Not all of my projects go quite according to plan. Some of them get slightly off-track due to creative improvisation. Some fail from a lack of expertise. And then there’s the occasional casualty of stress, annoyance or PMS. My DIY wedding card box falls into the latter category.

Overall, it wasn’t a terrible box. It was simple, just how I wanted it. The edges could have been a little smoother, but it would have served its purpose – if I hadn’t torn it into several pieces. Just after taking this picture, “PMS Chelsea” took over. Stress-addled, wedding-prepping, hormone-raging Chelsea decided that this box was a complete eyesore which could not be seen anywhere on or around the gift table at her wedding. So she did the only logical thing she could think of and yanked the fabric off in long strips, enjoying the oddly satisfying riiiiip that accompanied each tug.

The best man walked in to find me sitting in a shredded pile, maniacally muttering “Soooo much fabric…too SHINY…bunching up everywhere….so ugly!!” and he thankfully intervened. I really have to hand it to Nathaniel’s brother, he is the best best man I’ve ever seen. The box he constructed for me on his own – an elegant white one with a simple sign directing guests to put cards inside it - was absolutely perfect, and the world didn’t have to experience any more terror from CRAZY Chelsea for at least another month.

In spite of my minor meltdown over my own wedding card box, I’m posting the how-to instructions here because I think they may be helpful to someone out there looking for a simple craft. For brides with extra wedding fabric on hand, this is also an easy solution for matching your card box to your specific wedding colors.

How to Make a DIY Wedding Card Box

• You’ll need:
  • Banker’s box (or other medium-sized box or container to hold the cards)
  • Fabric bix enough to go around the box
  • Packing tape
  • Box cutter
  • Glue (a glue gun works best, but craft glue will work if you let it dry between each step)

1)  Trace a square in the box lid big enough to fit a card. I made mine approximately 1.5″x8″. Use the box cutter to trim the square hole out.

2) Secure the box lid down using the packing tape.

3) Measure the fabric to the correct size by laying the fabric out flat and centering the box face-down in the middle of it. Fold the fabric up over the box on all sides and trim so that the fabric is overlapping by a couple inches on the bottom and sides of the box.

4) Glue both sides of the fabric to the bottom of the box and then wrap the box like a present, folding the excess fabric on the sides in and gluing it down as shown below.

5) Using the box cutter, carefully cut a slit along the top of the box where the rectangular hole is, angling the corners of the slit so that the fabric can fold into the box. Apply glue to to the underside of the slit flaps and glue into the box.

If I had to make mine over (but thank god I didn’t!), I think I would have been more satisfied with the results using a crisper fabric, like muslin or linen, so that the folds would be tighter and flatter than the lightweight silky material I used.

We decided to make DIY bridesmaid wedding jewelry so that each of the bridesmaids’ jewelry would be slightly different. I have a weird disdain for all things matching – I’m pretty sure it dates back to when my mom made my sister and I wear duplicate themed outfits every single holiday. All the bridesmaids’ bracelets and earrings have the same beads (ordered from Fire Mountain Gems), but each jewelry set is slightly different.

This project looks intimidating and does take a bit of time, but it’s pretty simple with just two basic beading techniques as the foundation.

How to Make Bridesmaid Jewelry

• You’ll need: 
  • Earring hooks
  • Jump loops of varying sizes (these are the metal circles that loop through each other to form a chain)
  • Bracelet clasps
  • Metal circles (for the set with the earrings sitting in metal circles)
  • Metal ovals (for the set with the earrings sitting in metal ovals)
  • Head pins (for stringing through earrings)
  • 20 gauge wire (for wire-wrapped beads)
  • Pliers (roundnose, chain nose AND needlenose pliers are helpful for precise loops, but I’ve made loops with any of the above)

1) The basic pattern of each bracelet is three interlooped jump rings (directions for opening jump rings are available at Fusion Beads), followed by a bead with a simple loop on each end. I like to use a head pin with the top trimmed off for loops, but you can also use a section of 20 gauge wire.

2) Repeat the above pattern until you reach the correct length for your bracelet, and then use a small jump loop to add a bracelet clasp to one end.

3) Earrings are all created similarly to the bracelets, with the head pin looping through the beads and onto the earring hooks.

Metal Oval variation: simply loop a metal oval through the jump loops on each end of the bead with simple loops, so that the metal oval is spanning the length of each bead as pictured.

Metal Circle Variation: place the bead through the metal circle so that the holes of the bead and metal circle line up. String the wire through the holes of the metal circle and bead, then finish the simple loops and continue the bracelet as normal.

Wire-wrapped beads: The wire-wrapped bracelet and earrings are the most difficult of the set, requiring a little trial and error with the wire and pliers. Instructions for wire-wrapped beads are available at Fusion Beads. After being wrapped, the beads are incorporated into the bracelets as normal.

Our DIY bridesmaid jewelry was a total hit at the wedding. The beads I chose were a bit chunkier than what I’d normally like, but I thought they worked really well as a bright, fun accent to the bridesmaids’ simple black dresses.

I did it. FINALLY. Six years ago I met my husband. After a year of glaring at him, three and a half years of dating and a year and a half of engagement, it’s official at last! The hard work and preparation really paid off, and everything was picture perfect. Of course, there were a number of things I shouldn’t have stressed out about: the program fans were pretty unnecessary as it was a perfect day at the top of La Jolla, and the boutonnieres and corsages I spent hours wrapping went largely unnoticed.

As with most days in my life, my wedding day did not go off without a hitch (pun totally intended. Heh, heh). Technical difficulties resulted in our processional music being  played from a stereo in our friend’s hands, High Fidelity style (that was actually pretty adorable). It also turned out that there was an error in the directions, and the signs intended to direct guests to the ceremony site…somehow…never got put up. Pulling up to the ceremony to discover that HALF my guests were lost was not so adorable. It all ended up working out, though, and I felt surprisingly calm as I walked down the aisle to “Another One Bites the Dust” (the processional was Queen-themed, and the bridesmaids all walked down to “Fat-Bottomed Girls” without the slightest tinge of annoyance). The minister – our counselor from college – announced that anyone with any objections should “shut the heck up and keep it to themselves” before launching into the best ceremony speech ever. There were some references to Dr. Seuss and (my favorite part!) he had Nathaniel promise not only to love, honor and cherish me, but also to never wash my delicates on high ever again.

I presumed that our unconventional ceremony choices would get the point across that we tossed tradition out the window long ago. Several friends were surprised to see me in a white dress and one commented that she expected me to stroll out in a pink tutu (my response: “Pink is soooo not my color!”). Alas, none of that stopped a couple of old-fashioned attendees from pointing out that I was egregiously going against a number of etiquette rules. And THEN someone fell into my photobooth and knocked it over, breaking my beloved Macbook Pro.

BUT. That is not the point. Those things weren’t the spirit of the day, they were just the stumbling blocks on our way to something fantastic. I don’t mention them to dwell or be negative, but to point out that this is just the nature of things. Every day, every life, every person faces problems that have to be overcome. Maybe it stands to reason that the greater the day – the greater the life - the bigger problems we’ll face. When I encountered the most overwhelming problem of the evening, I sat down for a minute and assessed the situation. I was frustrated as hell but quickly realized there was nothing I could do to fix it. I felt numerous eyes on me, waiting with bated breath for the bride to finally just lose it. Instead, I searched out my new husband in the gathering crowd. He was standing quietly, unphased, reaching his hand out to me. I took it, brushed off my dress, and followed him to the floor. We danced the rest of the night away.

So did everyone else.

Welcome to day three of DIY Wedding Week! Yesterday we made DIY Wedding Table Numbers, and today we’re using a lot of the same materials to make DIY wedding program fans. We decided that we didn’t want a big program booklet since we’re trying to keep everything short and sweet, and a program fan will help keep our guests cool in the middle of July. We printed our bridal party information with a short note to friends and family on the front, and used printed cardstock for the back side of the fan.

Things you’ll need:

• Assorted patterned cardstock (we found a book of wedding pattern cardstock at Michael’s)
• Cardstock in your wedding color, and a printer to print on the cardstock with (we didn’t have cardstock in our color, so we glued our turquoise wedding paper onto white cardstock)
• Paint stirrer sticks – one per guest (we asked for these at Home Depot and they gave them to us for free!)
• White paint
• Hot glue and hot glue gun (we tried adhesive spary and a glue stick, the hot lgue worked best)
• A corner rounder, if round corners are desired (Fiskars corner punchers are available at most craft stores)

1)  Paint the stirrer sticks white.

2)  Trim the colored cardstock and the patterned cardstock to 8″ by 5″.

3)  In Microsoft Word, click File>Page Settings>Paper. Change the height to 8″ and the width to 5″. Type the names of your bridal party along with whatever message you want to appear on the fan. Print this onto the wedding-colored cardstock.

3)  Lay the patterned piece of cardstock face-down on a table, apply hot glue to a paint stirrer stick, and glue the stick to the cardstock.

4) Apply hot glue around the edge of the cardstock, and lay your program cardstock piece down to complete the fan.

That’s it! I put ours in a basket for the ushers to hold (or set on a table, because all of the fans together is actually pretty heavy).

Welcome to day two of DIY Wedding Week! We’re starting off easy today with DIY table numbers. You may remember seeing similar photo table numbers in our post about Amanda and Ken’s wedding. We absolutely fell in love with the idea at their reception, so we hijacked it for our own day!

For these, you will need:

• Childhood photos of you and your fiance from ages 1 through however many tables you have – 4″ x 6″ (we had 15 tables, so we have one photo of each of us at ages 1 through 15)
• Black cardstock – 8.5″ x 11″
• White cardstock – 8.5″ x 11″
• Paper in your wedding color (and a printer to print on the paper)
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Glue stick
• Edge rounder, if you want your edges to be round (Fiskars hand punches that round edges are available at most craft stores)
• Number stands/photo stand clips to hold the completed number (available at party supply and dollar stores, or you can simply cut a slit in a cork for a solid base, or bend floral wire into a clip shape)

1)  Using a large, simple font set to “Outline” style in Microsoft Word, type out two of each of your table numbers and print onto the colored paper. (We have 15 tables, so we typed out the numbers 1 through 15 two times each). Cut out each number and set aside.

Look at how hot my fiance is! Is it weird that I'm checking out a 15 year-old?

2)  Trim the white cardstock pieces to 8.5″ x 5.5″. Round the corners using the corner punch, if desired.

3)  Trim each childhood photo to a maximum width of 4.5″ and a maximum height of 5.5″. Cut black cardstock pieces to fit each photo so that there is a 1/4″ black border around each photo (I do this by setting the photo in the corner of the cardstock piece and then measuring 1/2″ inch on the top and bottom). Glue each photo to the corresponding black mount.

4)  Center your age 1 mounted photo onto a piece of white cardstock. Arrange your cut out number 1 in the upper right-hand corner, overlapping the photo and the cardstock. Glue down the mounted photo and the number. Glue the other number 1 and your fiance’s corresponding photo at the same age on the other side of the same piece of white cardstock.

5)  Repeat step 4 for each remaining age/table number.

DIY photo table numbers are a great way to incorporate a bit of “you” into your wedding, and gives guests something to look at and talk about throughout the night.

Welcome to DIY Wedding Week! In case the lack of recent posts hadn’t tipped you off, I’ve been pretty busy lately. I get married in 12 days! And we’re doing a huge amount of the wedding stuff ourselves. I’ve decided to dedicate all of my blog posts until the big day to wedding stuff in a series aptly named “DIY Wedding Week.” I know, 12 days is NOT a week, but “DIY Wedding Week and a Half” or “DIY Wedding Week and Five Days” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

In the process of getting ready for our wedding, we’ve had plenty of inspiration along the way since everyone and their frickin mom is getting married right now. A couple weeks ago we got to see our friends Chris and Rachel tie the knot in Orange County at Rancho Las Lomas, a rustic ranch with beautiful gardens and zoological areas featuring lions, tigers, zebras and birds. They played off the romantic vibe of the venue with hundreds of red roses, candles, and intimate seating areas. And yes, they had a coordinator to help them pull this all off.

We spent last weekend in Longview, Washington at the wedding of our friends Jeremy and Crystal. They actually got engaged a few days before us and have been our wedding companions during the whole planning process. We even planned our honeymoons around each other to be sure we’d all be at both of our big days! They had a low-key, fun wedding (complete with jello shots and funfetti cake) at an event hall in their hometown – and they did EVERYTHING themselves, from the food to the decorations.

Nate and I are meeting somewhere in the middle with our wedding – we like the romantic, “weddingy” feel of roses and elegant placesettings, but also want to reflect our fun, playful relationship. We decided to go with black, white and turquoise as our colors and don’t have any particular theme. Here’s the inspiration board we put together:

Check back tomorrow for the beginning of our numerous wedding projects. So far we’ve started tackling program fans, centerpieces, arches, and invites. Next up is the table numbers, placecards and (prepare yourself, this one’s quite an undertaking) a DIY photobooth!

I haven’t written about wedding planning in awhile, though not because the planning’s come to an end. Not even close. Actually, I’ve been so busy with all this wedding stuff that when I sit down to write a post, the last thing I want to think about is weddings. I’m weddinged-out. I told my caterer today that I want to meet about the menu so I can “get it out of the way.” Not your typical cheery bride, huh? I’m tired. I need to sleep more.

One of the biggest projects I’ve had on my plate lately is the embossing of all the seals to go on the invites and thank you cards. I didn’t have the first clue how to emboss – or what embossing even meant – until a fellow bride whipped out her fancy invites with raised stamps on them, sort of like a wax seal. I was instantly smitten, and harassed my local craft store employees until someone thoroughly explained the process to me. Here goes.

Supplies Needed:
Paper
Rubber stamp
Embossing inkpad
Embossing powder
Heat embossing tool
Small paint brush or Q-tip

I ordered a custom stamp with a fancy ”S” (from RubberStamps.net) since our new last name starts with the letter “S.” Since then, a couple people have told me it’s technically bad luck to use our future monogram on anything prior to the wedding, like invites. Oh ok. Guess what? I technically don’t care.

So I wet the stamp on a special embossing ink pad (available at any craft store) and stamp it FIRMLY onto the paper. A couple times I didn’t do it hard enough, and it didn’t transfer enough ink to emboss properly.

After removing the stamp, dust embossing powder (available at any craft store), onto the wet ink.

Shake the powder around the enitre stamp to cover the whole area, and then lift the paper and shake the excess powder off. Flick the backside of the paper to get off as much excess powder as possible. Be sure to keep this excess powder – you can funnel it back into the container for re-use later.

Brush away any excess powder with a small paint brush. Powder should only be sticking to the stamped design, and not to anywhere else on the paper.

Using a heat embossing tool (it’s like a super-concentrated hair dryer – available at most craft stores for about $30), heat up the powder until it liquifies.

The powder will dry into a slightly-shiny, raised stamp. Voila!

In an effort to instill small personal details into the wedding, we decided to have shot glasses customized with our names and the date as favors for our guests. I collect shot glasses from every vacation I take (a habit that started, not surprisingly, during my college days) and Nate thought it would be a fun way to put a bit of my personality into things. I’m not sure exactly what that says about my personality, but here we are nonetheless!

There is one problem, though: I simply can’t find a favor box that fits the shot glasses. I know that this problem could easily be solved with favor bags, but for some reason I’m really set on boxes for the favors. I’ve seen table settings with both and I just think boxes look cuter. So I set out on a crazy mission to make my own favor boxes. I found a great pattern on Style Me Pretty with four different prints, and I used Photoshop to adjust the sizing and color for our wedding.

I’m using the standard generic cardstock from Michael’s to print these out on our home printer. I’ve printed 30 in each print and plan on alternating them on the table (there’s eight people per table so it works out perfectly for there to be two of each pattern per table).

I then cut the printed patterns out and use a straight-edge and bone folder to create creases where the boxes need to be folded. Then I fold them and, finally, glue the edges together before inserting the favors with a decorative little piece of white tulle. It takes a long time. A really, really, really long time. So long, in fact, that when my terribly-behaved cat decided to pee on 50 of the cut-out patterns, I had a conniption fit and just about disowned the little bastard entirely.

But then I realized that things could be worse. He could have chosen to pee on the already-folded ones with the favors in them. That would have been a true disaster. And as bad as he is, I really love that bastard cat.

A little over 4 months to go until D-day (or what Nate and his friends are referring to as “the beginning of the end”), and we’re starting to get into the minutia of it all. My fingers are pretty much raw from cutting and folding invites, placecards, etc. We’re trying to include personal details in as many aspects as possible – which is why the cake topper that Nate found is perfect.

Nate’s line of work requires him to carry a gun, and together we’ve spent hours at the shooting range perfecting his (and my) aim. Now, I know that guns are kind of controversial. I personally have all sorts of opinions on the right to bear arms, gun safety and children, etc., but I’ll spare you my thoughts on that and just say that as a woman, I think it’s a necessity to know how to defend yourself. I feel better knowing that if (god forbid) I ever get into a situation, I know how to handle myself and will – at the very least - give the guy a run for his money.

There is one problem, though: I’m not blonde. And he’s not brunette. So I whipped out my acrylic paint set and went to work.

Nate complained that the silver guns were “too shiny,” so I brushed them with black to make them match his real ones. I also painted the flowers blue to match our color. If we were going for complete accuracy here, his head would be buzzed and my arms wouldn’t be that skinny. But overall, I like this little Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie-ish version of us.

For any other gun-toting, acrylic paint-loving soon to be wed couples out there, the “Super Sexy Spy” cake topper is available at Amazon for $28 + $4.99 shipping.

My wedding is officially six months away. It sounds like plenty of time, but I’m starting to get stressed out. So much to do. So much to pay for! After a florist quoted me $60 a piece for really tiny, really crappy bouquets, I decided I could get inexpensive wedding flowers and easily make the bouquets myself for way less. A friend suggested a place near me in San Diego that she called “Wholesale Flowers.” After visiting, I decided it would be more aptly named “heaven.”

Excuse the barrage of blurry photos…I was a little over-excited. The pots! The flowers! The shiny stuff and dangly things! And they actually have my color ribbon!! We picked this random blue color that’s not quite turquoise, not quite Tiffany blue or cornflower…I call it “dark pool.” Crayola should hire me. Anyway, this color choice has been a real pain in the neck when it comes to invites, chair sashes, etc. So finding this color ribbon wholesale is an absolute miracle.

For my wedding bouquets, I want really simple hand-tied white roses (which are exactly what they sound like: a bunch of roses tied together with ribbon, by hand). Easy-peasy, none of those fancy wedding bouquet sponges or hand-held vases. And at $13.99 for two dozen, I’ll still come out on top even if I screw up like, five bouquets. I’m even able to order ahead to make sure the flower place has what I want in stock when the wedding day rolls around.

For people getting married who don’t happen to live in San Diego…um, why don’t you live in San Diego? Seriously, it’s nice. Unless you really insist on having four seasons and simply loathe the sun. Where was I? Oh yeah. If picking up and moving isn’t an option, you’re still likely to have a wholesale flower market nearby. Try a Google or Yelp search for wholesale flowers in your nearest city. Costco, surprisingly, is also a great resource for inexpensive wedding flowers. So is Sam’s Club. There are even a few online flower wholesalers who will FedEx inexpensive wedding flowers right to your door. Check out DIY Bride’s list of wholesale flower distributors for some reputable retailers.