Weekend Recap: Part 2

In addition to the wedding projects shown in yesterday’s “Weekend Recap” post, this past weekend we also worked on our ceremony programs and a few other odds and ends. The programs were delivered to my house by our invitation lady on Friday afternoon so I had the chance to see them when I got home that evening!

On Sunday morning I was determined to have the programs started (since we were assembling them ourselves) because I didn’t want to leave my mom with all of those programs not anywhere near finished when I left! The first step was of course to do all of the folding. We ended up only having to print two sheets (printed on both sides of course). We have the main cover page (you'll notice it is printed with our duogram which was also used on our invitation, menu cards, place cards, and specialty signs), an inside page with our names, the location of the wedding and the date/time, two pages dedicated to the ceremony, two pages dedicated to the members of the bridal party, our parents, celebrant, and attendants. The back of our program is printed with a “Thank You” note and our “At Home” address. In the program we’ve also included a dedication of the flowers on the altar (which are dedicated to my late grandfather and M.’s late grandmother) and information about the blusher I will be wearing and the rosary that I’ll be carrying with my bouquet.

So like I said, I started the folding of the 150 programs at around 9:00am and once my sister joined in the folding everything went super fast! While we were folding the programs my mom was creating a small insert to include that would remind guests that our cocktail hour/reception won’t begin until 5:00 pm. The insert also has directions from the church to the club which will be helpful for all of our out-of-town guests!
The next step of the program process was of course the ribbon. My mom had already pre-cut 22.5 inch pieces of ivory satin ribbon so my sister and I started threading the ribbon through the programs. Unfortunately I am left handed and cannot tie very pretty bows, so that task was left to my mom. We all sat at the kitchen table together and worked. By 12:00 pm we had all of the programs threaded with ribbon and many of them were tied too!! My mom also trimmed the tails of the bows on each program so that they wouldn’t be frayed.

My mom found these GREAT trays that will be used to hold the programs at the church and two of my close friends will be handing them out to our guests at the front doors! They’re perfect for the programs because they’re painted the same ivory color and they are lined with a beautiful pale ivory and gold damask pattern! :)

Once the programs were almost complete I had the chance to work on one other small project for our reception. A while back, actually WAYYY back when we first got engaged my mom found these Martha Stewart “Photo Cake Toppers” on sale (I’ll admit it, $2.00 a piece). She scooped them up thinking they would be perfect to hold signs for different details at our reception. Above left you can see what these toppers looked like when you took them straight from the box (**I like C. smiling in the background!**) Actually, the signs are pretty cute, and I guess that Martha intended them to either be used as table number signs (hence the number 4 that was in the frame to begin with) or there were directions on how to make a cute “photo cake topper” for your wedding cake. I actually kept the scalloped edge that she included in the frames because I thought it would be a cute detail for scrapbooking! :)

Well, it turns out my mom made another great decision by purchasing these. Were we going to use them the way Martha wanted us to? – No, not really, but that’s OK! :) We need signs for the two bars in the cocktail hour room (to display our signature drink options), a sign for our guest book table and a sign for outside of the bathrooms so these were perfect!

So how did I change them?! The “Photo Cake Topper’s” base was already covered with white grosgrain ribbon and accented with two little bows, so I decided to leave that part on and just add to them. I painted the tops of the bases with a pale, peachy-pink color so that they’ll match the cardstock used for many elements of our reception (including the cardstock used to print the signs that I designed). I felt like they needed something else so I bought two faux peonies blooms and took the petals apart. I ended up hot-gluing the petals to the base of the stands and I am extremely pleased with how they turned out! Of course faux flowers are NOT something that you want to use in excess because they can definitely start to look “cheap”, but these signs will be nestled in “busy” tables and will just add a little bit of color around the actual sign itself.

I hope everyone has a productive Tuesday! :)