DIY: Wedding Photo booth

And the crafting continues! Wedding planning does tend to get stressful, so I'm glad that crafts help me to relax :) I've had fun creating cute things for our big day. One thing that I have wanted for our wedding since I started planning is a Photo Booth! Renting a professional one would be awesome, but also kinda pricey. We are on a budget after all! So, I decided that the DIY approach would work just fine. The key things we have for our photo booth are: Cool backdrop with our colors, hand-made chalk boards, and fun props to pose with. I also needed some crafting assistants (I won't take all of the credit). My main assistants in this project were Mindy, Ben's amazing mother, Pam, my wonderful mother, Ben, my love, and Kaityln and Cody, my super fun, super rad cousins! Check out the fun pics that map how we progressed through this project...

One of the first steps for creating a photo booth is finding a cool back drop. Mindy and I went to Joann's Craft store and found the perfect piece of fabric! My mom is going to sew the edges, and then it will be all ready to hang. Get ready to strike a pose in front of this fun backdrop! If you see this in advance, you could even coordinate your outfit! :) Below, you can see Mindy and me practicing some poses in front of the fabric at Joann's.
Here is my chalk board making station. I used the glass in differently sized dollar store frames, and painted them with chalk board paint. The paint is pretty cool stuff. You can "Create a Chalk Board on Virtually Any Surface!" :) Hey, maybe I'll even find a use for it in my classroom.

The next picture shows mother and son working together to paint the dowels for one of our prop ideas. Uh, oh, is Ben using a kitchen spatula to flip the freshly painted dowels? ;) haha

Well, that's as far as I'm going to get on this post today. I need my beauty sleep!

Wedding Invitations: Assembly

Get ready! This is a looooong post! If you're in a rush, at least just look at the pictures of our hard work! :D

I was so happy to have help from some wonderful people for this tedious project. It would have taken me FOREVER if I was left on my own, because I'm sorta OCD when it comes to this stuff. My fabulous friend/bridesmaid, Jen came over as soon as she got off of work to lend a hand and offer her expert advice. I knew she would be perfect for the project since she just helped do this sort of thing for her sister Jamie's wedding. The top snapshots of the picture below show Jen completing the first step of the project: Gluing the blue paper with the wording onto the yellow backing paper. The next two snapshots of the picture show me working on the second step, which was gluing the paper that we completed in step one to the beautiful pocket style invitation.

We also got to have some fun with stamps for the third step. We chose a beautiful sand dollar to stamp on the yellow paper that went behind the reception information card (which was printed on vellum). It was fun to chat and catch up as we stamped away. This step was not as intense as the first two steps :)

Sand dollars up close...

Below you can see the crew hard at work: Jen, Paige, and Cody. Cody is my awesome cousin from Texas, who is visiting for about a month. I figured I put him to work a little bit while he's here :) My sister/MOH, Chelsea, came to help too, but she wasn't available during this picture. Chelsea and Cody were in charge of the fourth step, which was folding the pockets, and adding the RSVP neatly into the pocket.

The next day my adorable mother, Pam, came to help me finish up the final steps. Below you can see her completing the sixth step while I was working on the fifth step (which I will explain next; sorry it's not in perfect order) The sixth step included snipping the sheer, yellow ribbon to the appropriate size, and then tying it in a cute knot around a completed invitation.
The next pictures show me doing the fifth step. I glued the vellum reception cards onto the yellow paper that Jen and I had stamped with the sand dollar the day before. After the glue dried a little bit, I stuffed the reception card into the pocket and handed it to my mom to tie.

Cute little invitations ready for the seventh step: putting them in the envelope!

I was fortunate enough to have my Aunt Laurie's best friend Marylynn calligraphy the addresses on the envelopes. She did a fantastic job, and I was so pleased with how they turned. See for yourself in the picture below. I did blot out the addresses for privacy sake! But you can kind of get an idea... Also, I don't know why it uploaded sideways...I tried several times to fix it, but it's being difficult!

The eighth step was mailing my little babies (the invitations that is). After the long process, it was hard to just hand them over to someone and trust that they would take proper care with them (hand canceling). Maybe I'm just weird like that! :) But, the post office by the future Mr. and Mrs. Ben Koehnke's residence is awesome and I didn't even have to ask. They offered to hand cancel them for me :) Now that the hard work with the invitations is done I love checking the mail and receiving the response post cards. If you're reading this and you haven't sent yours in, then this is a reminder for you! :D

It was a big project, but it was great to have so much support! There were many key players that helped in the process, and I am grateful for each one of them!

Bridesmaid's Bouquets

While flipping through one of my many bridal magazines I was ecstatic to find a beautiful, unique idea for the Bridesmaid's Bouquets—flowers in a nautilus shell. I immediately decided that I had to have this for our elegant, beached-themed wedding, so I started some research. I found the perfect shells at http://www.ioffer.com/selling/shellworld. The 5-6” pearl nautilus shells came in the mail today and they are PERFECT! Check out the pictures to see my inspiration and other ideas using nautilus shells.

For my Bridesmaids...

Flower Girls...sooo cute!

For the ring bearer, too!