In her blog, Meg from A Practical Wedding talks about DIT (do-it-together) instead of DIY (do-it-yourself). I like this term, because why should brides slave over projects themselves, anyway? It makes sense to have our loved ones help and make it a collective experience. I mentioned in my last post that I'm now focusing on making our own wedding vision happen. Now that we're just five months out from the wedding, it's time to do just that. I'm not going crazy with it and am limiting myself to just a few things I'd really like to create for our wedding. But I won't be doing these projects myself! I'll have the help of my wonderful and willing fiance as well as my mom. Here are the projects we're planning to attempt together:
1. Invitations, etc.
Steve and I are designing and printing our own invitations. I'll have a lot of posts about this coming up, but we want them to fit the cran-lemon color scheme, be a little whimsical and simple enough to handle the printing ourselves! We're also going to design and print the escort cards, menus, and programs. I know it's going to be a lot of work but I'm looking forward to spending quality time with Steve as we tackle it together. We've already started designing the invites and I think they'll turn out great!
2. Favors
My mom and Steve will help me with this one. We haven't completely figured this out yet but we know we want them to be edible, and hopefully seasonal. Here are some ideas I've found:
We could use pictures of places we've traveled together, or some of our engagement shots...
I don't think we'll have the time/desire to bake our own cookies, so I doubt we'll do this...but the packaging is cute!
If we got boxes like these, we could fill them with all sorts of things...
3. Pumpkin Decor
I love pumpkins, and since we're having a fall wedding, they'll definitely make an appearance. When I saw this centerpiece idea on Once Wed, I knew I wanted to incorporate it somewhere. These little white pumpkins are adorable and if I decide not to use real flowers, I could get faux ones or even paper flowers. Instead of using these as centerpieces on the tables, I'd use them on the escort card table and/or gift table. I've already talked to my mom about getting these pumpkins so we'll work on this one together!
4. Ties
My mom loves to sew and she offered to make the ties for Steve and the groomsmen! We're going to bring the swatch of our bridesmaid dress color to the garment district in NYC to find a silk or other appropriate fabric that goes well with it. I haven't talked too much about what Steve and the other guys will be wearing, but they'll wear black suits and ties. Picking out the fabric should be fun and I'm grateful that my mom has offered to help!
5. Aisle Runner
If we have time, we might make our own aisle runner. Funnily enough, Steve's the one who wants this! When we saw pictures of previous weddings at our venue, we noticed that for the outside ceremonies, they used a carpet for the aisle. Since it doesn't seem that hard to create our own runner, we might do it.
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That's basically it! Like I said, we're not tying to tackle TOO much, and this is already a lot. The paper products are going to take the most time so now that I'm done with graduate school (!!), Steve and I are going to get started on them right away.
What projects are you working on? Are you planning to do-it-together with your fiance and family members?
Love the pumpkins :)
ReplyDeleteAs for the aisle runner, I'm curious. Do you plan to do it yoursel...(I mean together ;)) to coordinate with your colors, or to save money? Have you priced them at Micheal's, because they're cheap there, and with a 40% off coupon they're even cheaper. No idea about the quality of them, but I might get mine there.
All of these are great projects to work on together! I especially love the pumpkin escort/guestbook table centerpieces. My fiance is a huge help with most of my DIY projects. But a lot of the times, he gets home from work much later than I do, so I end up tackling a large portion of them myself. I love being crafty, so it's therapeutic to me, but it's definitely more fun when he's helping out!
ReplyDelete@amberdawn: if we make an aisle runner, I definitely want to spend as little money as possible! I'll have to check out Michael's for sure...if we don't end up making one, I don't think we'll buy one so we'll just go without.
ReplyDelete@PartyPlannerGal: I feel like I'll end up doing a lot of this myself, because Steve does have a busy schedule. But since he's willing to help, he'll do so when he can! He's already helped me with our preliminary invitation design :o)
That pumpkin centerpiece is adorable! Love it!! :-)
ReplyDeleteMy invites were done by a friend that I met on Twitter. I will probably do my own STDs, and programs.
ReplyDeleteI'm still mulling over some sort of favor (as you know). I'm still not totally sold on the idea.
I have many offers for help on projects and hope to have help to get through some of them....I am just soo picky and critical I am afraid to have people help me sometimes!
ReplyDeleteProjects done: The save-the-dates and the invitations were both DIT.
ReplyDeleteWhat's left? The programs (will probably be DIY, but I think they'll be simple enough), the table names (I think himself will be doing those), the seating display (DIT, because I know I'll stress out over it), oh, and I think I'm going to bake cookies for out out of town bags (although assembling them will definitely be DIT). I think that's plenty of projects to keep us busy over the next couple of months . . .