Wedding Craft Tour, Part One

My wedding was nothing if not a labor of love. It was months and months of pulling down favors from friends and family. It was gluing and painting and cutting. It was beautiful and I loved it.

I became a master at distinguishing at a glance the difference between a tutorial that would be inexpensive, high impact and thus totally worth it and one that would be expensive, a pain in the ass, and cause more trouble than I could handle.

One of the reasons we decided to use Katie Day [photographer, designer, mother extraordinaire] was her attention to the small details of a wedding. I wanted to remember each paper flower, each hand painted sign, each strand of lights. She did a marvelous job.

I've already waxed poetic about the pros and cons of Pinterest inspiration in terms of wedding planning, but I will say this- virtually every element of the wedding (less the ceremony itself) was pieced together from other people's ideas. In spite of that, my wedding felt like it was a total reflection of Brett and I and our relationship with each other.

Here is a (probably incomplete) walk through of the DIY elements of my wedding with sources and inspiration linked.

I got lots of comments on my sweater.. This was easy. I just cut red felt and sewed it on the elbow spots. 

These signs were simple and added a fun, rustic touch. Dad had lots of plywood laying around. He cut these and I hand painted the lettering. 

We had a pretty casual wedding, but I still liked the idea of escort cards. Here are mine: 

Inspired by this: 

My step-ma's mom snagged this great vintage suitcase (see how I repurposed it here.) She added the "Cards" letters and found a nice lacy fabric. 

I was inspired by these: 

I'm pretty sure my dad and step-ma came up with the idea of the guest quilt. We went through several incarnations of the idea, and ended up with this. An antique lap quilt- 

Loved how it looked here: 

I became a little obsessed with putting together the perfect centerpieces. When I saw this photo on Pinterest, it became my ultimate source of inspiration for the rest of the wedding. I went back to it time after time: 

Here are my centerpieces. My handsome hubby Brett helped me paint the numbers on the books: 

I hit farm wedding jackpot when I found boxes of vintage agriculture text books at a local thrift store. I probably would have gotten in a fight with anyone who tried to wrestle one from my grip! 

The book table numbers were inspired by this photo: 

My flowers were a real group effort and can I just say THANK YOU again to my awesome bridesmaids who made so many of these things? Mary (and Michael) made all the book page flowers and Amanda (and Andy) helped with the coffee filter peonies. Kimberly sported red hands for weeks after she helped me dye some of them pink. These girls kicked bridesmaid ass... 

Flowers made by these tutorials: 

Side note- If you are looking for big impact, low cost, low effort flowers, I highly recommend the coffee filter flowers. So inexpensive and very easy to make. 

If you're getting married in the Kirksville area, let me say I totally recommend Amie of Amie Cakes. Her prices are great and she did an amazing job with my beautiful wedding cake:

Unfortunately I can't find the exact pin I sent Amie, but I showed her several styles like the one below and we both really loved the one with the artichoke "flowers." It was beautiful, without being what I thought was too girly: 

To keep this post from getting too long- I'm splitting it in two parts! Back tomorrow with part two!