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?

10 Wedding Tips

There was some talk on Weddingbee recently about wedding regrets. I don't like regrets. While there's something to be said for learning from past mistakes, focusing on what you wish you had or hadn't done gets you nowhere. I'm happy with my life, and I feel that every decision I've made, good and bad, has gotten me where I am today. I'd rather not talk about wedding regrets or even think about them. However, I would like to share 10 wedding tips that I learned from my experience.


1. Remember that you're preparing for a marriage, not just a wedding.
This might seem like an obvious one, but in the rush of planning, I constantly had to slow down and remind myself why I was doing all this work. You're entering into a covenant; that's kind of a big deal. Take the time to discuss things like how you'll handle finances, child rearing, your fiance's expectations for marriage, etc. either through premarital counseling or just through discussions with each other. You'll still have a lot of learning to do after tying the knot no matter what, but I felt like our relationship grew quite a bit during our engagement.

2. Only plan a wedding in 6 months if you're willing to make sacrifices.
We had limited options in certain areas. I didn't have time to order a dress from any place other than David's Bridal, and we had to pick a venue within the first few weeks of planning. But by getting married when we did, Nathan wasn't in class during our honeymoon, and I was able to move out of my apartment the month my lease was up. It was the best choice for us, and I definitely don't regret getting married when we did.

3. Don't be ashamed of going on an inexpensive honeymoon.
Nathan gave this an "Amen!" when I read him my list - it's the biggest one for him. Do I hate the "oh" reaction I get when I tell people we went to Cincinnati for our honeymoon? A little bit, yes. But do I wish we had spent more money? Not at all! There's no need to go to some tropical paradise to begin your marriage. I really hate the term "mini moon" and the implication that spending only a few days away is somehow not worthy of being called a honeymoon.

4. Never look at Style Me Pretty.
Okay, you can look at it, but real weddings don't look like that, at least not where I come from. I've never even seen a croquembouche. I was reading several wedding blogs when I first started planning, but Weddingbee was the only one I kept reading the last couple months of our engagement. And even some of the posts on Weddingbee can make you feel like you aren't spending enough time or money on your wedding.

5. Expect your fiancé to have opinions.
Some grooms might have a "yes dear" attitude on everything, but mine dreamed about his wedding when he was younger and didn't want me making decisions without his input. He was flexible for the most part though and decided he liked some of my dreams, like having an outdoor wedding.

6. Carefully calculate the cost savings of any DIY projects.
While I loved our cupcake tower, the supplies and ingredients ended up costing over $100. I don't know that putting in all that extra time and effort was worth the small amount of money we saved.

7. Try to say hi to all of your wedding guests.
I kind of felt like a jerk at my wedding because all these people came from miles and miles away just to see our wedding, and then I hardly even had the time to talk to them. I'm glad Nathan and I dismissed all our guests from the ceremony personally so we could at least give them a hug and thank them for coming.

8. If you're having an outdoor wedding on a hot and humid day, don't expect your hairstyle to hold up.
My hair was curled three times before the ceremony, and by the end of the reception it was wavy at best (it's naturally pin straight). I think the hairspray evaporated the instant I walked outside. Looking at the photos, I don't think it looks bad, just more natural than glamorous, which is fitting for me anyway.

9. Expect multiple things to go wrong.
Having heard that "something will go wrong," I was fully expecting a minor disaster of some sort and even wondered what that thing would be. In our case, a lot of things went wrong. But you know what? I didn't care. I was completely happy that day. As long as you don't expect to have a perfect day, you'll be fine.

10. Let people help you.
If there's an item on your to-do list that you don't need to complete personally, assign it to someone early in the planning process. People would tell me "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help!" While I appreciated this, I had difficulty coming up with tasks that others could handle for me, particularly since no one lived in town. Also, let people ask questions about your wedding - you never know how they might be able to help. A coworker asked where I was getting my hair done, which I thought was an odd question, but a few weeks later she happened to get a coupon for the salon that saved me $25!

 Bonus tip: While people might not see your feet during the ceremony, your 
shoes will be visible in photos like this! It might not hurt to have some pretty 
shoes for photos if you aren't wearing them the entire day.

What are your top wedding planning tips?

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: And We Walk

As the violinists played Canon in D and my dad and I watched from our hiding place, the wedding party began the processional.

Pastor Joe started the show.

Nathan escorted his mom while his dad followed. Nathan wasn't sure at first how he wanted to make his entrance, but ultimately he decided he liked the idea of entering with his mother and walking out with his new wife as a sort of metaphor for the "leaving and cleaving" of marriage: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)

 Brandon escorted our mom.

Scott and Carly

Tim and Stacie

 

David and Rachel

Brandon and Eddy rolled out the aisle runner.

The Ring Master made his entrance.

How awesome is this kid? Three years old, a 90+ degree day, and 

wearing a tie, yet he was still by far the most photogenic.

After the violinists began "Mo Ghile Mear," my dad and I made our way down the aisle. I have to pause here to say how in awe I was of how well the violinists played my bridal processional. I had full confidence that my mom, a professional violinist herself, would hire talented violinists for my wedding, but I still had no idea how "Mo Ghile Mear" was going to sound. I listened to the Celtic Woman version over and over and could hear it as a violin duet in my head, but I wasn't sure they would interpret the sheet music the same way. As it turned out, they did excellent.

My dad and I faced the crowd.

 And we were ready to begin.

I know some people have issues with the bride being "given away" and passed over to her new husband like property, but looking at the photo above, I feel nothing but happy.

5 Things I've Learned the First Five Months

We've now made it through the first five months of marriage. I hope time has flown by for our wedding guests as quickly as it has for us since we didn't get thank you notes out until about a month ago. Being married has been a lot of fun, and we've had many more ups than downs. Here are 5 things our marriage has taught me thus far.

1. Our communication skills still have room for improvement. I went into this marriage thinking that we had great communication skills, and we do, but we're still constantly working to better understand each other and communicate with each other. Pretty much the only arguments we have are over what one of us actually said. It's an ongoing process.

2. It isn't easy to think of everything as being "ours" now instead of mine/his. Everything in out apartment should be ours now, with the exception of things like toothbrushes and shoes, but I don't think of it in those terms. This might be partly due to the fact that this was his apartment before I moved in. My books are separated from his books, my board games are separated from his games, my Tupperware is on shelves that I brought rather than in a cabinet. I referred to the fondue pot as "my" fondue pot recently, and Nathan had to point out that it is ours. That one isn't even debatable since it was a wedding gift.

3. Having a husband who makes more money than I do is a wonderful thing. We've flip-flopped in wages several times during our relationship, but Nathan took the lead again in August. I will most likely never make more than he does again, and I'm glad. It really is best for both of us. Nathan has always wanted to provide for me, regardless of whether or not I can provide for myself. Being the primary breadwinner makes him happy, and that makes me happy. I'd rather he be the one that's driven in his career. I was drawn to graphic design as a career partly because it's possible to work from home, not because I wanted to make money.

4. Marriage means letting go of the "that's how I've always done it" mentality. We're from two different families who do things different ways, but now we have to figure out how we do things in our family. In my family, we would usually leave the pots of food on the stove or on the counter and fill our plates before sitting down. Nathan's family puts all the food on the table. We can't do both, so I'm trying to get used to the latter. Also, Nathan doesn't like that I get out of the shower without drying off first and end up getting the bath mat wet; I thought that was the purpose of bath mats. It's a compromise.

5. Being married can change your love language. Or, maybe I have a better sense of my love language now that I'm married. Before we were married, my primary love language was quality time, followed by words of affirmation and acts of service. Acts of service have become more valuable to me and really makes me feel loved. After retaking the quiz I discovered acts of service has actually become my primary love language, followed closely by a tie of quality time and physical touch. I guess I've been able to experience acts of service and physical touch a lot more now that we live together. We were still long distance the first time I took the quiz.

An example of Nathan's acts of service. He hates folding laundry; I had to take a picture to believe this actually happened.

What has your marriage or relationship taught you?

Wedding Recaps: Bridal Party Photos

We had three groomsmen, three bridesmaids, and a ring bearer in our wedding party. Our only reason for not having a flower girl is that we don't know any little girls. We had several boys we could have picked for a ring bearer, but no girls. I'm glad our ring bearer (or ring master, as he preferred to be called) was able to steal the show.

My three bridesmaids were my college friend and fellow graphic design major, Carly; my cousin and friend, Rachel; and my friend since middle school and roommate for all of college, Stacie.

Nathan's groomsmen were his friend from college, Scott; his older brother, Tim; and his friend since middle school, David. David's son was the ring bearer.

Ushers were Nathan's friend Eddy (far left) and my younger brother (far right). 

Nathan and David engaged in a tickle war.

Rachel and I managed to remain civil for once in our lives.

The jumping photo didn't turn out quite as spectacular as I had hoped. I had to combine two photos to get this one. Oh well, it's still funny.

It was over 90 degrees that day, so it's really amazing we got as many good photos as we did. Everyone in the bridal party was a really good sport.