SgtPepperette (Melissa's) Planning Thread! Tons of pictures!

[SgtPepperette]

We leave in just 3 days. EEEEEEKKKK! Its hard to believe that our time is here. The last few weeks have seriously gone by in a blink of an eye.

 

I can not express how thankful I am for this forum!!!! Thank you Tammy for starting such an amazing, supportive place for all us destination brides to be!!!

 

I got so many wonderful ideas from you ladies, so I apologize that I dont have everyones names where I bumped ideas off of. Thank you!!!!

 

The engagement

 

Grant and I went on a trip to Carefree, Arizona. It was a work trip for Grant but his boss so kindly paid for me to go along as well. Grants work hours were very limited, so we had a chance to do all kinds of fun things. Hiking, couples massage, horseback riding, and even a hot air balloon ride! The day we came back to Michigan was my birthday. We planned to go see Newton Faulkner that night. He was playing at a venue we often go to. It was also the first place Grant ever told me he loved me. So during the song, Dream Catch Me, Grant pulled me to the side and sent a very (nervous) sweet speech about how he loved our romantic week, and wouldnt think of a better place to propose to me. Than got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. Of course I said yes!

 

I was so surprised about the engagement, I literally had no idea! He designed my engagment ring himself, turquoise (Im native american), and diamonds. Ill be using the engagment ring as my wedding band as well.

 

 

The Venue

 

When we decided on a destination wedding we were going to elope to Hawaii. Well after losing my dad shortly after we got engaged we decided to do something closer to home so our family and friends could attend. Grant grew up in Fort Myers, Florida and is always talking about how much he loved it there, so we decided to make that our destination

spot. We spent a few weeks researching and finding everything quite pricey down there, so decided to rent a beach house and hold our wedding there. We found this amazing property, and are so excited to finally see it in person!

 

 

 

 

We will be having the cocktail hour around the lounge furniture.

 

 

 

 

This pergola is where we will be holding the ceremony. I was a little disappointed that is wasnt directly on the beach, but you have to walk through the tide to get to the beach and we have some guests in wheelchairs. We will have the ceremony here, as well as the dancing.

 

 

 

[SgtPepperette]

Save The Dates

 

Our Save The Dates were our first DIY project, and we loved the way they turned out. We wanted to get a pre-RSVP count because we really had no idea on how many guests would we have. This helped in picking our venue and other vendors. We created an invite, along with a RSVP postcard, and a magnet.

 

First, we spent a few weeks coming up with this cute little poem. We were really excited about it! We bought the image from stock photo, and Grant worked his magic on it. As you might notice our date and location changed since the Save The Date! LOL We printed these at vista print on the postcards with a blank backside.

 

 

 

We also did a magnet to match. I didnt really like the magnets from vistaprint, they looked a little cheap. But since we ordered them and had so many of them we sent them to our guests anyways. We ordered the business card size, and I think if we would of ordered the size bigger the quality might have came a little better.

 

 

Lastly, we created a RSVP postcard. This was the front of the postcard, which we matched the invitiation.

 

 

Here is the back part of the post card. I wasnt sure how people would respond to the RSVPs, but we got about 80% of them back. It narrowed our guest list down by 10 people, so that made such a difference in looking at intimate wedding packages vs regular wedding packages!

 

 

We loved how these turned out, which also set the tone of DIY projects for us. Our guests seemed to love them as well, which was nice to hear :-)

 

Website

 

With Grants amazing web developing skills our wedding website turned out better than I could ever imagine! We loved this stock photo that we found when creating our Save The Dates, so we decided to base the website off of that. It was a tree with hearts on it, and a couple kissing next to it. The hearts on the tree had exactly the same number

of years we have been together. And from that point the creativity kept flowing. We created pages with all the wedding info, photos of us, photos of our kids (furbabies), a guest book, a fun quiz, and the music to the song Grant proposed to me.

 

Melissa & Grant

 

Invites

 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE our wedding invitations. When I saw the pocketfold design invitations I knew I wanted to go with that style. And after doing some research online I found that it can be done at a reasonable price! First, here are the links to the tutorials that helped me the most...

 

DIY Pocketfolds Finished!!! - Weddingbee - The Wedding Blog

 

superfabulousdiypocketfolds - The Super Fabulous Guide to creating Super Fabulous DIY Pocketfold Invitations! by Knottie themar

 

The vendor that I found that made these so affordable is Cards & Pockets. We bought 20 sets of the invites. That set included the pocketfold, invitation card stock, invitation mat card stock, 2 precut card stock inserts, RSVP card, RSVP envelope, and mailing envelope. They have a ton of colors to chose from. They offer samples to which is nice. So before you place a big order you can order the samples, either in the actual product or just small cardstock samples to see if the color is what your looking for or size. After ordering what seemed like 20 samples, we finally decided on our color selection. Which helped us finally make a decision on the wedding colors. Killing two birds with one stone...I love it!

 

While we waited for our shipment to come in we started working on the invitation. We weren't really sure what we wanted to go with. Palm trees, star fish, etc. We loved how we designed our website, so we went with that same theme. It worked out perfect! The more we hashed out the details the more excited we got. Dont you love how those small details really pull everything together? Next we worked on the inserts. First up was the map. I spent a good 4 hours working on that thing in PowerPoint! After slaving on it I realized it was to big, so we had to adjust. Thats seems to be the role DIY projects work with me...work, rework, and rework again! The wedding details insert was easier, just text mostly. The last thing was the RSVP. We were debating between a mad libs RSVP or not. We thought some people might get confused with the Mad Libs, so we did more along the norm.We bought the inserts precut. But they sell them uncut and its a little bit cheaper. Being perfectionist we thought it was better to get them precut. We did have to trim the map insert so we could get the staggered look in the pocketfold. But that was a simple cut. Besides that nothing in the invite needed any additional cutting. Dont worry I didnt get off that easy as you will see as you read on. Ha!

 

The most tedious part was probably the belly band and monogram. I found our ribbon at JoAnns. I wanted something with a design vs the solid color ribbon, and found the perfect retro-like design ribbon. While at JoAnns I also picked up some card stock for the monograms, and monogram mat. Being cohesive, we designed the monogram to match the website. All the text on our website are in billboard like signs, so we made the monogram a sign to. We were able to print out a ton of monograms out on one sheet of card stock, and than I just cut them up with my handy dandy cutterbee trimmer. I was also able to cut the mats for the monogram out of one sheet of card stock, which I used my lovely trimmer again. This is when the perfectionist in me worked against me! I cut probably three times than I needed to so I could find the best 20 to use. LOL When I was finally satisfied I started to put everything together. I used scrapbooking adhesive which was much easier than glue. Soooo happy with the finish product.

[SgtPepperette]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ran into one big snafu. We printed them at home on our inkjet printer. We weren't sure how that would work but it actually printed them quite nicely. But our printer does not print borderless on custom sized paper. So everything was printing out with this weird border. We just readjusted the design and created a brown border on everything. I actually liked it better. It really brings everything together nicely. The pocketfold is a tight fit so we couldnt mat the inserts (which is what my original vision was), so it all worked out in the end.I went back and forth on the addressing of the envelopes to. I know there's all these etiquette rules, but honestly we arent really paying attention to them. The envelopes we got had this shimmer to them so I wasnt sure how the handwriting would look. So we ended up doing labels. We created the brown border on the labels to give it an extra special touch. The problem with that was our inkjet printer again...the ink easily smeared. I learned that after about 5 labels. So I had to peel the labels off carefully, and stick them on the envelopes holding on to only the sticky part. Than I smoothed them out with a blank sheet of paper. That effort had to be as good as handwriting didnt it? That printer rocks, we didnt even have to refill any of the ink!

 

Get this....the cost per invite came out to $3.11! Not bad at all! Especially since the cheapest invites we priced were $6-$7 each!

 

After we finished I sort of wished we would of went with a more daring pocketfold color. Like the orange or green. Besides that one small regret, Im soooooo happy with the outcome! And cant wait to work on our next project

 

P.S. Of course we have a mock up invite done in photoshop that I also have to share. This will help you see the invite in better details, since my pictures are so crappy! Once you click on the link, than click on the image and it will enlarge. But Ill also post the image below to.

 

http://melissaandgrant.com/images/invitation.jpg

[SgtPepperette]

Ceremony Details

 

We have some ideas on how the decor will be for the ceremony, but since we havent actually seen the property we are going to figure it out better once we get there. But we plan on hanging starfish with twine down the isle chairs, here are a few inspiration photos:

 

 

 

We also are planning on decorating the pergola with some green and brown organza with starfish hanging down the sides. Its in my head...we shall see how it turns out.

 

Our program inspiration is from a DIY program we found on weddingbee, DIY Programs - Another Labor of Love - Weddingbee - The Wedding Blog. We had a vision but needed to try to execute it. So we headed out to shop for paper, because clearly we can find some locally right? 6 hours later we found out that wasnt such an easy task! We did fall upon this paper at Staples that were 5x7 cardstock, and had scalloped edges. We loved the look, but werent sure if we wanted to pay the money it would cost to get 80 pieces of cardstock. They were only packaged in 10's and that was $4 a pack. So we kept looking, and came up with nothing. After coming home and searching online and than sleeping on it, we decided that that the scalloped paper was what we were ready to go with. A little more than we wanted to spend, but what can you do. When you see something you like,

you cant get it out of your mind. So the next day Grant went to 3 different Staples and got all the ivory and green he could find. We decided to use brads from Michaels to hold the pages together. We went again with the cohesive design that we have been using, and are VERY pleased with how they turned out! So I guess you could say we half DIY'd these since the paper was precut. But the design, hole punching, and brad pushing was all us LOL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SgtPepperette]

We are doing a sand ceremony. We bought a picture frame with an vase like opening. And we purchased blue and white sand. The vases look gigantic, but the frame holds almost 4lbs of sand!

 

 

My dad has passed and Grants mom has passed, so we wanted to do a little something to remember them. We both had poems we wanted to use, so we stuck those in a frame with pictures of us with our parent. We are going to have these off to the side on a table with a candle lit.

 

 

And here is our gigantic playlist!

 

http://melissaandgrant.com/playlist.htm

[SgtPepperette]

Reception

 

The reception set up is going to be in a U-Shape. I found the great idea from our very own Kristy! Here is a mockup...

 

 

Oh how the centerpieces were stumping us! We had these tins pails we got from our cousin. We wanted to use them somehow but had a hard time figuring out the right way. So after many trips to the craft store we came up with a idea we both loved. The tins we borrowed from Grants cousin. The sand and shells we bought as samples, but plan on using sand and shells from the beach in Florida. The candles, candle holder, fans, and raffia we got from a wholesale craft store.

 

 

 

Now this was a fun project, Cootie Catchers! When I fell upon this DIY project I was so excited. I LOVED these things as a kid, and how fun to incorporate them into my wedding. There are tons of blogs with info on this if you google wedding cootie catchers...the one I used is not available anymore. But here is one I fell upon when I searched...

 

DIY: Wedding Cootie Catcher Template April Foster Events Blog

 

Now this project is not faint of heart, or perfectionist. Actually Im still not really happy with how they turn out, but am trying to let the perfectionist in me let it go. LOL I didnt like the way the lines looked when printed, so I

hid the lines. You do need the lines as guide to where the text will fit, but are able to hid them in the end. I still needed the outside lines to cut the box out, so traced over them with one of our wedding colors so I still had those. I added a border line around the outside to give it a little extra something. There are all kinds of options in powerpoint to do that. We did 3 different styles. Two of them were random facts about Grant and I, and the third one was little wedding dares like pose for a photo, have a cocktail, etc. We printed them out at home, and than started cutting and folding. For the most part it went smoothly, but if you dont cut the square evenly your folding can get thrown off a bit. Like I said not for the faint of heart! We plan on putting these around the cocktail hour tables.

 

 

 

[SgtPepperette]

Our guestbook is another great idea from the BDWers! We are doing to do the dry erase board guest book. Basically we have two dry erase boards, and each guest will sign the erase board like they are signing a guest book. Than they will pose with their message for the photographer. So than we can create a photo album with the pictures, or maybe blow them up and make a collage to hang in the house, etc. Here is our setup:

 

 

 

Favors! Since music is such an impact on both Grant and I we decided to do CD favors. We are only having 20 guests so thought it would be fun to get a little participation from our guests. I emailed them and asked them to forward me their favorite love song, or a song that has a special place in their heart. We got a pretty decent amount of participation, but not all. So we combined the songs they sent us along with some of our special songs (most played at the wedding), and created our CD favors!

 

We used the same cohesive design that we have all along for the CD label, and insert cover. We were able to use a CD machine to create the CDs and labels. So the labels printed right on the CD vs a sticker label. We bought a package of CD inserts to print out the outside/inside cover, but the program wasnt working that great for us. We printed them at home with our old faithful printer (hasnt let us down yet!). When they printed from that program there was black horizontal lines for some reason. So we just made the design in photoshop and printed out on cardstock. A lot more cutting, vs the perforated insert paper we orginally had...but it was worth it in the end. They turned out great!!!!

 

I had a hard time with the wording because I wanted to acknowledge that they helped pick the songs...but not everyone did so I didnt want people to feel left out. So we left it at these songs are special to us.

 

 

 

 

 

Koozies! We used Barry Promos for the koozies, and I have to say very disappointed with his service. When I received them they were very crooked, so he is rushing a new order to me in hopes that it arrives before I leave. But here is the artwork:

 

 

Menus: We only have 20 guests and no assigned seating, so are just putting these in the fold of everyones napkins.This is a horrible picture,sorry!

 

[SgtPepperette]

Lastly I have our wedding attire! I have gone through 3 different dresses, and I think this final dress is what Ill be wearing. But hey you never know. Ive had a lot of health problems in the last couple years so have put on a lot

of weight, and have really bad body image issues. So that explains going through so many different dresses Anyways, this was my final choice. I had the sleeves altered from a halter into regular shoulder straps, and have a

pink crinonline to go with it.

 

 

 

Here it is on me, but couldnt get a great picture because no one to take it. So this is my timer on my camera taking it. LOL Dont mind my crappy hair either!

 

 

My shoes I found at DSW:

 

 

 

My earrings I bought off of Esty seller Kristen Friesen:

 

 

My bouquet I got from etsy seller High Tide Creations:

 

[SgtPepperette]

My makeup is being done by Grants cousin, Kendra. She just started her own business, All The Glamour and More. I wasnt sure if I wanted makeup or not, since I usually don't wear it. Actually I dont even own one piece of makeup. Crazy eh? I saw a few bridal parties that Kendra has done and everyone looked so great! And its my wedding, why not right? Kendra did airbrush makeup, and I loved it. It was very natural, and I loved how my eyes popped.

 

Before:

 

 

And here is the after (dont mind my crooked glasses, they need an adjustment badly!):

 

 

And here is later in the night, still looking great!

 

 

My hair...still unsure what Im doing....

 

Grants attire...he found in a few hours. Love to be a guy sometimes! LOL

 

We found his pants at Express - pinstriped Khakis:

 

 

 

We found his shirt at Macys, but it will be in white...

 

 

And his shoes at DSW as well:

 

 

To save on money right now we are using a ring I bought him a few years ago as his wedding band. We plan on getting him one he wants next year when we have more time and more money! LOL

 

Phew! I think thats it! Love how I was really detailed than I sort of faded out? Sorry! LOL

 

Thank you everyone again!!!! I Cant wait to share our pictures with you when we get back!!!!

[*HOLLY*]

Love it! You did such a wonderful job!