Wedding Wednesdays - Part 3

I'm feeling a little under the weather today, so I'm going to keep this one short and just do a general update on how things are coming along. We've pretty much decided on our venue now, which makes me feel great. I absolutely love it, but we want to meet with the caterer first to make sure their food is good (I'm sure it is). The venue only allows one certain caterer, so that actually helps a lot in the decision making and convenience. I'll do a whole post about the venue as soon as we officially book it, hopefully by next week. I have so many great ideas already swimming around in my head, I can't wait to be able to start really planning.

Blake and I decided that since our wedding is so far away and we're having a pretty long engagement, we want to have an engagement party. Since our birthdays are coming up (and it's the big three-oh for Blake!) we're doing a joint birthday party/engagement party with family and close friends. Since I can't even remember the last time I've planned a party, I'm really going for it with decorations, a theme, games and everything. I'm keeping the theme a secret from Blake because I want him to have somewhat of a surprise since it's his big birthday. I'll probably do a post on that after we have it, too! Haha...

Also, last week I forgot to mention something funny that happened with the "Will You Be My..." boxes. When I gave Natalie her box, she had given me a congratulations gift, too. She had made a tote bag with J+B in a heart on it, and a tank top with "Dorman" on the back and "Bride" on the front. I LOVE it! The funny party was, it took a few seconds for us to realize that we had used the same font in our homemade gifts to each other!! Out of all the hundreds of thousands of fonts in the word, what are the odds that we would both pick Honey Script in our presents to each other?? I guess we just have the same great taste and that's why I knew she'd be my perfect choice for matron of honor! ;) So, I'll definitely be using that in a lot of my wedding designs for sure. It's meant to be!

The font we both used is seen here in "I Do" and "Bridesmaid"

And here is the gift Natalie gave me, with "Bride" in the same font! How cute is that??

I just love it!

This shirt also really made it start to sink in that I'm going to have a different last name! I only have a little over a year left as a Bales and then I'll be a Dorman! It's so weird when you really think about it, that as women we have to change our name when we get married! But I'm going to be so happy and proud to be Mrs. Dorman. 

Well, that's all for today, hopefully next Wednesday will be a big one with a lot of great venue news!

[ j. ]

Wedding Wednesdays - Part 2

I'm running a little late on week 2 of my "Wedding Wednesdays" series (since I'm just now starting it late at night!), but this will be a pretty quick post anyway. I just want to share about the gifts I made for my bridesmaids to ask them to be in the wedding party! Blake and I have pretty much nothing else officially locked down as far as a venue or a wedding date, but at least I have my girls all set! That's just as important to me as anything else. We really want our wedding to be a big, fun party and that's not going to happen unless all the people we love are there sharing our day with us. Having these girls with me on the day of my wedding is going to be SO much fun, not to mention all the fun planning and partying we will get to do together.

My wedding party is going to be as follows: my friend Natalie is my Matron of Honor; my cousin Carly is my Maid of Honor; and my other two bridesmaids are my cousin Kelly and Blake's sister (my soon-to-be sister-in-law!) Hilary.

I made each one of them a "Will You Be My..." gift box filled with some wedding-themed goodies. I'll start with a couple of photos of a completed box and later explain step-by-step how I made them. It's super easy and I think they turned out really nice.

This one was for Hilary so it has her initial "H" on the front and on the inside it says "Soon you'll be my sister, but until then... will you be my bridesmaid?" I filled the boxes with a bottle of OPI nail polish, a mini sized Korbel champagne and the best "wedding cake" ever... red velvet cupcakes from Sprinkles!

Here's what supplies I used to make each gift box:

Unfinished wooden boxes (Michael's)
Roll of burlap (Michael's)
White and blue acrylic paint (Michael's)
Lace ribbon trim (Michael's)
Mini Korbel champagne bottles
OPI nail polish
Sprinkles cupcakes

And here's the step-by-step process of now I made them:

1. First of all, I bought unfinished wooden boxes from Michael's and painted them white with simple acrylic paint. I was going for a vintage/rustic look to these boxes to go with the style of our wedding, so the paint job was a dry brush technique to make the box look somewhat old.

Unfinished wooden box from Michael's.

Wooden box painted white.

Inside of wooden box

2. Next, I made little signs to put on the inside of the box lids with the message for each person, asking them to be in the wedding. I designed these in InDesign, but I'm sure these would turn out just as good if you made them by hand. Since I'm a graphic designer, I find it to be quicker and easier for me to just whip out stuff like this on the computer and print them out. I trimmed them down and fixed them to the inside lid of the boxes with double sided tape.

The wording was slightly different for each person. For Kelly and Carly I wrote "I can't say 'I Do' without you! Will you be my bridesmaid? (Maid of Honor?)" and for Natalie's we actually asked her husband and daughter to be in the wedding as well, so I listed each one of them on the sign. 

"Will you be my bridesmaid?" sign.

 Soon you'll be my sister...

Groomsman, Flower Girl, and Matron of Honor

3. For the decorations on the outside of the box, I bought a roll of burlap, unpainted wooden letters (each of the girl's first name initials and an initial for Natalie's family's last name) and lace ribbon trim from Michael's. I first cut the burlap to the size I wanted and glued it on to the top of the box with regular Elmer's glue. While that was drying, I painted the letters a blue color which will probably be close to the color their dresses will be. I cut the lace trim and glued that to the edges of the box and then glued on the letters. Easy peasy!

Roll of burlap from Michael's

Finished exterior box

4. To fill the box, I cut another piece of burlap to use as a base and then placed in the nail polish, champagne, and cupcake! 

 Fitting burlap to size

Loosely tuck burlap into box. This can also be done with paper grass filling or a pretty fabric that relates to your wedding!

The best part.

There's really no more delicious cupcake. If you haven't had Sprinkles cupcakes before, stop reading this blog and immediate go get one!

For Natalie's family I bought three mini cupcakes so that they wouldn't have to fight over one big one. Apparently, her daughter Brenna (she's about 1 1/2 years old) loved her cupcake and then got mad when she couldn't eat Natalie's, too. So I guess that concept didn't work out anyway, haha!

The final finished product.

Being in someone's wedding is a really big deal. Not only is it a huge honor and a lot of fun, but I know it is also a big time commitment and financial burden, too. So I felt it was important to show my girls right off the bat how much I appreciate them being in my wedding. And they all said "yes." :)

Hope you enjoyed my crafty bridesmaid boxes and thanks for reading!

[ j. ]

Wedding Wednesdays - Part 1

So, as all of you who know me in real life know, Blake and I are engaged :) We are of course BEYOND happy and excited. But at times, I'm also pretty overwhelmed with the whole wedding planning process. There's so much to think about and do! I'm sure that once we pick the venue and the date, the whole thing will get a lot more fun. I've decided that I want to blog about my wedding planning experience because I am going to be a very DIY bride. Thanks to Pinterest, I have a lot of cute projects in the works that I want to share with everyone. Plus I'm always trying to blog more anyway, so I am going to shoot for a wedding post every Wednesday because it's an alliteration. So here it is, my first "Wedding Wednesdays" post!

I want to start with the proposal because Blake did an exceptional job and I want to brag about my fiance! I already posted the photo of the big moment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter so you have probably seen it already (and if you don't have Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, I don't know how you even found my blog in the first place...) but I wanted to post the whole sequence of photos and tell you how it all went down.

Blake and I went to my favorite place in the world, Yosemite National Park. It's our tradition every time we're there to stop at the Tunnel View and take a picture with the self-timer. As I was taking pictures of the view, Blake mumbled something to me and walked away although I barely even noticed. What he was doing was going back to the car to get the ring box that he had smuggled on the trip with us in his computer bag. He put it in his pocket and came back and I really didn't notice a thing. I set up the camera to do our customary photo and after the shutter went off, Blake immediately said "do one more." So, I went back and set up the timer again, and we took another photo. Then he said to take another and he also asked how long the timer was. I told him it's ten seconds and thought how weird he was acting and why did he want to keep taking so many photos?

Well, what was really going on (he says) is that people kept walking by and he didn't want to do it with a lot of people staring at us. He was waiting for a more private moment. But what I think is that it took 4 shots for him to actually get up the courage to get down on one knee and ask me :) He had the ring in his pocket on the wrong side, too so he was really worried that I would feel it while we were taking the picture. Of course, I didn't notice anything and he pulled it off perfectly. Anyway, here is the sequence of pictures:

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3

Take 4

In this shot you can really see the giant bulge in his pocket where the ring box is and how he's trying to lean away from me so I don't feel it!

Take 5

I honestly don't really remember it happening. I was in some sort of shock and just remember seeing the blue color in my ring and the blue color in his big eyes looking at me. I was completely trembling and instantly started to weep. I think I remember him asking "will you marry me?" but I don't remember what I responded or if I said anything at all, but obviously the answer was yes. 

Take 6

He stood up and I sobbed into his sweatshirt for a couple minutes and then we decided to take one more with me wearing the ring. My face is all red and blotchy and I have tears all over my face, but it was such a special moment. We immediately rushed back into the car to just sit quietly together for a few minutes and take it all in. It was also kind of nice to know that at that moment we were the only two people who knew that we were engaged. I had no cell phone service so it took a couple hours before I could post a picture on Instagram, at which point our phones started blowing up, of course!

Blake was really happy to pull it off so perfectly. He was stressing out about it for weeks before the trip. He had the ring custom made based on rings I had pinned on Pinterest. I've always loved the color of my aquamarine March birthstone and the fact that our birthdays are the day after each other makes it even more special to me. I think it's the most beautiful thing ever.

Blake had even smuggled one of our expensive bottles of wine on the trip, too, so that we could really celebrate together once we got to our hotel. The rest of our vacation was wonderful, and we called it our "engagement-moon" thanks to my friend Natalie who told me that name haha...

So that pretty much sums up the engagement. I love my new fiance and I guess now it's on to wedding planning :) We are going to visit a venue tomorrow morning, and I have a really good feeling about it! Spoiler alert: the next two posts will be about the venue location madness and how I asked my girls to be bridesmaids!

[ j. ]

P.S. - I realize that by the time I am posting this, it is nearly Thursday which kind of kills the whole "Wedding Wednesdays" thing. I'll try to post earlier in the day next week! ;)