My Wedding DIY's
1. Centerpiece
I was trying to cut costs for the wedding so because flowers can be VERY pricey, I decided not to have flowers as centerpieces. Instead I negotiated with my venue and they allowed me to borrow their hurricane glasses.
I thought about what I could do with these hurricane glasses, which they told me would be placed on a mirror with candles around it.
So after a lot of thought and many trips to Michael's Craft Stores, I came up with the idea of placing decorative beads at the base (in my colors of course!) and submersible LED lights (also in blue!).
I then decided that I could get cheap fake flowers in white, which I would recommend going to the dollar store, and put everything together.
When I put everything together the day before the wedding, I put the beads in the hurricane glass first, then the LED light, then the white flowers. I filled almost to the top with water and added a floating candle. DONE and it only cost me $20. Yay for dollar store crafts! The most expensive thing was the LED lights.
The finished product (minus the floating candle-this was the day before the wedding)
I found a good youtube video showing a similar candle.
2. How I broke in my shoes
Buying wedding shoes, I thought... hmmm how about just flip flops. BUT come on... it was my wedding day and I deserve to be a little GLAM! The problem I find in general is finding shoes that I like that are also in my size since I have such small feet. I generally wear between a 5-6 in women's or a 4 in kids... yes a 4 in kids! I could have had shoes that light up while walking down the aisle, but I thought that wouldn't fit with the traditional church wedding theme. SO I found a pair of shoes online that I LOVED. They were wedges and so I thought hey.. I could dance all night in wedges and they were not that pricey. Boom... ordered!
The day the shoes arrived I was super excited and naturally put them on right away. They fit and I could walk in them just fine, but I noticed after awhile, my toes started to pinch. OH NO! I needed to find a way to make the toe pinch stop. I tried EVERYTHING! I put big socks on and walked around the house while doing chores. I must say.. I think I looked pretty good in sweat pants and fancy shoes as I vacuumed the house, but it didn't help long term. I tried blow drying the fabric as I wiggled my toes, I tried putting water in zip lock baggies and then putting the zip lock baggies in the shoes and then putting the shoes in the freezer overnight. The goal was to stretch the shoe as the ice freezes and expands the toe, but that didn't work.
The day came where I was thinking man I am going to have to find different shoes, but then I found a shoe stretcher. Now I only needed the stretch in the toe. I found these lovely miracles. I stretched the toe out NO PROBLEM. My shoes were super comfy for my wedding day. I am not going to lie though.. they did come off during the reception as I danced like a lunatic, but that was more for coordination purposes.
3. How to make a card box
I wanted a pretty card box for people to put wedding cards in during the reception. I kept finding that these boxes were kinda pricey. The venue would have provided me a box for a charge, but hey... I'm crafty and was determined to figure it out.
I went to Micheal's..OF COURSE.. and found plain cardboard boxes in different sizes in order to have the tiered look.
I put the biggest box at the bottom and cut a rectangular sized hole in the top lid (so when the top box was glued on, the cards could fall to the bottom.) I purchased pretty paper at Michael's and navy blue ribbon (my colors where Navy and Silver). I took my hot glue gun and glued the paper to every side of the big box and the little box. On the top of the bottom box, I cut the paper to fit the hole-again we need those cards to be able to drop down! I then took the top lid and cut a long and thin rectangular slot for the cards to go through and glued the paper to the top matching the hole. Once all of the paper was hot glued on, I hot glued the top box to the bottom.
Then I took the navy blue ribbon and glued the ribbon around the top sections of each box and hot glued pretty flowes to the finished boxes to add an extra detail!
If you are not sensing a theme yet... I am a bargain shopper and place cards were super pricey as well! My goodness, everything seemed to be so expensive and I knew that I could make something that I loved and was exactly what I envisioned.
I went to.. you guessed it.. MICHAEL'S... and bought 8 sheets of card stock paper in navy blue and sparkly silver. They were 12 x 12.
I invested in a paper cutter and scorer, which was all in one. I cut the navy blue paper 4 x 4 inches and scored at 2 inches so it was scored in half. I then cut the silver paper slightly smaller, about 3 x 1 3/4 inches and glued the silver paper to the blue. I bought plain white labels and printed the guest names on the label and TA-DA! Done!
I even did my invitations and designed them and sent them to a printer and put everything together. It saved a lot of money and it was so much fun to do!
