Love Story Save the Dates

For our save the dates, I wanted to do something more personalized than just a postcard with a date or a photo. I had seen examples on Etsy of Love Story Save the Dates. I took the inspiration and ran with it. The end result was fun and different. It gave guests, who may not have known, insight into our love story.

I'm sure there are many amazing programs that are better suited for a project like this. But I'm a girl that likes to stick with Word. It's simple and user-friendly, at least to me. 

I knew I wanted a long skinny look. So I started by picking out the envelopes at Michael's. Each pack of envelopes was originally $5. They were 40% off, and after my teacher discount of 15%, I got them for $2.54 each. 

The dimensions of the envelope dictated my margins in Word. You want to make sure that guests don't have to wrestle with the cardstock to get it out. I adjusted my margins so my usable area was 4" wide and used regular 8.5 x 11" cardstock that I had laying around the house. 

Our Vintage Country Wedding

I'm so sorry that I haven't posted in what seems like forever. I got caught up in wedding projects, then came the wedding, then after the wedding seemed like "phew, I need a break!" Now I'm back. And I want to share some photos of the wedding with you all.

Ryan and I paid for the wedding ourselves. Neither of us make a ton of money, but we were creative, included as much DIY as possible, and had help from tons of amazing friends and family. 

We had bought our dream home in January (a screaming deal!). Twenty-two beautiful acres in Northern California. After looking around at outrageously expensive wedding venues, we thought "Why not just do it at our place?" Instead of paying several thousand dollars to rent someone else's barn, we could put that money into building a barn of our very own. 

So we did. A high school friend of Ryan's has a family-owned construction company. He came up to take a look at our place. He asked if we were sure we didn't want to just do a metal barn - it would be cheaper. We told him that we were set on a pole barn with a tin roof. Just like they would have built 50 years ago. 

In true procrastinator's style, barn construction began in the second week of March, the wedding date was the second week of April. Cutting it close!

The flowers turned out beautiful! I actually have a friend that teaches a floral arrangement class at a local charter school. She offered to have her students do all of our flower arrangements for free. We just paid for the flowers wholesale through one of her contacts. It was a life saver!

We kept the attire comfy casual. The guys wore pressed wranglers and vests. The girls wore sundresses and cowboy boots. Pretty low budget. I'll break down the cost in another post.

We filled mason jars with true homemade Apple Pie Moonshine for favors. The real deal. If you've never had it, it's ridiculously good! Most people broke into their favors early, which made for a lot more people shaking it on the dance floor.

Be my bridesmaid? {Free Printable}

I'm engaged y'all! Which means...there will be lots of wedding projects coming your way. We're planning this wedding on a very tight budget. It's going to be a very merry DIY wedding. We plan on recruiting help from all those we love around us. First up, the bridesmaids.

I put together these cards to ask my girls to be my bridesmaids. Of course, I had to let them know what they'd be signing up for. So I came up with this list of duties. It just so happens to rhyme. Don't judge.

I tried to give the list an ombre effect. So despite what some may think, my printer was not running out of ink. To download the free printable, click here.

DIY Bride's Survival Kit

Ryan and I are heading to Vegas tomorrow, for my best friend Stacey's wedding! I wanted to put together a little kit for her before we left. One never knows what kind of last minute emergency will arise while the bridal party is getting ready, which makes a little kit like this a relief to have around. It turned out to be really easy and fun to make.

I started with a red tin lunchbox (leftover from a store-bought hot cocoa kit) and used double-stick tape  to hold the paper on the front. Isn't that second font amazing? It's called JFRingmaster and you can download it here.

I brainstormed for things a gal might need on her wedding day while getting ready: all those little just-in-case items, things she might need and didn't think to grab. I put together a list and hit the store. The shopping was pretty easy. A lot of the items can be found in the travel size section.

I posted the list of items inside the lid, so that she can easily see exactly what's in there without having to dig through it all. Not that bride's are ever crunched for time. :)