Recycled Wedding Invitation Ornament

Wondering what to do with your extra wedding invitations? Or need a Christmas gift for a newlywed? Here's one idea.

One night I was going through my DIY Ideas board on Pinterest and making a list of what I would need to actually make some of the crafts I had pinned. When I came across this invitation ornament, I realized I already had everything I needed and got started right away. I was finished in about an hour.

All you have to do is cut the invitation into strips, curl each strip, and put them inside an empty glass ornament. If you have an X-Acto knife, you can use that for the cutting and then curl the strips around the handle (after removing the blade of course).

Nathan was a little disturbed when he saw me cutting up our wedding invitation, but I assured him it was okay since we still had a bunch of them. Then he reminded me we had gotten rid of all the extras and that was the only one we had left. Oops. Good thing I still have the original files and extra paper.

I realized I never actually blogged about my wedding invitations, so here's what they looked like before I mutilated them.

I actually cut up the entire suite, but I ended up just using the strips from the invitation and a few of the more interesting ones from the other pieces. The ornament was plenty full.

It fits right in with all the other mismatched ornaments. Our tree looks mostly the same as it did last year.

I wanted to buy one new Hallmark ornament this year, and we picked out Tom and Jerry.

Another change is that we're using Bob and Larry as our tree topper this year. Maybe someday I'll buy or make a real tree topper, but it's kind of fun to decide what to put on top as we're decorating it.

Did you do anything with your wedding invitation?

Our Wedding Album

 

Look what we finally have!

Since all we wanted from our photographers was a CD of the original photos, sorting and editing the photos and designing the layout for the album were all my job. I would not recommend this route to anyone unless you don't care that much about how your photos look or you're really good at Photoshop. I'm only kind of good at Photoshop, and I couldn't get the photos to the level I wanted them.

We ordered our book from Adorama. You can use the online tool they have to design your album, or you can use your own design program and export the pages as jpegs. I created my layout in InDesign, then uploaded the jpegs of each page on Adorama's album maker tool. They have a "fit to page" button that allows you to quickly insert the pages.

The main reason I chose Adorama was their Leporello binding system. Every spread of the album lies almost completely flat, so it's great for two-page photos. From Adorama's website: "Unlike other lay-flat systems which use two separate pieces of paper hinged at the center, every spread in an AdoramaPix book is a single unbroken sheet of premium archival photo paper." 

 
An album like ours (50 page 10"x10") costs $110, but Adorama's albums are often 20% off. We bought ours when we got an e-mail for 40% off. The only downside with Adorama is you're limited to 14, 26, 38, 50, or 76 pages. You can't just pay a little more to add a couple more pages; you have to add a lot more pages.

 
I'm really happy with how it turned out!


How long did it take you to get your wedding album?

What to Do with Greeting Cards: My DIY Wedding Card Album

What do you do with all the cards you get for your wedding? Up until recently, our cards just sat in the card box we used at our wedding. I suppose you don't have to keep them, but I want to be able to remember those who gave us well wishes for our marriage, especially since some wrote out their own personalized messages.

I had considered getting a couple of these nice greeting card albums but decided against it since we had such a variety of card sizes. One card is too big to fit in a sleeve, and I thought the tall skinny cards would look odd in them. Plus, $48 for the two we would need seemed a little pricey.

I also like how T.K. at My Orderly Chaos cut her cards in half before putting them in her album, saving the inside messages and the nicer fronts.

When I saw this image in an article on Simple Mom about what to do with old cards, I immediately loved the idea. You could put all kinds of keepsakes into an album with just a couple book rings.

This is the album I ended up making:

For the front cover of the album, I created the design in InDesign and included the monogram we used on our invitations. Then I just printed it out on a leftover 6x9 envelope.

I made the front and back covers a little sturdier with a thick piece of cardboard (the backing of a sketchpad) cut in half.

Then I just put the pieces of cardboard in each envelope and sealed it. (Pro tip: If you have self-sealing envelopes, you're supposed to peal the little strip of paper off, not lick it. Not that I would do that or anything.)

I used a two-hole punch to punch all the cards.

I like that you can flip through all the cards and actually feel them, and also that they can be rearranged.

This is one way to make all sides of the card visible. While the backs of most cards are not that interesting, we had one card that was signed on the back since they had written a long message inside. 

One card opens from the top, so I glued it onto a piece of card stock so we could still open it and read it.

I put all of the tiny gift bag cards on their own page by gluing them to a piece of card stock.

The one thing I'm not sure I like is how much the 3" book rings stick out. I wouldn't be able to use shorter rings unless I divide the cards into 2 albums. I might try to find some D-shaped rings or possibly bind it with ribbon. Another disadvantage is that the cards aren't well protected.

Overall, I'm happy with this solution.

What do you do with greeting cards? 

Shared at the Homemaker by Choice blog hop.

Wedding Recaps: The Honorary Flower Girl

Although we didn't think it would be a good idea to have Nenya walk down the aisle, the venue coordinator was nice enough to let her stay in the men's changing room during the wedding so she could be in photos.

When she first saw me the morning of the wedding, she didn't recognize me. She was interested in me, but she didn't get excited and whine like she normally does when she hasn't seen me in a while. After Nathan and I had our first look and we went back inside to take photos with Nenya, he told me to put my hand down for her to sniff, and then the happy moaning began. It was a really great moment. Apparently all the layers of fabric that didn't smell like me threw her off.

The Family

We brought her outside for the family pictures after the wedding as well. She was pretty well behaved, considering how many new people and smells were out there.

But she did manage to get distracted...

And eventually got bored and sick of wearing a bow.

She spent some time with my uncle John, who also took care of her during our honeymoon.

I'm really glad we were able to have her there. As I wrote about previously, Nenya has been a part of our lives almost the entire time Nathan and I have been together, and she's definitely important to us.

Wedding Recaps: The Details

I didn't quite make my goal of finishing the wedding recaps before our 6 month anniversary (which was 2 days ago), but they should be done by the end of this week. Here are a few shots of various details of our wedding day.

This is how the centerpieces looked in action. As small as they were, with a couple votive candles on either side and some scattered silk petals, the tables were as decorated as I felt they needed to be.

There were two corner china cabinets behind our table at the reception, which we filled with photos of Nathan and I at different ages on our respective sides.

One job I did not want to tackle myself was making signs and placing them around the park to direct people to our wedding. Nathan put his brother Tim in charge of them a couple days before the wedding, and he did a fantastic job. He just happened to have some thick poster board lying around that was our wedding color.

For those of you who are planning weddings or will be some day, make sure whatever container you use for cards is a lot bigger than you think it needs to be. I thought our card box would be plenty big for cards, but someone gave us a card that was actually too big to lie down flat inside the box and the corners ended up getting kind of mashed.

If you've looked at photos of our gigantic bouquets and corsages and wondered how much we spent on flowers, it's probably not nearly as much as you think; our final total for flowers was actually a few dollars less than I'd budgeted. I was shocked when I saw how big the bouquets were. Our florist is a friend of Nathan's family, and he wanted to make sure we got our money's worth.

I wore my paternal grandmother's diamond and pearl necklace. It's been worn by several brides in the family, and as I shopped for my dress I thought about how the dresses would look with the necklace. The dress I ended up choosing matched really well.

 

Our hands with our new rings

Wedding Recaps: Eating, Drinking, and a Moderate Level of Merriment

After the ceremony, Nathan and I wanted to take the time to greet each of our guests. We wanted our bridal party to be the first to get in line for the food and not have to stand out in the sun in a receiving line greeting people they'd never met before. Our hope was that we would walk into the reception without any big announcement and find most of our guests already eating.

Well, I don't know if the food wasn't ready yet or if someone decided that we couldn't just sneak in, but we ended up being announced at the reception.  It was unexpected but not the end of the world.

Instead of enjoying the food, our guests were all staring at us, waiting for us to do something.

 And we had no idea what to do.

Nathan said that we just wanted everyone to eat, but it was suggested that we have a prayer first. This was fine, just not something we had planned on doing. Thankfully, the best man was fine with leading a prayer, and then we were all able to eat.

I've heard that some brides don't even get to eat at their own wedding, but Nathan was adamant that I get to eat at our wedding. It's pretty difficult for me to skip meals, so since all I had to eat before the wedding was a bowl of cereal, I don't know how I could have made it through the day without eating at the reception. (Nathan and I did get some Bob Evans at about 9:30 that night too.)

Since we had cupcakes instead of cake, Nathan and I just kind of ripped apart a cupcake.

Of course Nathan ended up with the bigger piece and tried to shove it all into my mouth.

I got some icing on the tip of my nose, so I whispered to Nathan to lick it off. And he did, but no one got a picture. We got plenty of laughs though, and a laughing "Ewww!" from my mom.

Then we enjoyed some sparkling grape juice.

I hope our guests enjoyed the reception even though it ended up being very different from how we planned it. We had a tent set up outside for additional seating, but since it was so hot, everyone crammed inside in the air conditioning. A lot of people left really early, probably because it was a little uncomfortable in there. We had also planned on having dancing under the tent, but since we couldn't get the sound system we'd rented to work, that didn't happen either. Fortunately, my bridesmaids, brother, and cousins were able to find entertainment though since some people had left up a bounce house nearby (I don't have the photos of that, sadly, but they're hilarious).

Our reception at least had one redeeming factor: the FOOD!

Nathan's brother and sister-in-law planned out and prepared (with a little help from various people) all the food for our reception. I was amazed when I saw the results before the wedding. I couldn't believe that was the food for our wedding!

Fruit assortment with dip

Veggies with ranch dip, dill dip, and red pepper hummus

Bacon and cheddar cheesecake

Herb cheesecake

Not pictured: spicy garlic meatballs and sweet barbecue meatballs

I ended up baking all the cupcakes myself and freezing them. Including the trial runs, I probably baked close to 200 cupcakes total. Sister-in-law Betsy came up with the decorating technique. She made all the petals and sugar pecans and shipped them to me before the wedding, and she and our videographer did all the icing and decorating.

If nothing else, our reception was certainly an excellent culinary experience!