Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Wedding #1 Recap

Now that I have had a day or two to rest, I have to show you the pictures I took at the wedding this past weekend!  Half of them are terrible, but hang in there.  The venu was A-Ma-Zing!  The ceremony AND reception were held at Aria in Minneapolis, MN.  This building used to be a garment factory 100 years ago.  Some amazingly brilliant person tore out the 2nd and 3rd floors and turned it into an event center.  I really couldn't love it more.  The mix of chandeliers and pearls with all the urban decay grunge is just ironically enchanting.

Above is what our guest's walked into.  A large hall with tables set up for gifts, family wedding photos, and the sign-in area.

The bride and groom chose to have a travel theme of sorts.  The groom was born and raised in NYC, studied abroad in Greece, and met his true love right here in Minnesota.  The bride was born in Soul, Korea.  She was adopted by a sweet family in small town Minnesota, also studied abroad and is currently studying for her medical boards.  They wanted to highlight all the places that were special in their lives, so they "named" the reception tables instead of numbering them.  They also used a globe as their sign-in book.  I love it!  90 years ago when I got married, you did everything by the book.  You had a sign in book because it was the unwritten law and now it is stored in the box we never open and never move, until we are moving, because it is so heavy {full of year books and such}.  The signed globe is so cool.  It will be a decoration in their home AND a reminder of this special day.



Here is one of my signs...And if I show you the "Restrooms" sign, I might as well show you the restrooms!  They were one of the first places I visited ;0}


Just gorgeous!

Sneak peek at the ceremony being set up.

It is such a beautiful thing to watch, an event like this coming together.  There were vendors, the DJ, the decorator, musicians, florists, caterers, and my snazzy team...the even coordinators ;0} all dancing around putting everything in their place, no stress, no worries.  Everyone knew just what they were doing.  That is the fabulousness about hiring professionals.  They have it all down.  They know just what wattage of an electrical amp they need, just how many gluten free cookies you will want, just how many glass vases will be broken and how many extras to bring.  It really was a pleasure to work with all of these professional teams.


We also set up the Slurpee station so it would be ready for the happy hour in between the ceremony and the reception.


The ceremony started and everything went smoothly.  The ladies waited upstairs, groomsmen at the bottom.  The bridesmaids came gracefully down the stairs, met their groomsmen and floated down the isle.


My Madison waited over along the side with the flower girls and the ring bearers until it was their turn to walk.




The bride.  I wish I had my good camera on me when she came down the stairs.
She reached the bottom, her dad fluffed the train and she was off to meet her groom.


I almost got lost in it all.  It was simply enchanting.  Luckily I remembered I had work to do in the other room to get ready for the happy hour in the hall.

We moved the pictures down to one table and out came my place card stands.

I told you last time the bride decided on a roughed up board and mason nails {spray painted gold} as her stand of choice.  It took 8 to hold all of the luggage tags.  They had little coloring book/crayon packs for the place cards for the kids.




Once the bride and groom snuck off to the back it was time to pop up a reception!

I was SUPER nervous about having only one hour between ceremony and reception to get the room all set up.  There were SEVERAL things going on the tables, chandeliers to hang, and a number of finishing touches to execute.

This is the Aria coordinator coaching her team while moving the chandeliers.

Somehow we pulled it all off.  The head table was sparkling.

The whole reception glistened.  

I was so busy getting ready for the reception, I didn't get a picture before the meal.  Please excuse the juice boxes and crayons.  Here is one of the table markers.  Duluth table, printed on a floral imprinted pink paper and framed in gold.




Each place had a booklet introducing each member of the wedding party and a few cute facts and stories about the happy couple.

They even planned late night snacks to come out at 10pm.  Popcorn with accompanying sprinkles, cookies and milk, cake, and more.

My brother Chris brought his photo booth for Madison to run during the ceremony.  It is always a huge hit.  Chris has a program that will print a series of 4 photos in a strip, two identical strips fit on one 4x6 sheet of photo paper.  Mads is in charge of refilling the ink and paper as needed, and cutting the photo strips in half.  One photo strip goes to the bride and groom for their photo book, the other goes to the party getting the photo taken.  So fun.

The Chuppah from the ceremony was then used to cover the wedding cake.  Again, I did not get a photo before the cake was gobbled down.  It was SO yummy!  


The rest of the night was dancing...

Dancing, dancing.  

Here the bride and groom took a moment to go upstairs and watch their friend and family all celebrating with them on this amazing day.  I didn't actually realize they were up there when I snapped this shot.  I totally love it though!  How sweet are they up there together.

Before we knew it the party was over.  We hustled around packing everything back up and loading the car.  Now it is just a memory, but a totally happy one.  I thought it would be such a stressful day.  Luckily my own fabulous husband and Madison were there by my side helping tackle every flicker before it could become a flame.  The night went off, really, without a hitch...other than the happy couple that got hitched.  I guess I should count that one.

Now, I have to hurry up and rest.  My brother Dave gets married in less than three weeks.
Just when you thought the wedding posts were going to stop....
They are back!

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Placecard Puzzler

Unique escort card display with wooden logs. love the detail of the monogram on the ends
Working with my current wedding charges we found the above photo on Pinterest.  It is of a lovely set of little log placecard holders made from birchwood...or painted tree branches, cut just perfectly to hold the couple's guest's seating assignments.  

My happy couple LoVEd the idea and put it on their list of things for me to make them.  Sadly, as I worked down my list and came to the woodsy card holders I realized they would not work very easily for the placecards they needed to hold.

My couple's placecard holders are these sweet little luggage tags....After a while I realized the pinterest picture is for cards...single sheets of paper, maybe folded in half that can fit in a single saw cut.  These luggage tags require a slot 3/8" thick.

Help from Hubbs is not an option right now, not that he can help much with this issue with the tools we currently have.  I thought about routing the slot out with my new router, but I am not super confident with it yet, especially not confident enough to try to route out the slot on a round branch.

The only choice was to come up with other options and see if the happy couple could fall in love with one of them.  Here we go!

Above was my first try.  I cut a log in half, cut it into one inch sections, and glued them to a piece of wood just about the width of the log.  The idea would be maybe it would look enough like a whole log....Nope.  Next try...

This one, the more I look at it, the more it grows on me.  I actually like it without that piece of birch off the front.  I rustically painted a section of 1x4, then glued the same birch pieces to the board.  I used a 1/2" molding to make the spaces between tree branch pieces.  I like the nature mixed with the rustic man-made look.  Hmmmm...

The wedding venue looks like this...
It is an amazing mix of elegance and grunge.  Scott recommended moving away from the "nature" looking, and embracing the grunge, industrial look a bit more.  That lead to this option...
Same rustic plank, but drilled a billion times and railroad nails pounded in to act like a divider.

I love it.  The only problem is the couple's colors are light pink and gold.  These nails are silver.

One more idea...

I shopped for about an hour looking for the moldings...I hate it.  It might be that it is painted gold...
I hate it.   Nope.  Not even a contestant.

After showing these to the bride tonight when she dropped by, It looks like we have a winner.

We are going to paint the planks light pink, rough them up, and spray those nails a matching gold color.  Only two more days to get it done.  Here I go.  Heaven help me!
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

Novelty Print Quilt Pattern

I have had a hard time finding good quilt patterns for novelty prints the past couple times I purchased them.  I made up this pattern so tha...