Honeymoon Keepsakes

This summer Darryl and I travelled to Berlin and Prague for our (just under 2 years later) honeymoon and it was amazing!  We went for 9 days and had such a wonderful time exploring together and seeing new sights, learning about new cultures, their foods, their languages, their ways of life.  I was 28 weeks pregnant at that point and we figured this would be our last opportunity to do something big on our own, just the two of us, before we become a family of three.  We tend to always find excuses not to go on vacation - namely money-saving excuses but man were we glad to have done this.


I'll have to do up a separate post with some pictures and highlights about the trip, but last week I put together a little something to keep all of our keepsakes from the trip together.


It's nothing new or earth shattering, but displays everything that would have otherwise sat in a drawer, forgotten for years on end.


I started by laying out everything I wanted to include:

I bought two black Ikea Ribba frames and just used the inside paper to put my momentos on...

Once I was happy with the rough lay out, I trimmed the map to fit.  I actually had to use two because it wasn't long enough.  I had seen some cute ideas where people used the map to cut out letters that could say "Berlin" for example, but I quickly decided against that because I knew I wanted to have our main routes, streets and spots highlighted to look back on.

Our framed keepsakes for Berlin...

And for Prague...

The reason some of the frames may seem unbalanced with greater areas of map showing and no keepsakes in certain areas is because those were the main travelled spots that have highlighted and circled spots that we relied on to get from point to point and I didn't want to cover them up.

Now we just need to find a spot to hang them, I'm thinking in our bedroom, but that's at the bottom of our to-do list right now.  Only 6 weeks until our due date and we are hustling to get a livable nursery and non-construction zone upstairs before that happens.  Fingers crossed!

How do you display or keep momentos from your travels safe?

Table Numbers and Centerpieces

Remember when I had too many ideas for what to do for our centerpieces?  I so badly wanted to do the doily lanterns, I thought they were so romantic and would give such a nice glow.  I also really loved the freshness of the lemon centerpieces (but remember how the inside of a lemon gave Darryl the creeps...like the inner part of a sunflower?).  Well after days of him seeing me struggle to make the doilies work, he put his lemon-phobia aside and agreed to do something with them.  Thank you!  In the end I ended up combining a couple of the ideas.

Last summer we came across a garage sale that had this fabulous box of old mason jars...all for $2!)  Some of these jars were from the 1930s, total score!

 

With 11 tables and a couple jars left over, that's less than 18 cents per table!

 

At another garage sale later on in the summer I came across a box full of (12!) older hardcovered books labelled "free - take one!"

 

I hated the thought of insulting them, especially since there really wasn't anything else there that I wanted to buy (but having hosted a garage sale, I also knew that if they were like me, any left overs would just be driven to the nearest donation center...maybe I could save them the trip!)  So I shyly asked if they would mind if I took the whole box, explaining that they would be the perfect addition to my wedding centerpieces and they gladly welcomed me to them. 

 

Here are the flowers we decided on...

 

 

I loved how full and fluffy they were.  They're a type of chrysanthemum.

 

I decided to also use the mini mason jars from the brooch shower my mum and sister threw me to put some tealight candles in.  Worried that the lemons would kill the flowers, I did many, many trials throughout the summer, here's one...

 

Luckily the lemons seemed to have zero effect on the flowers' well-being (at least with these particular flowers...if you're considering a similar centerpiece, definitely do a trial run or two to be sure).  It was after this that I decided to give the lemon-filled mason jar a little bit of height by stacking it on a book.  I think two or three stacked books would have looked nice, but I just went with what I had.

I tied some twine around the neck of the jar and a grey tag with our table numbers on them (this was the only photo that semi-showed the table numbers, sadly)

 

 

We ended up deciding to put random dates, years and numbers that were meaningful to us and our relationship as our table numbers (ie: the year we started dating, our anniversary date, the year we went to Africa together, our ages when we met...) and then as a way for the guests to get us to kiss, instead of clinking their glasses, someone from each table would guess the significance of their table number (the DJ's alternative was for table to sing a love song which was also fun).

 

It turns out that the flowers that were delivered for the day-of were much much smaller than the ones I had been practicing with all summer (look how sparse they look compared to the trial ones I had done!).  They were very unattractive, in my opinion, but in the end I really couldn't have cared less because when all was said and done, I just wanted to marry Darryl and celebrate with those closest to us, I barely even noticed the centerpieces and decor all night.  Don't lose sight of the real reason you're putting all of these ideas and decorations together in the first place!

 

I think this was the last wedding related thing I had to catch up on, other than pictures of the day...coming next week!

 

 

The Bouquet

Photography is clearly not my strong suit, so after posting yesterday's how to, I want to show you some more professional looking pictures!

 

I may be biased, but...so pretty right!? 

 

 

It added some nice sparkle to the head table during dinner...

 

 

 

And added some interest to otherwise predictable wedding pictures...

 

 

And just because I love a little black and white...

 

 

I can't thank my cousin enough for capturing our day with her photography skills.  I can't wait to show a few pics of us and the rest of our day, I'm just going through them all and trying to narrow the selection down!

 

If you're looking to make your own brooch bouquet (I'd totally recommend it; it's beautiful, it's memorable, it's meaningful and it's a keeper!) click here for the how-to.

  

 Linking up to:

 

 

            

 

Making the Brooch Bouquet

After my lovely brooch shower I got started on assembling my bouquet about a month and half before the wedding.

 

 

 

I gathered all of the above brooches, plus a few more (I probably used 40-50), together, I bought some fake hydrangeas to soften the bouquet up a bit, and also to hide the wires.  I also used floral tape, wire cutters, wire and hot glue.

 

 

I turned each brooch into an individual stem (this is great to do alongside your favourite movie, or with the company of your darling niece).  My sister was kind enough to come over and help me with this.

 

There are two different sizes of wires, the thick one is 14 gauge I think and the thinner one that is wrapped around was something like 22 gauge.  Start with the thinner wire by wrapping it from one end of the brooch's clasp over to the other.  Then the larger wire will hook through that to be the sturdier, main stem.

 

 

I'm not going to attempt to explain this part any further.  Take a look at the link below this picture for a much more in-depth look at how to create the stems.  This lady documented each step so perfectly...

 

I used this tutorial which has some wonderful step-by-step pictures

 

By the end of your movie (and maybe into another) you'll end up with all of your brooches on their stems...

 

On another day I started to assemble the stems into a bouquet.  Using the hydrangeas as my base, I took one brooch stem at a time and taped the whole wire stem to the hydrangea stem with floral tape (don't worry too much about the exact placement of the brooches, they're very pliable and easy to manipulate as you go).

Just keep adding them on...Your stem will slowly get thicker and more realistic in size

Once I had them all in place I cut a small piece of burlap and hot glued it to cover the bottom of the handle as I didn't want the green tape to be visable. 

 

 

Then I hot glued a larger piece of burlap for the rest of the handle.

 

Finally, to dress the handle up a bit, I added some lace and a beaded necklace from my Nana.  The heart shaped brooch was my "something borrowed" from my mum, it is part of a 3-piece jewelry set of my great grandmother's.

I'd read lots of tutorials and forums talking about brooch bouquets being really hard to make and a lot to take on and not worth it, and I guess it depends on each bride individually, but I loved the process of making it.  Sure it took a good few hours, but the beauty of it is that it's not going to wilt on you, so don't leave it to the week before your wedding!  I had this done at least a month before our wedding so it was not a stress at all and I did it over a few days. 

If you make one and put a necklace around the handle, here's something I learned...hot glue is not enough.  Luckily I had put a pin in both ends to secure it more, but if I had to do it again, I'd put a few more pins throughout because with all the handling it gets on the big day, the hot glue did not hold enough.

 

And now it sits in our bedroom as a beautiful reminder of our wedding day, and of the many people involved.  I love that it is something I can keep forever as a momento of our special day.

 

Next up I'll show you how it looked on the actual day :)

 

 

Anyone else out there try their hand at a brooch bouquet?? 

 

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Seating Plans

In the summer I showed you our seating guide inspiration.  We loved the idea of using our house's 92 year old original windows that we replaced.  This house means a lot to us, we've put a lot of our own blood, sweat and tears into it, it's the walls that house our own new family, it's the third member of our family!  So bringing a part of it into our wedding was only natural.

 

My original plan wasn't much of a plan at all, I was just going to write and erase as needed, but I can sometimes have a bit of a perfectionist streak, and having uneven, crooked writing would have driven me nuts.  So thank goodness a family friend (hi Susan!) asked if I was planning on printing a template out to trace.  Hello!  How did I not think of that!?  I blame it on the million other wedding things that were on the brain.  So after I found a font I liked, my mum printed our guest list out on overhead sheets and I taped them to the front of the windows.

 

 

The reason I wanted the printout on overheads was so that I could tape the sheets to the front of the window, flip them over and write on the back of the window (so that, once the windows were on display, the writing would not get smudged, scratched or wiped off because the writing was behind.  Make sense?)

 

 

Tracing a font made my life so much easier!

 

 

I don't have a picture of them set up at the wedding unfortunately but here they are all done and in our house!  There were two windows in the end. 

 

 

 

 

I wanted a font that wasn't too stuffy or formal because that's not really us, and wasn't the feel we were going for.  Just something nice with a little personality.  We made our table numbers, years, dates and numbers that were significant in our relationship (like our anniversary date, the year we started dating, the year we went away together, the year we spent in two different countries...)

 

 

 

Then during the wedding dinner, instead of clinking glasses to get us to kiss, guests were welcomed to guess the significance of their table's number (the DJ also said they could sing us a love song which some of them also did)

 

Right now these are sitting on the floor in our dining room, but eventually we'll get them hung up on our walls for some personalized wall art.  I just have to find the right spot, which I think I may already have, but we'll also have to make sure we don't tear any plaster down in the process - those windows are heavy, yo!

Card Box Reveal

So I realize I've dropped the ball on post-wedding stuff (sorry, Susan!!) and part of the reason for that was because I was waiting for our pictures to get to us, but there weren't pictures of my diys at the wedding, so I'll just show you the ones that I had taken before the wedding.

 

Three months ago I shared with you the card box inspiration I had been eyeing.  I mentioned that I had come across a grey AND yellow suitcase at Value Village for $3.99.  What are the chances!?  There was a bigger size that I was going to get, but I'm glad that Darryl put his two cents in...the bigger one would have been too much.

 



 

The inside had a nice sunny yellow...fun!

 

 

I painted some wooden letters to spell "cards" in white

 

Then cut some burlap triangles and hung them on a scrap piece of fabric I had.

 

 

 

Then I decorated the interior with my left-over brooches and some doilies, just cause they're cute and tied in with my brooch bouquet.

 

 

The grey ribbon was an extra from our invitations

So many pretty brooches, but I had just run out of room in my bouquet...and I knew I wanted to decorate the card box with some too, so it all worked out well in the end. 

 

I kept the doilies in place with pins, with little yellow tips

And we topped it off with Darryl's favourite picture of us, from the early years of our relationship, camping with our first joint purchase (a $4 one-man tent from a garage sale, we paid two dollars each.  It was a big moment for us lol)

So while I didn't catch any pictures of it all set up for the wedding, a few days later we snuggled in to open and read our cards.  It was fun, we tried to guess who each card was from(based on the writing on the envelop, the style of the card and it's placement in the pile of other cards lol) before looking inside.  It was a fun way to draw the process out and make it last a little longer. 

 

So there you go!  That's how our card box turned out - sorry it took so long to post!