Tuesday, August 04, 2009

sneak peaks ... 31 days out


Since most of the people who read my sparse (as of late) posts are old friends that unfortunately will not be attending the wedding celebration, I thought I would give you a sneak peak into what I have been busy working on. I feel like our wedding reception will be fairly low-key ... with basically all the decorations done by me. I have some very distinct ideas of what I like and its my first real opportunity to try out some my decorating ideas. As many of you know - I like very flowery, swirly, "baroque" (if you will), heavy decorations. Clean and simple lines are not really my thing. So naturally our wedding will reflect this. I do however subscribe to the philosophy that less is more ... so that translates to not a lot of things but the things that are in the room are very busy and ornate. Enough talk ... now for the pictures! Remember this is a sneak peak ... which means that these are process photos ... showing you the work I have been doing which includes, painting, printing and planting mostly.




Before:
Ikea frames I have been wanting for years now but never could justify more than one since I don't really have a real home to decorate. Now they are mine! YAY!


During: Priming the original black ... lots of nooks & crannies!

After: Ta-Da! Navy blue with a little antique white dry-brushing ...
we had to trim the canvas to fit the oval because of course Ikea can't make a standard oval dimension ... sheesh. Had fun picking the font (trying to match the invitation font) and trying to get it to look just right. Also had fun (read the sarcasm here) printing the individual letters as large as I could ... then ironed on the letters one at a time so they would overlap!



Before: My dad had these sweet gilted frames up in the attack that he had rescued from the dumpster at work. Can you believe people were just throwing these away?! The red and gold was not working for us though ... so I got to priming again.


During: Primer ... again.

After: Two frames done in the same way as the Ikea frames. They turned out really well!


After (again): This is how one of the frames will be used. Printed the sign at OfficeMax for $3! That of course is without mounting, which I will do myself. I will mount it to foamcore that my dad also rescued from the dumpster at work! YAY!


My beautiful map ... I don't want to give away all the fun ... so I will tell you about this after the wedding (for those that won't be there)



Succulent Lovelies: I potted all these succulents (they are desert plants in the cactus family) in vintage milkglass that I had scouted out in thrift stores. I really like how they turned out. No two are the same really ... different plants in different arrangements in different vases or bowls. These are the table center pieces which will have navy table cloths.

SO THERE IS YOUR SNEAK PEAK! HOPE YOU ARE AS EXCITED AS I AM TO SHARE OUR WEDDING ... EITHER ON SEPTEMBER 5TH OR AFTER ON MY BLOG!

P.S. Don't panic if you have not received your invitation ... they haven't been sent yet (EEKKK - i know miss manners is shaking her finger at me ... we are having a printer issue ... should go out next week I hope!!)

5 comments:

Em said...

Emily Post claims you assemble and send your invitations 6-8 weeks in advance and she is probably right for non-LDS culture. Remember, you are dealing with a tribe of very flakey people who do not really understand party etiquette (for example you will search far and wide before you'll find a Mormon who faithfully RSVPs, especially if they AREN'T attending). Therefore, sending your invitations three weeks in advance is perfectly appropriate, because it needs to be early enough that they don't make other plans for that night but close enough to the date that they actually remember. So...get on it but don't feel like a terribel person because you haven't already finished it. Its neat that you have a decorating vision -- my vision tends to be more of what I emphatically don't like. We received quite a bit of that and as a result our walls are barren and our garage is well decorated.

Darby Family said...

Bethany I am very impressed on your homemade wedding decor. It looks very professional. I'm sure it is going to turn out beautiful.

heather said...

Oh boy! I love it all so far! Very cute and I can't wait to see the rest! HOpe all goes smooth until then. ;)

Lis said...

Love, love, loooooooove the succulents for the tables!!

Chelsi Ritter said...

wow bethany i wish we could be there to see all the creativity at your reception! it's so cool that you're doing so much of it yourself; you're very talented! it makes things so much more meaningful that way. when eric and i got married my boss said we could use her beautiful backyard for our reception. the catch was that we had to sod it first. it took us forever and it was a lot of hard work, but it cheap is free, and it was worth it. plus it was fun doing something like that together, and it's such a great story. anyway, i can't wait to see the photos afterward!!!