Menu and Bar List

Continuing on with my minimalistic designs, here are the menus that will be placed on each plate and two bar list frames that will be placed by the bar.

Partially DIY Guestbook

When I was on bestdestinationwedding.com, I came upon a forum whose topic was guestbooks. Some people were planning on bringing a Fuji Instax Mini 25 camera (a Polaroid-type instant camera) and having people insert their pictures into a guestbook. I thought that was a great idea and immediately started looking for guestbooks that could accomodate these mini pictures.

I didn't see many options. There was one company called Adesso that made guestbooks with clear plastic pockets that fit the photos, but I was iffy on buying their guestbooks because their covers were so plain looking. But I kept their guestbooks in mind as a last resort. Then I went on Etsy and found a vendor who sold custom-made guestbooks, and specifically those for the Fuji photos. They were beautiful and for a time there we were emailing back and forth. After a while though, it became too involved (I had to choose from a bunch of fabric for the cover but I couldn't find one I liked that much) and I gave up on the whole custom-made thing.

I forgot about the guestbook for a while and then realized about a week ago that I was running out of time. So I decided I'd just use the last resort guestbook which was sold by the Adesso company. Wouldn't you know it, they went out of business.

Fortunately, while I was walking around the Paper Presentation store down in the city, I saw some nice fabric-covered guestbooks made by Rag & Bone Bindery. So when I went to pick up my wedding dress in Manhattan last week, I picked up one of their albums that could also be used as a guestbook. I then used the guestbooks from that vendor on Etsy as my model and custom-made the guestbook myself.

I used extra ribbon and decorated the front cover.

Then I stuck on black photo corners into the book so people could just insert their pictures. Here's an example of a picture that we took during our friend Bo and Keith's wedding that I inserted into my guestbook.

When we attended their wedidng in Montreal at the end of April, I saw that they also had a Fuji Instax Mini, but the older version. They had roll on glue next to their guestbook and had guests just paste their pictures into their guestbook. We took two pictures because we didn't like the first one and we just kept the picture we didn't like. Good thing too, because I was able to use the photo to shape the black photo corners.

I also made a sign with a little poem that (hopefully) will encourage people to use the camera and sign the guestbook.

Here's the first page inside:

I think it came out pretty well!!

Hair flower

Etsy is a really cool online store if you want to find funky items, vintage-looking items, handmade items etc. Halfway through my engagement I would spend hours and hours on this site looking for items for the wedding. I found this website through my go-to source bestdestinationwedding.com. And through bestdestinationwedding, I came upon a vendor Mikiye on Etsy who sells her own handmade silk hair flower creations. I bought one two days ago and it arrived today! What great service. Plus it came in a plastic container with a pink bow and personalized thank you note. The flower looks beautiful with Duchess satin petals and Swarovski crystal and rhinestone center.

My DIY Program

The title of this blog should really be: My Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Wedding. I didn't have unlimited financial resources to have things made for me. Invitations, tags, welcome letters, OOT bags, survival kits, pre-travel brochures - I made them all myself. I couldn't afford the really nice designs that I saw online or at the stores. And the ones that I could afford were mediocre at best. So I decided to just make things myself using simple but elegant designs that reflected our tastes.

A great resource for ideas was bestdestinationwedding.com. I could definitely not have done what I've done without this website. A great many ladies on the site did a lot of their own stuff themselves and posted templates. I got a lot of ideas from there and sometimes mixed and matched what people had to make things my own.

An example is my program. After weeks of hemming and hawing, and figuring out how I wanted it to look, I decided upon the minimalistic style. I saw a program that someone posted on bestdestinationwedding that I liked and saw other program samples online. I mixed and matched and made something so simple but I really like it.

I forgot to take a picture but I also added a Pablo Neruda poem in the back which I really love. Pablo Neruda is a Chilean poet and has great love poems. I used his poem Love Sonnet XVII:

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

Love Sonnet XVII

Welcome Letters

When Gregg and I visited his younger brother Kevin in Washington, D.C. (technically, really Alexandria, VA) in March, I was very excited to see an actual Paper Source store.

I was drooling over all the great stuff they had. I couldn't stay too long because I didn't want to bore Gregg and Kevin. But I did get to buy some paper for my welcome letters that I will place inside the OOT bags. Printing them didn't take too long. The twine I used to wrap around it was very difficult to tie, though, so this was yet another time-consuming project.

Maracas!

I also received my maracas last month. I was debating on having favors for the wedding. I already knew I wanted to have maracas for people to shake when they wanted us to kiss. I figured I'd just use the maracas themselves as favors. It also took FOREVER to print out these tags, remove each one from its sheet via their perforations (this was the hardest part because the perforations weren't very perforated at all), and then attaching the tags to each maraca.

Fortunately, my mom, Rich and I all had facials at my apartment last week. So mom helped me out and I finally finished it all that same day.

My OOT Bag and Survival Kit

I have been so busy doing wedding things that I haven't had too much time to update this blog and write about what I've actually been doing.

I received my OOT bags more than a month ago and it took forever, but I finally printed the tags that go with it, removed each (barely) perforated tag from its sheet, and then attached each one to a bag with a ribbon.

I've also printed out and cut to size the tops of my survival kits. Now all I have to do when I get to Isla Mujeres is fill up each biohazard ziploc bag that I got from work with items and then staple the top label to look like this: