Necklaces

So my other "cost saving technique" is to create necklackes for my bridesmaid and myself. I enjoy beading but lack confidence in doing it well. Sometimes I can put it together and it looks wonderful. Other times, I give up half way through because it doesn't look like what I wanted, in my mind.

I found these necklaces that I want to try and duplicate. I've bought some beads but haven't tried putting it together. The first two are for the bridesmaids and the last one is for me.

Hairstyles

With the wedding approaching in about 5 weeks, I need to figure out what to do with my hair. I haven't hired any stylist and don't have plans to do so. Because it's a casual wedding, I convinced myself that the expense wasn't worth it. I may be changing my mind.

My fine, straight blonde hair doesn't hold a bit of curl. I don't want a fancy up-do since it's a beach wedding and I lack talent in styling hair. I found two hairstyles that I liked and thought were easy to do (or find a friend to do).

Luckily, I was mentioning this to one of my bridesmaid and she mentioned she has a friend who is a stylist and said we'd all get together (over a bottle of wine or two) and her friend would play with my hair. Good news!




I'm on the fence regarding having a veil or not. A friend got married a couple of years ago on the beach and she had a long veil at the top of her head. With the wind, the veil took on a life of its own whipping around her head. If anything, I will have something short at the bottom of the head. My mom just gave me a great piece that she had on her veil when she got married so I'm going to try and incorporate that into the hairstyle.

I'll keep you posted.

Bridesmaid Dresses

My girlfriend's mom agreed to make the bridesmaid dresses. (See previous post about trying to find dresses). She altered the dress a bit to an A line dress and it looks amazing!! The bouquets I made match great! She's going to finalize the dresses within the next week.





We loved the back of the dress because it's different and will be somewhat sexy.

Total cost of 2 bridesmaid dresses $50

Program Fans

So my fiancee decided we should have a program for our 15-20 minute ceremony. I didn't think we needed one. A friend of mine is getting married about a month after me and saw the following directions for a program fan.

http://www.intimateweddings.com/blog/easy-diy-wedding-programs-tutorial/

We met up and went shopping for all the materials (A2 cards, popsicle sticks, glue). I designed something a bit different than the website directions. We didn't have much information for the wedding ceremony so I put a photo of us on the front and the agenda for the ceremony around the photo. On the back is a list of everyone involved in the bridal party.

I'm working on trying to add some color. I got ribbon and tried just about everything with it and liked none of it. We may just end up with something plain but I think it still looks good (for the 15 minutes people will actually use it!)

Table Signs

When we visited with our wedding planner at the resort, we said we'd just use their table signs. I came up with a super cheap option instead that fit our beach theme better.

I got the picture from online Microsoft clip art and selected "photo's" and "starfish" and the option above was available. I simply created a Word document with an appropriate size (4 1/2 x 5 1/2 is what I chose) and then added the numbers in the corner. I printed two copies on card stock paper and then cut them out and glued them together so both sides show the same picture and table number.

Beach themed table signs!

Bridal Bouquets

I have been remiss in posting to the blog. I feel I've accomplished a lot over the past couple of months.

I knew I wanted to save cost with the flowers. It seemed a complete monetary waste with real flowers and have them die within a week. I've always been a potted plant person anyhow because they last longer.

I spent a bit of time trying to find flowers that I liked that I thought looked real and that I could arrange nicely. Below is the bridesmaid bouquets. Total cost for both was $20.38



My bridal bouquest was a total of $14.31. I think they both came out nice!

Bridesmaid Dresses

My two girlfriends (Jasmin & April) and I have been attempting to find bridesmaid dresses for a while now without much luck. We all agreed we didn't want the 'traditional' bridesmaid dress. It seems no matter which bridal store, all the dresses had the same boring cut. And I didn't want them spending a lot of money on a casual wedding. Both girls prefer shopping online so we gave that attempt but we ran into problems where we liked a dress but when it came in the fabric was too casual or their sizes weren't available.

We finally gave in and did a day of shopping at one of our local (larger) malls. We hit the department stores but couldn't find anything we liked. I like the color purple but don't think like royal purple or pastel purple. I have a color I call 'sunset purple' which is the color of the clouds around sunset time. It's kind of a gray, blue, purple but no one seems to have this color. I told Jasmin and April they could pick another color they both liked because I could incorporate my color in a small way.

At the end of the day, we gave up and Jasmin offered to have her mom make a dress for her and April. This way they could pick a pattern they liked and then we could shop for colors. April liked the idea. Luckily, all that happened fairly quickly.

I've attached the pattern and we plan to do the knee length dress. I attached a color swatch from Joanns for the fabric we picked out as well, which they call delphinium. Not quite the 'sunset purple' but we all agreed on the color.