Travel Bags for the Maids!

So I lied again. Invitations are not my next post because I have yet to take pictures of them all completed.

Instead I will feature the lovely (if I do say so myself) travel bags that I send to my Maids.

(mainly because one of my lovely maids, VM, already took a photo of hers and posted it online, thanks lady!)

Here they are:

{If you are wondering about the double monogram it is because VM is ultra-chic and has a hyphenated last name...which her husband also took as his last name. Swanky, right?}

I filled the bags with finds from the travel section at Target, and attached that little bow with a safety pin, in case it was not everyone's preferred style (and for easier washing).

I also attached the little poem to the upper right hand handle that said:

"Because you are a maid and friend,

One that is amazing and oh so dear,

I decided to show my thanks and send

These travel treats to get you here!

{Wisconsin that is}

Enjoy!"

{It's no Whitman, but I think it got the point across :)}

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I have been showered!

This last weekend I headed up to Virginia for a lovely bridal shower thrown by my FSIL and Maid Haley:

{all photo credits to people other than me, since I forgot my camera}

There is a lovely write up courtesy of my friend Jessica on her blog, so I am just going to share a couple of my favorite pictures and my feelings on the day.

I'm not gonna lie, I was a little apprehensive about this shower. Don't get me wrong... I love bridal showers! But, I have never been the one getting showered.

Besides, the part I was most worried about was opening up gifts in front of people. I haven't done that since I was probably ten years old at a birthday party and was having irrational worries {What will I say?? If I keep saying thank you is that redundant?? or sufficient??} I braved the concerns though and have to say that I had so much fun and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It was so wonderful to be surrounded by all of that love, especially from some guests who I hadn't been able to see in so long! The entire day I simply felt so blessed to have such gracious and {seriously} generous people in my life who are genuinely excited for us to embark upon our married life. So I just want to take a second to say thank you to all of you who made me feel so loved, including those who were with me in spirit though they couldn't be there in person.

Here are a few pics!

{The lovely ladies Jessica and Haley}

{The proof of my seriously generous friends}

Yay! I am starting to feel like a real bride!

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Once upon a time...

...I promised you a post about envelope liners from our Maids & Men cards.

Here it is.

To be perfectly honest, I was kind of oblivious to envelope liners before the wedding blog world. I did realize that some envelopes were lined and some were not, but not that you could make your own!

Once I saw this tutorial over on With This Ring, I was pretty much hooked and set off on a quest for the perfect navy and white paper for liners.

I headed to Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and even a few local craft and scrapbooking stores. What did I find? Nothing. Not a single navy and white patterned paper!

After reflecting in disappointment for a few days, I started thinking...why not print my own paper?

So I did.

I opened my favorite program throughout this process, Microsoft Publisher, and simply created a box that would be the right size for my envelope liners, on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.

Then I simply created a vertical line, with the line drawing tool, and opened the formatting options. I changed the color to the same navy blue as the rest of the card design, and bumped up the style and the weight.

Once I formatted the line the way that I liked, I simply copied and pasted it in a repeating pattern across the box, and made sure to let the lines bleed over the box a little bit. I also made sure to center my first line so that it would hit right at the point of the envelope flap.

I simply printed enough copies right onto normal printer paper and then followed the steps from the envelope liner tutorial.

Finished product looked preppy and clean, which was exactly what I wanted, and cost nothing besides printer ink and paper!

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So, it has been a week -

Since my last post.

I am a bad bride.

Sorry.

In the mean time...

My ladies are now ordering their dresses {yay!}, and I made the trip with my only local maid, here is proof of our trip:

{though this looks close to Navy, it isn't...do not be fooled, K also won my mostfavoritepersonintheworld award that day because she brought me that skinny vanilla latte you see in my happy, happy hand.}

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Dressing the Men

Pretty soon I will introduce you to the lovely people who will be wearing these fabulous clothes, but until then...let's talk about what the men will be wearing.

Ready for a shocker? {she asks with a raised eyebrow}

Tuxes!

Yes, the men will be wearing tuxedos - traditional, classic, tuxedos.

After a recommendation from a couple of people, we decided to head to Men's Wearhouse while we were in Wisconsin to talk over our tux options. I thought it would take a while, we would have the FH put some on, try some variations, etc.

Boy, was I ill-informed.

Just like every other part of this wedding related to men folk, we were in and out in about 15 minutes. Our consultant was super helpful - and very stylishly dressed, might I add - and the decisions were made in no time at all.

Without further ado, the tuxedos that we are going with:

These are the Ralph Lauren Three-Button Super 100's Notch Lapel.
The Super 100's part refers to the weight of the wool, which means that these tuxes will be really lightweight and the best option for men standing out in the heat and hopefully the sunlight.

The vest in this closeup is actually the one that the FH will be wearing at the reception. The tie, if you look closely has stripes on it, and I am not all about mixing patterns, so it will be solid {in his case white} as will the rest of the men's ties {a long tie, not bow tie, much to the dismay of my childhood dreams of a Great Gatsby, white-tie wedding}.

He will be wearing his dress white uniform for the ceremony, but since that thing is white - and so dang expensive - we are not going to chance food or wine being spilled on it while dancing. Therefore, the groom will be a two outfit groom, while I will be a one outfit bride. Ha!

Speaking of uniforms, both of our fathers also served in the military for many years, and we struggled for a while whether or not to have them wear their uniforms, or wear tuxes. Ultimately, we went in favor of the comfort factor and decided that tuxes would be int he best option. Their vests will be in the same pattern as the rest of the men, but in black as shown below, again with the solid black tie.

The groomsmen will be wearing navy vests in the same pattern. I was really nervous about the whole navy and black combo deal, and almost insisted on black vests for everyone, but our consultant assured us that it would be beautiful...and now I believe him. They will wear the vest below, with a solid blue tie {in Marine, which is exactly the color of the bridesmaids dresses}.

{a closeup of the pattern, which is thankfully, subtle and will help the blue and black look smashing together}

Have all of your guy-related choices taken no time at all like ours? Why do they get out so easy?

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Dressing the Maids

Shortly after asking all of my lovely ladies to be a part of the big day - and hearing a resounding yes - we started the bridesmaid dress speculation.

I knew that since we are getting married in July, and I will have them traipsing all over for photo ops in the heat that really does exist in Wisconsin summers, we would go with something short.

One of the favorites off the bat was this Jim Hjelm lovely

{I love pockets on a dress! If my dress wouldn't look ridiculous with pockets, I would pay whatever the amount to have them put in. Seriously.}

While everyone loved this dress, we were not all in love with the around $300 price tag.

Fast forward to Christmas. While hanging out with my sister, and MOH, one day we decided to head over to David's Bridal - one of the only wedding wear vendors in Chippewa Falls - to try on some dresses, just to see.

I wasn't really that confident that we would find anything that we would like. {Also, I was secretly hoping not to find anything so that I could start lobbying for J.Crew}

But much to my surprise, we found this little lovely from their new spring line

Cotton sateen, not taffeta, but the same general shape, and hey, it even has pockets!

Of course it will be in Navy, or "Marine" as David's has named it, just like this picture

The dress on the left comes in the same fabric, and to be honest, I am fine with the ladies choosing either one. These dresses come at a much more cost friendly $135.

Another point for these dresses is that we decided to go with Men's Warehouse for our tuxes who recently took over David's tux line, so the vests will exactly match the dresses. While we didn't plan it out that way it will sure be nice that everything will coordinate well :)

My lovely maids have been running around their respective cities snapping photos of themselves in fitting rooms with the dresses on, and I think we have a winner.

What do you all think?

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Maids and Men Cards: How to

While the cards may have seemed almost self-explanatory for other crafters out there...I thought it would be fun to break down the steps, and cost, of the cards from asking our Maids and Men.

First up was the card itself:

After much deliberation on what colors and types of cards to do, {and Austin pleading desperately with me to go to any other store besides Hobby Lobby and Michaels -sidenote: have you ever noticed there is no apostrophe in Michaels? So is it plural Michaels? rando. sorry} I decided that crisp white cards would be the best to build on from there.

I bought one of those Value Packs of cards and envelopes from Michaels for a whopping $5.99 for 50. We would only need 16...by far the most cost effective way to do a card, in my opinion, since I did not have to buy envelopes separately and all of the card stock was pre-cut. I bought the navy cardstock and vellum on the other hand at "The Lobby" as it is affectionately called around our house, for about $5.

After coming home with cards in tow, I measured them and figured I would leave about a 1/4 inch border of white, then do a 1/4 inch border of the blue, and then 1/4 inch in from that would be the photo and vellum.

It is important to remember though, if you are doing something like this with the ribbon at the top, do every other step first, before adhering anything to the card, or you will have to punch through to the inside of the card...and unless you have a long handled puncher you are in for some creative solutions...

So, we took the photo ourselves {camera with a self timer is imperative} and then I imported it to my computer where I used Picasa 3 to edit it.

If you have not heard of it, Picasa is powered by Google and is a free downloadable photo editing program. It is pretty basic, but I love it for quick fixes and it helps keep things really organized on your hard drive. It also interfaces really easily with Blogspot and Their Online Web Albums.

So, I cropped and sepia toned the photo to look copper-ish and then imported it into one of my favorite programs, Microsoft Publisher.

I know, I know, it is not fancy. But, I am of the personal opinion that with a few other small tools Microsoft Publisher and PowerPoint are some of the most easily usable design programs out there, and let's face it...most of us already have it. So I use them a lot.

I created a few pages in Publisher {it helps with my organization to be able to have multiple pages and save all aspects of a program in one file}. The first was the photo, and the next was a box with the wording for the vellum overlay.

I printed and trimmed both to the same size and then used an adhesive roller to attach the photo to the navy card stock. I used some removable glue dots that I had lying around to position the vellum on top of the photo, and then used your everyday hole punch to punch the ribbon holes.

I used white grosgrain ribbon that I found at The Lobby for 99 cents for a roll. I then tied a simple square knot and cut the edges and adhered the whole shebang to the front of the white card.

Card Cost Breakdown:

Cards and Envelopes...........................................$1.92 (for 16)
Cardstock and Vellum (8 Sheets of each)....................$5.00
Ribbon...................................................................$0.99
Total.....................................................................$7.91
Total per card........................................................$0.49

Not too shabby for 16 cute cards and the envelopes! Of course I did not factor in ink, adhesives, or regular computer paper, as I had them all already, but still pretty durn cost effective.

::whew:: That was a long explanation, but it is a relatively simple project, I swear. Next up, easy breezy envelope liners!

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Maids and Men

Though I haven't heard from a couple of them yet, I am going to go ahead and reveal how we asked our bridal party to join us! {I will wait for introductions to the party as a whole until we hear from everyone, but a tutorial will be coming soon too! :) }

We deliberated for a long time on how to do this...and then we decided, hey, why not DIY it?

Remember that Sneak Peek I gave you a couple weeks ago??? Well that was a peek at our "Will you be our..." cards!

Here are some better photos:

The "suite" as a whole

We used the same card for bridesmaids, groomsmen, MOH and Best Man.
The ladies got the bottle of champagne {plus some poppers!} and the men got the cigars*

Here is a closeup of the front of the card, and the self-made envelope liners

The inside said:

"but there is nothing that we would love more

than to have you celebrating with us at the finish line.

Will you be our {blank}?"

{Yes, those are really our feet, and please, please, ignore the grammar mistake on the front if you noticed it...the comma just did not look right with the change in font.}

The card in the envelope, as shown before

and a quick seal I whipped up...thanks Xyron!

A closeup of the champagne bottle label...thanks again trusty Xyron

The label is the same image of our feet, washed out, and a definition of the word "celebrate"...we had originally intended on making cigar labels that looked similar for the men, but ultimately decided not to...as the boys would probably not care :)

*I had a couple of ladies out of town, and found out that you cannot mail alcohol, whoops. So then I thought, "Hey! I will just send the poppers, good idea!" Just Kidding. Those are also illegal to mail. In the end I sent them a champagne glass, with a picture of their champagne bottle that is awaiting them the next time we see each other.

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