Map It Out

When Jimmy and I first got engaged, we knew we wanted a small wedding. Many of our past couples have told us that if given the chance to do it all over again, they too would plan small weddings, so we took their advice and decided to have a destination! :) We had heard of people having larger receptions a few weeks after their destination weddings so the people who could not attend would still get to join in the festivities. I loved this idea!...Except for one small detail. After the wedding the only thing we want to think about is the honeymoon, haha! So we planned a pre-wedding bash instead!

I can't even describe to you how excited I am! What better way to celebrate with your closest friends and family than to host a lakeside BBQ on a beautiful summer day?! Or at least I hope it's beautiful!!! All of you summer brides out there know what I'm talking about! :)

Anyways, as soon as we set the date, I got to work designing our invitations. We wanted our travel themed wedding ideas to be present at our big bash as well so I tried to come up with a design that represented our theme.

One super cool idea that I got from a few of our past couples was marriage advice cards. Your guests write down their most valued marriage advice so you can refer to it later or apply it to your marriage right from the start!

That's it for this week!

captured in frames - St. Louis Wedding Videography

The Scenery

Crafts, crafts, crafts! My recent creation for our travel themed wedding is a sign composed of our instagram photos and ... our wedding hashtag!

So long disposable cameras, hello hashtags! You either love them or hate them. Personally, I think it's kind of cool to have all of the photos taken by your guest lumped into one easy-to-find category, but that's just me. :)

Either way, here's how I did it!

I had already created and printed my instagram poster so the next step was to work on the frame itself. I started with an old cork board that I've had for YEARS. I stripped all of the cork off the board, which wasn't to difficult since it was all ready peeling off.

All right. Time to turn the old into new! I used my trusty glue gun, some burlap ribbon, and white paint to cover the old ugly frame.

I painted the whole thing white, covering up all of the wood.

After the paint dried, I used flat thumb tacks to attach the poster to the frame. I wanted to be able to remove it in case I wanted to use the frame for something else in the future. You never know what I'll do next! :)

I then measured out the burlap ribbon. I wanted it to fit the frame without covering any of the poster. In the end I had to double up the ribbon before hot gluing it to the frame.

And there you have it! It was probably the easiest thing that I've created so far haha! Hopefully it survives the trip to our wedding in Utah!

See ya next Wednesday!

captured in frames - St. Louis Wedding Videography

Up In The Air

Hello all! I hope everyone is enjoying all of the beautiful weather we've had  lately here in St. Louis! Jimmy and I took advantage of it this past weekend and decided jump back into wedding planning.  Our most recent wedding project we worked on was our wedding lights.

While Carol (my future mother in law! :) ) and I cut burlap for our table runners, Jimmy and his dad worked on the lights stands.

During their first trip to Lowe's (notice how I said FIRST haha!), they decided to use pvc pipe to hang the lights because it's so light and would be super easy to bring out to Utah.  There was only one problem....

The lights were too heavy for the stands to stay upright.  They supported the buckets with boards while they contemplated the best way to hold the lights up.

After a few hours of testing out a couple of other ideas, they made a second trip to Lowe's (thankfully they only had to go twice!).  They came back with cables to anchor the poles to the ground. It worked!

The next step? Plugging the lights in.

We waited until it was dark enough to see them and.....dun du dun!!

Seeing the beautiful lights had made me even more excited for our destination wedding in Utah!

While Carol and I were working on the burlap table runners, we came across an idea to cover up the buckets. We were pulling out the strands of burlap to make it easier to cut when Carol said, "These would make cute skirts for a little girl!"

"Skirts!" I said excitedly. "We could make burlap skirts for the buckets. What a genius idea?!"

And incredibly, it worked!

After this past weekend do have a few more stands to make and we need to fine tune the burlap skirts but we finished the hard part! And best of all? We only broke one light bulb the whole time! Luckily we bought plenty of extra :)!

And I couldn't thank Kevin and Carol enough for helping us out with our wedding decor. They truly are the best for putting up with all of our trial and error wedding ideas!

Take care!

captured in frames - St. Louis Wedding Videography