shoes for the girls.

While I don't always think its necessary for bridemaids to wear matching shoes, in the case of my own bridesmaids this is the route we opted to go. I was worried that different color dresses along with different types of shoes would look a little too busy. Realizing that not all girls have the same taste in shoes, I determined my criteria for choosing a pair that all six girls would like:

1. They have to be black. As much as brides think that their girls are going to wear those purple heels again after the wedding, they probably won't. Though still not guaranteed, there's a much higher possibility they'll wear the black ones again.

2. Simple design. Nothing with sparkles, patterns, etc. This also lends itself to wearability, and helps when you're searching for a pair of shoes that six girls with very different styles are going to like.

3. Preferably leather, not satin. This goes back to that wearability thing. They'll probably have more occasions where they can wear leather shoes over satin ones.

4. Affordable. My girls are not made of money, and even if they were I wouldn't expect them to be spending it on matching shoes for my wedding anyway!

I sent out an email to my bridesmaids asking if they had any suggestions for black shoes (I did not give them all of the criteria, to see what kind of shoes they would choose). Here are a few of the options they had picked out.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

After listing all of the options, the girls told me which were their favorites and we went from there. Can you guess which pair we ended up choosing? I'll give you a hint...they follow all of the criteria listed above!

We went with #2! They were on sale last week for 50% off, so they all got their shoes for under $30!

I think they'll look really cute with their dresses, and hopefully they're practical enough to be worn again. One more thing to check off the infamous list of bridal to-dos!

Did you opt for matching shoes for your 'maids?

saving the date part 5: adding it all up.

Finally, the last post on our save-the-dates! You've seen how we made the envelopes and the save-the-date cards. I told you I'd write about the cost breakdown and lessons learned, so here it is. First up, let's see how much they cost us, shall we?

$35.00 - 200 sheets of text weight paper in Lake from PaperSource
$11.50 - large flourish stamp from PaperSource
$7.95 - small flourish stamp from PaperSource
$15.00 - envelope template kit from PaperSource
$5.50 - Colorbox stamp pad in Eggplant from PaperSource
$1.50 - Clear embossing powder (on clearance at JoAnn's)
$3.00 - Double stick adhesive ( 2 rolls - using 50% off coupon at JoAnn's)
$3.00 - Two packs of metal brads (using 50% off coupon at JoAnn's)
$3.59 - 1/16" circle punch (on sale)
$5.00 - Corner rounder (using 50% off coupon at JoAnn's)
$14.40 - 90 sheets of linen textured cardstock (12 x 12) from JoAnn's (6 for $0.96)
$38.16 - Printing costs for 90 full color 12 x 12 sheets*
$143.60

*Note: The printing company we used had quoted us $.40 per color sheet when I sent them our design. Later we found out that they had quoted us wrong (it should cost more like $.99 per sheet) but they still honored the original quote. We got lucky!

We'll also be using the large and small flourish stamps and the envelope template kit for other projects. I still added them into the cost of the save-the-dates, but they'll be freebies for our invites and other paper goods.

Final price per invite: for 150 save-the-dates, it works out to about $0.96 per save-the-date (not including postage). Not too bad!

Now, onto the lessons learned.

1. Even though making envelopes with PaperSource paper rather than buying PaperSource envelopes is cheaper, I'm not sure it would be worth it for everyone. It is a pain cutting out 150 envelopes. I spread out the work over a week or so, cutting about 20-30 envelopes everyday. Cutting anymore than 30 per day is just torture, don't do it!

2. Sign up for emails from craft stores like JoAnn's and Michaels. You will get coupons pretty much every week for 40-50% off one item. Use these to buy your supplies. You'll save a ton of money!

3. This is an important one. JoAnn's has great sales on 12x12 paper. You can get 6 sheets for $0.96, while one sheet usually costs $0.50. Ask your printing company if they can print on 12x12 paper before you buy it. If they can't print on it, you'll have to find another printer or cut the paper down to 8.5x11. We found out that none of the common printers in our area (FedEx Kinko's, OfficeMax, etc.) knew how to print on 12x12 paper. We ended up using a place in the UP to print all of our save-the-dates to avoid cutting the paper down.

4. It's quickest to make the envelopes and save-the-date cards one step at a time, preferably with help. Get someone (your fiance!) to cut out all of the printed cards (or envelopes) while you stamp them. Put the embossing powder on each stamped surface immediately, but you do not have to heat up the embossing powder right away if you don't want to. It would probably be best to have three people for this process. One to cut, one to stamp, one to emboss. You can round all of the corners and insert the bosses on the save-the-date cards at the end.

5. Embossing allows you to use pigment ink without waiting for it to dry. This is one of the primary reasons we've been embossing all of our paper goods (aside from the fact that it looks good!). The only type of ink I've found in our wedding colors are ColorBox pigment inkpads. The problem with this ink is that it takes forever to dry unless you emboss it. Once you emboss it, it's dry in about 30 seconds.

6. These save-the-dates take time. Make sure you have time to spare before taking on a project like this one! We were working on these for about a month (not everyday of course). Now we know how much time our invites will probably take, so we can plan accordingly.

Hope this helps some of you that are planning to make your own save-the-dates or invites! Happy crafting :)

if we could go back and do it again...

We would get an engagement picture like this!

Photo by Joel Flory

I came across this on Brooklyn Bride today and had to share. My dad is a retired police officer so this would be a perfect shot for us to capture! Maybe next time... except there won't be a next time. Maybe a wedding picture like it instead? How cool would that be! Pretty cool, I think.

a very helpful fiance.

When we first started planning our wedding, my dear fiance was less than interested. In fact, he even surprised himself with how much he didn't care about anything related to the wedding (besides the fact that we were getting married of course!). It was a little frustrating to say the least. I'd ask a question about the reception site, colors, guest list, ANYTHING, and he would respond with "whatever you want to do" or "I don't care" or some other generic statement that didn't help me at all. This went on for a month or two before I couldn't take it anymore. I am not really a crier, but on a trip back from the UP the tears came out. I told him that I wanted his opinion on things, whether it was the same as mine or not. He felt bad for making me feel like he didn't care, and said he'd try to get more involved in the wedding stuff. And has he ever!

He has helped me book vendors. I give him a phone number, he calls and gets quotes. We decide together which vendor to go with, he calls and takes care of it.

He researched and booked our honeymoon. I am ever so grateful for this one! Planning trips overwhelms me a bit because there are so many options!

He pretends to care about things that no guy should ever care about. Flowergirl dresses, centerpieces, you name it, he knows what we're doing.

He comes with me on all of the wedding shopping trips. What to know where to look for cake pedestals? He is your guy.

He has helped me with the crafty projects. He manned the paper cutter while we made our save the dates. He helped me make our mossy initials. And his latest project... bathroom signs! Check them out! He came up with these all by himself, with the exception of the paint colors and the little dots, which were my contributions. Aren't they cute?

I'm so glad I'm marrying him. And not just because he's good with a saw.

Does anyone else have a very helpful fiance when it comes to wedding planning? Was he always that way, or not so much at first?

motherofthebridestyle.

You may have heard of groomstyle but this is motherofthebridestyle...

I hate to brag, but my mom is a pretty cute little lady. She is short (like 5'1") and skinny and I have always been jealous of her for that (somehow, I got stuck with the taller and wider genes...no fair!). That being said, my mom is way too young, hip, and beautiful to be stuck in one of those stereotypical mother-of-the-bride dresses!

While she and my sisters were in town awhile back, she tried on this dress from David's Bridal and we all agreed that it was a contender for her wedding day attire.

Since there are essentially ZERO malls in the UP, she hadn't found any other possible dresses when I asked her about it last month. I told her she should just order the dress from DB, but she didn't seem completely happy with her choice. I had seen some cute dresses at Ann Taylor in their Celebrations collection, so I told her to look online. She did, and she fell in love with this gorgeous dress in pistachio (the green color on the right). Sorry for the poor picture quality!

I think it's the perfect color to accent the rest of our bridal party. Ultimately, she decided that this second dress was more "her", and ordered it (using a coupon of course... I had to get my thriftiness from someone)! It came in recently and she loves it! One more wedding-related task taken care of!

Motherofthegroomstyle will be coming up soon, but it will have to wait until next week since my FMIL and I will be searching for the perfect dress for her this weekend!

Did anyone else help their moms pick out their dress for the wedding? Where did you look?

so excited.

Check out what just arrived in my inbox! That's right, an evite to my own bachelorette party! I'm so excited! It makes the fact that I'm getting married in 5 months feel a little bit more real, and I like it.And of course, I can't wait for the party!

the great debate: renting vs. buying.

When we first booked our reception, we knew that the venue would not be providing dishes. They do not hold events there on a regular basis, nor do they plan to in the near future. We kept this in mind when booking our caterer, who is a family friend and has access to dishes through his work. We thought we would be able to use these dishes for our wedding, so we never budgeted for this expense.

A couple months later, I found out there were some circumstances which were preventing us from using the dishes for our wedding. We would have to rent or buy our own, or borrow them from somewhere else. Not knowing where else to borrow them from, we starting weighing the pros and cons of the two remaining options, renting and buying. Here's what we came up with:

RENTING
Pros
-Generally cheaper
-Don't need to wash the dishes after use (just scrape off food)
-Don't need to figure out what to do with the dishes after the wedding

Cons
-Waste of money (nothing to show for it after)

BUYING
Pros
-You can get some of your money back by selling them afterwards

Cons
-Generally more expensive
-Need to wash the dishes after use
-Need to do something with the dishes after (sell or give away)

As you can see, there are more pros for renting than buying. But I couldn't help but think that it is such a waste of money. After the wedding we'd have nothing to show for all the money we'd spent.

So I began pricing out some dishes. I found dishes and flatware for a decent price at Sam's Club. Plain white 10.5" dinner plates would cost about $2.40 per plate. I liked that they were plain white, as we are going for a simple, modern look. But multiply $2.40 times 360 and you get $864, and that's just for one plate. Then we'd need to add salad plates, bread plates, dessert plates, coffee cups, saucers, beer glasses, wine glasses, and mixed drink glasses. Needless to say, the numbers got a quite high, and the prices didn't even include shipping.
So what did it cost to rent 10" dinner plates? At $0.33 per plate times 360, it would cost $118.80. Muuuuuch better. I would even settle for the ivory plates with gold trim for the extra $745.20 we'd be saving.
Believe it or not, I actually considered buying for a lot longer than I'd like to admit. I just couldn't get past the fact that we would have nothing to show for the money we spent on rentals after the wedding. Plus some of the other items (the bread plates, for example) had less of a price differential between renting and buying ($0.75 to buy vs. $0.33 to rent).

After figuring out that it would cost us more than double to buy all of the dishes (and we still hadn't negotiated shipping) I finally caved and signed the contract with the rental company. That is, for everything except the flatware. During my analysis, I found that buying flatware from Sam's Club was actually cheaper than renting. So we went to Sam's and bought the Bakers & Chefs forks, spoons, and knives, and saved about $60 compared to renting at $0.37 per piece.

In the end, I was glad to know that all of my research had paid off and I had made the most of our money when it came to dinnerware. The rental company has been great to work with so far!

Did anyone else struggle with the rent vs. buy decision for wedding items?