If you’ve been watching any of the 2011 wedding trends going on, I’m sure you’ve seen that vintage weddings are going to be getting more and more popular this year. And for all of those DIY-ers (like myself) there are going to be lots of excellent projects and designs that are easy to do, inexpensive, and a great way to make a giant visual impact for your guests. So, what is something that is totally cheap to buy, easy to find, and still looks so over the top elegant? Easy, doiles of course! And with a little creativity – you should see the sorts of things that can be done with them. I used to love the look of doilies. They were so crisp and classic that they dressed up any party or tea just by putting some on the tables or on top of a plate.

But the people at Cap Classique have found lots of other great uses for doilies that you wouldn’t believe. Here is a snippet of some of my favorite things:

There’s something so simply pretty about these paper goodies, and the best part of course is that they’re easily available and very budget friendly. Roll them into paper cones for your confetti, hang them in a garland, stick them on clear glass jars to hold your flowers, pop large ones on each place setting as a place card or menu – couldn’t be easier.

Not only do they give out these great ideas, but they also have pictures and links to templates of other more intricate and elegant DIY projects that you can check out here. I’m loving this theme!! What do you think?

One of the things that really gets me is women are getting married so young, and planning the most important day of their lives, and that’s fine. But what I really don’t understand is that we have these young girls who have no idea how to plan wedding, dealing with huge sums of money and trying to plan the most memorable event of their entire life. Planning a wedding is hard at any age, but planning a wedding when you have no previous party planning experience can be doubly overwhelming. So if you are wondering how to plan a wedding and aren’t quite sure even where to start, then join the club. Many brides are lost when they start looking into everything that goes into planning a wedding. If you’re in that boat, then you’ve come to the right place. When I was planning my own wedding, I was freaking out about how much work there was to do, and how many vendors that I needed to work with to pull the whole thing off. So when I was thinking about how to plan wedding, I started off in the wrong place, and made some decisions I wish today I could go back and change. Want to know what they are? Keep reading avoid those rookie mistakes that I made with planning my wedding.

Game Plan: How to Plan Wedding

When I first started planning my wedding, the first thing my husband and I did was to come up with a wedding date and go check out reception venues and book our church for the date.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m all for incorporating your own tastes and personality into your wedding, I encourage brides to do it all the time. So when I first saw the subject for this blog post online, I just had to check them out. I loved what I saw! Oh the things that you can do with fondant and wedding cake! Several of them I just had to look twice to see if what I was looking at was a real wedding cake, or some kind of trick of eyes.

To be honest though, I think that some of the wedding cakes shown are grooms cakes. Groom’s cakes are mainly a Southern tradition where the bride has her big fancy white wedding cake, and the groom’s cake can be anything they dream up.

I’ve included one of the shots here in this post, but you have to click on the link to see the rest of them! Enjoy the picture slide show of some of the wildest wedding cakes ever here! Enjoy, and happy weekend everybody, and thank you Bridepop.com for your entertaining wedding cakes.

My sister called me a few months ago with an excellent idea for a blog entry, and please forgive me for not putting it on sooner. But the idea stuck with me so much that I just had to let everybody know about it. You see, she had been to a wedding recently where the bride and groom, looking to do something awesome and unique for their wedding guests, had come up with the totally original and totally cute idea of giving away little homemade kits of smores! How cool is that?!? I love smores, and really, what’s not to love with the toasted marshmallow goodness, melted chocolate and crunchy graham cracker? So, here I am to share with all my faithful readers here the wonderful idea of making S’more wedding favor kits.

Of course we all know what the ingredients are for great smores, and when it comes to ingredients, there really isn’t a whole lot to this wedding favor. All you need are graham crackers, pieces of chocolate, and giant marshmallows, and whatever materials you’re going to  use to wrap them all up. I’ve seen several different ideas for wrapping them up though, and whatever you use make sure you that make it your own and personalize it so it doesn’t look cheap and homemade.

One great idea is to make a little kit all on your own. Get some boxes from a craft store, some cellophane bags and go to work. Wrap up a couple of large marshmallows in their own bag, several pieces of chocolate in their own bag, and 4 squares of graham crackers in their own bag. Then, put them all together in the box, include a box of instructions, and tie it off to make it look pretty.

Another idea is to pre-make the s’mores for your guests, which will save you in materials cost. Just layer graham cracker, marshmallow, chocolate square and the other graham cracker and insert it into a bag, making sure to seal it well. Then, tie the package with a ribbon. That way your guests can eat them as is, or take the home to heat and enjoy campfire style.

One quick word of warning for you though. If you choose to do this totally fun wedding favor, don’t do it months before your wedding. Try to wait until just a few days before your wedding to assemble everything, or your marshmallows and graham crackers will get stale and ruin the whole thing you’re trying to do.

The picture in this article is borrowed from Stylish Giving , many thanks for your fabulous ideas and picture!

Brides everywhere are looking for that special something that completes their perfect wedding day in a creative, custom way while still saving those dollars and fitting into sometimes a very tight wedding budget. I have to admit, some brides are much more creative at making it work than others, and those of us that are left just have to look at their ideas and decorations to be able to do it ourselves.

This idea can help you save a ton of money on your wedding decorations, and is as simple as cutting paper. Literally. Instead of renting those expensive colored table runners that look nice but still aren’t exactly what you were looking for, why not find some other kind of material to use? Some brides just use a colored tablecloth and hope that that their centerpieces will be bright and colorful enough to make up for the lack of color everywhere else on their table. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

So instead of renting those expensive table runners from a caterer, why not use something simple and inexpensive like wrapping paper? You can buy it in bulk and at just a couple dollars per roll, it’s really hard to go wrong! Find a pattern you like that fits your wedding colors, and run a thick stripe of it down the middle of your table, and secure it under your tablecloth with tape or pins. If you have enough paper left over, why not use it in more of your decorations? Make paper flowers out of the leftovers, or shred the left overs and use them in your wedding centerpieces. You could even wrap the lids of the boxes that have your wedding favors in the same wrapping paper, and have them on each plate while your guests are coming in. There are lots of great uses for inexpensive products if you just know how to use them.

So for those of us who have to sit back and see what the totally creative people do, there are lots of great ideas out there for decorating your wedding on a budget. All you have to do is find the tips and ideas that are right for you, and make them your own!

The other day, as I was searching around on the web, I ran across something that truly disgusted me. You may or may not have heard of it, but it’s called BridalPlasty, and it’s a crazy new idea that E! has come up with. The basic gist of it goes something like this: several brides to be who are unhappy with the way they look all move into a house together. They complete little daily wedding related tasks with the winner immediately going in to have some kind of plastic surgery done. The winner of the whole show gets as much plastic surgery as she wants done, and her groom is totally shocked (disgusted) when he lifts the veil to see….a different woman than he fell in love with.

Really? I mean REALLY?

How long do networks and the public have to work before women are actually happy with the way that they look, only to have a show like this to undermine it all? I’ve never been so disgusted by a reality television show, although several have come close.

ABC News describes it pretty well in this lovely little quote:

Competing in wedding-themed challenges such as writing vows and planning honeymoons “each week one lucky bride will … get one piece of her dream body — going under the knife for one of the surgeries off her ‘wish list”….

If you’re really interested, you can read more about the show here. To me, it’s disgusting.

Thoughts? Think it’s great entertainment, or a disservice to women?

Hey ladies! I’ve found a hot new trend in weddings that I am totally excited about, and am wondering if y’all have heard about it.  They are these wonderful little things called Balsa Wood Flowers, and they might be just what you’re looking for to complete your wedding day look. These little blooms are so fabulous and versatile, let me just count the ways:

Balsa Wood Flowers:

• Will save you money on your wedding flowers
• Will NEVER wilt in the sun…NEVER
• Last forever – literally
• Are completely eco-friendly

When I first heard about them, they sounded too good to be true – so I did a little bit of research…and here is what I’ve found. Everything that I’ve heard about balsa wood flowers is true – all of it. Here’s how it all works.

Balsa wood flowers are handmade flowers, but totally look like the real thing. They are handmade from tapioca wood peel, also called sola wood, which is a naturally derived paper product. It’s made by cutting the tapioca wood peel into pieces which are then made into the delicate petals that you see in the pictures. That’s right, balsa wood flowers won’t ever die, and they are made from all natural products, making them totally eco-friendly and green. How cool is that?

I also did some looking online to see how they really measured up when it came to price, and from some of the sites that I saw, you can buy 12 blossoms for just $5. Plus, they’re totally versatile. You can use them to hold your place cards at each seat rather inexpensively, use them in your bouquets or for your boutonnieres, the choices are endless.

So what do you think of these little beauties? Something you would be interested in or not?