~ staying long enough for you to embroider but then completely disappearing in a couple of days {sometimes sooner if you really agitate the fabric}.
~ I used the backstitch to trace the honeycombs.
~ I then found a font that I liked and printed out the four initials that I needed. I used these as a guide to free-hand the letters with the magic pen and then used the stem stitch to embroider them, going back and making two lines of stem stitch where I wanted a thicker line.

PS. ::
~ This is my first embroidery project, so maybe there's a more standard method for embroidering letters? I did a few quick searches and some test runs, and then I winged it.
~ Many of these purse frames require you to glue the fabric into the frame. Everywhere I looked, people recommend Gutermann Glue. I had a hard time finding it in the typical craft shops, but was able to order some from this seller.
~ I think I drank a lot of coffee while working on this project. How I managed to get it all over the paper with the initials but not on the bags is a mystery.

Since the big design went smoothly, I wanted to add a touch of design to the back side of the purses. At first I thought it'd be fun to trace three medium hexagons, filling in one of them like so::

But my test runs looked a bit sloppy and came with the "wah wah" soundtrack of disappointment. So, back at the drawing board I came up with this:: I cut out a hexagon shape from the fabric I was going to use for the lining and using a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine I attached it to the back of the bag. It might look a bit wonky in that picture due to the folds in the fabric.

The lining was made up of two fabrics. The top half was the flowered fabric::


And the bottom half was made from the same satin that was used to make my sash {more on that soon!}. You can see a snippet of the two fabrics in this photo::

I'm so happy with how these turned out and am a bit bummed that I didn't make more for the mothers, flower girls, and myself!

In addition to the clutches, there was another little project that I'd been wanting to make. Hairpins with little flowers:: A big thanks to my sisters for modeling/photographing these at the beach last week. I think everyone wore them the day of the wedding, and yet I can't find a bit of photographic evidence!

Of course these are unbelievably simple. Buy the flower cabochons and pins, glue one to the other and you're done! I purchased my flowers and hairpins from the Snapcrafty Etsy Shop. I used a jewelry glue that I picked up from Michaels that's meant to glue plastic to metal, and it worked really well.

Assembly tip :: Slide the pins onto a piece of card stock to hold them steady while applying the glue and flowers::


Quick confession :: I was inspired to make my own after I paid $12 to buy a set of two from a little shop in Boston. That was a few years ago before I knew where to find the flower and pin resources. Never again my friends, now you can make 10 for under $10. winning!

Take a seat...

Here's a project from the wedding. Just about two years ago at this exact time, I was biking to work in Boston and saw this old screen door out on the sidewalk with someone's trash. Of course, I locked up my bike on the spot, carted the door home, and then went back to my bike and on my merry way.

The door is really awesome, and it's too bad that its dimensions don't match any of the doors I know, or else I'd put it to good use. The door sat in my bedroom for a long time. First it just leaned against the wall, after that it as a jewelry holder - attaching my earrings to the screen and hanging my necklaces from a few hooks. Then I decided that I wanted to embroider a design into the screen. I spent an evening doing it, but never got much further.

So, when it came time for the wedding, my motive was always to use what was on hand, and I knew it'd be fun to incorporate the door {keeping with our farm-house wedding motif}. Inspiration struck one night when I was thinking about the seating cards.

We were using manila tags on the thank you gifts {a post on those is coming}, and to keep things cohesive I wanted to use the tags for seating. Since the tags had a string, I wanted to hang them from something, and that's when the lightbulb went off ~ I have so many fun/beautiful buttons. We could sew the buttons to the screen door and hang the tags on them!

We embroidered an upper section with the words "Take a seat" and added a little bee button that I had been holding on to for the longest time.


In another section, we sewed a simple heart with our initials::

And then we added the buttons! The screen came with a tear {on the right side of the picture below}, so rather than ignoring it, we playfully stitched it up.


We sewed on a button for each guest/tag... but then invited a few more people, so on a few buttons we doubled up the tags. We decided to double up moms and little kids, that way both of their names were right next to each other and easy to find!
On the day of the wedding, we propped the door up under the willow tree as it's pictured.

Another door project's coming tomorrow!

Wednesday Soundtrack

Before we get to the songs, another wedding detail::
My sister painted these fantastic signs for the wedding. The day really was a big party, other than the ceremony, toasts, and cutting of the cake, there was no formal schedule.

Using big signs was a great way to virtually guide people around the party/property. Some signs pointed people towards the games and acted as an open invitation to play. Our games included horseshoes, bocce, washers. Other signs shared some of the crucial details : bar, bathrooms, ceremony. Some friends and siblings camped, and I thought the "camping" sign was a great way to keep that area organized while also letting the other guests know that having the tents and camper in the far corner of the field was intentional.

And as I mentioned last week, our DJ and late night dancing was in the barn, not under the tent where dinner took place, so if the thumping music and flashing lights wasn't enough, our fun little sign explained everything::

Before I play the music, did you see the sign?



Or are you thinking that the signs are just blocking the scenery?

Wednesday Soundtrack {wedding edition}

Calder and I both like a wide variety of music, our soundtracks for workdays are different from our Saturday mornings, and that's different from our Saturday nights. We made an effort to share some of that variety on the wedding day, and the credit for how awesome it turned out really goes to C as he took a lead on the music planning.

We were so very lucky to be able to hire the Wissahickon Chicken Shack to play during our ceremony, during cocktail hour, and after dinner. They are a fantastic bluegrass band out of the Philly area, and they really added to that relaxed, backyard picnic feeling that we wanted to evoke. It was also the perfect choice of music that our guests, both young and old, could sit back and enjoy or get up and dance to. And of course, nothing says farmhouse wedding like a cat hanging around the bluegrass band:: She didn't leave her post all day!

If you're in the Finger Lakes region this weekend, they'll be playing a few shows. And if you aren't lucky enough to see them in person, YouTube will have to do::

Reason #101 why we love them :: The band played their own rendition of Bruce's Two for the Road (click here for the lyrics) for Calder and I to dance/stumble to.

Here's Bruce's version of Two for the Road, and note that at the beginning of the video it's black, but everything works out in the end ::

After the band cleared out, the DJ stepped in, and the rest of the night looked like this::

And sounded a bit like this::
Our DJ was a friend of my sister's and she brought the barn down. Calder is particular about his dance music, and he loved her! We want to take over the barn and hire her every weekend. Best night ever.

We did it!

We had ourselves one fantastic wedding! And we lived to tell the tale...

As I may have mentioned, we did a whole lot of crafting for the wedding. Originally I thought I'd share projects as they happened, but in the end, I liked keeping most things a secret, and now we have a whole lot to talk about!

Inspired by my drink this weekend {a mojito with lemons rather than limes}, I thought I'd ease back into things and talk about colors.

I originally wanted a yellow and grey color scheme ~ big on the yellow and just using the grey when we needed a color to tone things down. If you're unsure about that idea, a quick google search shows you that there are a lot of great yellow and grey weddings out there. But as I started to put together some of the projects, I thought it would be fun to add touches of red and green... think bowl of strawberries meets lemonade with a touch of mint. Or red table meets mint mojito with a touch of lemon.

I put together a little pinterest board {after the wedding} in an effort to convey the ideas I was having before the wedding. If only I had jumped on the pinterest bandwagon sooner ~ it would have been a great way to get all of my ideas out of my head and in one place for everyone to see!

Our first touch of red came from Ikea's TEKLA dishtowels {pictured on the pinterest board}. These were used as the cloth napkins at each place setting. ETA:: when I bought the 100+ towels/napkins for our event, they were priced at 49 cents a piece. We really got lucky, because as you see they're now up to 79 cents a pop!

Above the tables, we hung yards of bunting. This project was super easy to make, and although I was worried, it didn't look like we were going to open a used-car lot!

We cut out a cardboard template that was used to trace triangles on our fabric. These were cut out with pinking sheers. Wanting the bunting to be two-sided, two triangles were stitched together with right sides out to make each individual flag {or bunt?}.

We used 1 inch wide, heavyweight twill tape folded in half for the top of the bunting, remembering to leave a bit of extra twill tape at each end for tying to the tents.

I ordered our twill tape in 72 yard spools from twilltape.com, and now I love the internet even more for having a website that specializes in twill tape.

Sticking with our festive flag projects, I made a whole bunch of mini flags like these::
I got the idea after seeing these flags at Herriot and Grace. The project turned out a lot simpler than I expected. I cut pieces of ribbon, glued them to the skewer, and added one stitch with a needle and thread to make them extra secure. After the ribbons were on, I handed them over to my sister to make different cuts in the ribbon ends and then dip them in No Fray. We used a variety of ribbons, some with wiring, some without, and we even made some with extra large yellow rikrak. Now I want another excuse to buy more jump rikrak!

Finally, I'll leave you with the raw materials for a quick, last minute project::

We had a few friends and high school students assisting us with food service and cleanup throughout the day. They were all wearing black, and so I wanted to give them something that would add a little color to their outfits and help them to stand out in the crowd as someone who guests could approach if they needed a drink, had questions about the food, etc. At first I thought I would make them aprons from the Ikea towels, but then I saw this toweling fabric from the Fabric Depot and knew that it'd be perfect! It looks a little granny-ish/country-ish, which fit in well with our use of old china on the buffet table and the bluegrass band.

The toweling fabric is meant for making dishtowels, so it's already hemmed on two ends ~ you just cut it to the width you want and hem the remaining two sides. I did that, and then used some of our leftover twill tape to make the apron ties.

So with all of the yellow, red, and green, where's the grey? We used these grey blankets {also pictured on the pinterest board} for some of the seating during the ceremony. And the bridesmaids looked fabulous in their grey wedge TOMS.

Someone deserves a sweater...

Our wedding invitations went out last week. Oh boy! Talk about making something official.

The production of these invitations was a major undertaking by my brother. Here he is mixing up paint::

He created the designs, mixed the paint, printed and printed and printed, and cut each invite by hand {x-acto for him, he doesn't trust paper cutters!}. And unfortunately for us, he did this all in the basement, making it very hard to take good pictures and document the process.

The invites were a combination of screen and letterpress printing. On the fronts, the yellow and gold images are screen-printed, and the green is letter pressed. The green on the backs of each piece are screen-printed.






Because we were doing everything by hand, I wasn't too stressed about having an exact day that the invites had to go out. On the other hand, because we're doing so much of the actual wedding planning and prepping, I was a bit conflicted about when we should require the RSVPs ~ most guides suggest an RSVP date of 4 to 3 weeks before the big day. I would love to know today how many guests we'll have.

To give us some flexibility in this situation, we came up with a great solution:: We added a little hanging tag to the RSVP cards that allowed us to write in the return date rather than having to know it the moment the letterpress plates were made. Another plus ~ this allows us to put different return dates on the smaller second round of invites that are going out a week later than the first!

So, here's what we have:: A fun, twine-tied package with the invite, RSVP card, and info card with some of the important details! I love the final results, and think they set the mood for the fun, relaxed, outdoor, homemade wedding that we're planning!

Here's a close-up of the backs with our initials::

Oh, and one more thing to think about ~ stamps. I found the selection of USPS stamps to be slightly lame at the moment. I'm just not a fan of the current, purple love stamps, but at the same time I didn't want to spend a dollar per stamp to make our own. Our invites required 64 cents in stamps, so I settled on the ug-loves {ugly loves}, and then I paired them with these 29 cent herb stamps. And in the end? The ug-loves grew on me! So if you're in a stamp bind, it is worth going in and seeing what fun combination of stamps you can put together to get the postage and look that you want.

So, as soon as the wedding craziness is over, it's time to start working on Jeff's sweater!