WW #4

Today's Wedding Wednesday photo is a guest photo that features the ambience of our candle lit tables and our mini wine bottle favors/escort "cards".

<3 Ashley

Wedding Wednesday #3

It's that time of the week again folks! Today's wedding photo is another one of my favorites {one of our 1st looks}. Oh, who am I kidding? Every single one of them are "one of my favorites". 

If you're still debating whether or not to do one, let me just tell you, it really does wonders to help to calm those nerves. And, no it didn't take a single thing away from my moment walking down the aisle.

I'd seriously consider it if I were you, plus the images are priceless.

<3 Ashley

Hike up your skirts ladies it's Wedding Wednesday

The photo I'm sharing with you today is one of my absolute favorite photos from the wedding. First, because it's beautiful. But, also because it captured the feeling of the day. It was taken just after the ceremony. Frank and I snuck off for a quiet moment together and to cool off in the A/C {hence the hiked up skirt}before pictures. Plus, it features my "something blue", my hand dyed crinoline. 

<3 Ashley

Wedding Wednesday

I henceforth declare every Wednesday "Wedding Wednesday" {oh yea, I have that kind of power...around here anyways}.

I will share a favorite wedding photo from our rustic chic wedding. 

And,

if I'm feeling really ambitious,we might have a little story time to go with it!

Todays photo:

I'm still absolutely in love with this ring dish I purchased from this etsy shop. In fact, looking at this picture reminds me that I should dig that bad boy out of the garage and put it out somewhere that I can see it everyday. 

You should head on over to Wise Impressions and check out her array of beautiful dishes and very reasonable prices. Who needs a traditional ring pillow when you can have one of these?

**Note: I just noticed that she is closed until Sept 1st {bummer}. But, she's definitely worth "favoriting" and going back to check out once she reopens in Sept. So do that, ok?

<3 Ashley

another beaut from SMP

So I realize I may say this a lot, but I'm going to say it again. 

What's not to love about this wedding featured on 

Style Me Pretty today?

I. mean. seriously?

**All photos from Style Me Pretty /Austin Warnock Photography**
***Click photos to enlarge***

I think the programs are so cute, even though I may be partial to paddle fan programs...

and

Her dress is gorgeous. Just gorgeous. 

Sometimes I wish that I would have gotten a dress with lace, 

but I loved my dress.

I love the idea of having several smaller cakes. 

If we didn't do cupcakes, we so would have done this.

Love that bunting covered wagon.

 AND it was in a barn. Be still my heart...

Inspired? 

Visit Style Me Pretty to read all about this gorgeous wedding!

<3 Ashley

our wedding DIY projects

I wanted to share a few images of our my (let's face it, I was the one burning my fingers with hot glue and feeding paper through the printer, not the mister, mmmmkay?) DIY projects from our rustic chic wedding. 

First up, the dress...

KIDDING

This photo features a wire name hanger I made for shots of the dress. I also made one for my maid-of-honor.

The garter.
I bought an inexpensive white garter, snipped the ribbon bow off of it and hot glued on handmade rosettes.

The programs. I designed them in power point, printed them on our computer, glued them onto a large popsicle stick, and tied ribbon around the handle. These really came in handy in the chapel which was not air conditioned. Seriously!

Lemonade stand.
We got married on the HOTTEST day of the year. No lie. I planned to have a lemonade stand to help my guests cool off. I designed the sign in Word, printed it and framed it. The drink urns were from Walmart, and the table cloth was bought on clearance at Target. 

Dyed crinoline.
I dyed my crinoline in the washing machine using RIT dye.
It was my something blue.

Our cupcake tower.
I bought the stand from Cupcake Tree and decorated it with kraft paper and yellow ribbon. The cupcake wrappers were made out of paper doilies. I handmade the burlap flowers strewn on the table. {They are available in my etsy shop} I also handmade the burlap sign hanging behind the table, it reads "Love is Sweet" {awwww}.

The menus were designed in Word and printed on our home printer onto brown paper bags. There was a note on the bottom suggesting guests take cupcakes home in the bags. I'm pleased to say many of them did do that!

I designed the place cards in word as well; each had a silhouette of a boy or a girl.

The burlap table runners were painstakingly cut the night before by my maid-of-honor and myself.

Our "Guest Book" was a love note station where guests could leave notes/advice/memories and pin them up for us to read later. I made the chalkboard out of an old frame.

Our wedding favors were mini wine bottles bottled by a friends father-in-law. I hung shipping tags on them so that they also served as escort cards. The chalkboard was another I made out of an old frame from Goodwill.

I stenciled the Just Married sign onto burlap and it was hung with twine.

I'm so pleased with how all of my DIY projects turned out. All of the hard work, and maybe a few tears, really paid off beautifully. 

<3 Ashley

our wedding...

I am still anxiously awaiting all of our wedding photos, but our photographers have been so kind as to drop us a little teaser every once in a while...ya know, to build the anticipation even more! Please check out a video montage, if you will, put together by our photographers at Capture Life Moments Photography.

<3 Ashley

Our Invitations

Let's start from the outside and work our way in, shall we?

Envelopes:

I love, love, love Kraft paper. I think it is so very chic and can be dressed up or down. Casually elegant, so to speak ;) 

The font used for the printing of the addresses is called "Jane Austen" and I downloaded it from dafont.com. I wanted the look of handwritten calligraphy, but I don't have the handwriting for it and obviously wasn't going to pay someone to do it. Did you know people still do that? Yea. And the cost is outrageous...your first born...or something like that.

Postage:

Yea, I'm one of those nuts. I took an invitation to the post office a couple weeks before I mailed them out to pick out my postage. It was actually kind of fun, the lady at the counter got really excited about helping me pick out my wedding postage. I ended up paying $.04 more an invitation to mail them out just so that I didn't have to put a George Washington stamp on my envelopes :)We ended up with two "Wedding stamps" with white roses and "herb" postcard stamps for the response envelopes. I think the "herb" stamps look really beautiful with the Kraft paper.

Pocketfold:

I decided to go with a pocketfold style invitation because I just didn't like the look of a bunch of inserts stacked on top of each other and shoved into an envelope. No offense if that's your style or choice, but this is just how I preferred it.

I used this tutorial to make my own pocketfolds out of the Kraft cardstock. It was actually super simple and I loved that this particular tutorial only called for one sheet of cardstock per pocketfold.

I tied the yellow/white bakers twine around the pocketfold to keep it closed. I decided to have this be the only color in the invitation after a vistaprint fiasco when my first invitation design arrived at my doorstep looking brown rather than grey {our colors were grey and yelllow}. 

Inserts:

I printed the actual invitation and all of the inserts from my printer at home and designed them in powerpoint. 

The font used throughout the invitations is called "Traveling Typewriter" and is used throughout all of our wedding stationary (programs, favor tags, etc).

I made the map on the back of the direction card using this technique and Word. It was kind of tedious, and it didn't turn out perfect, but I was happy with it.

RSVP:

Our RSVP card was actually a shipping tag. Shipping tags are a big wedding trend right now and I chose to use them in several other areas of our wedding decor/stationary as well. I printed these on our home computer too. There was lots of trial and error involved in getting them to print straight. Some of the printing was actually kind of crooked, but I think it adds a little charm. 

{you can purchase similar tags which I have fancied up a bit in my etsy shop here}

That's all folks. All the details of my labor of love. I hope you enjoyed them. I realy felt they set the tone of the wedding and clued my guests into the tone beforehand as well.

Stay tuned for more posts with the details of our
rustic chic wedding!

 <3 Ashley