Weddingbee boards

Great pictures!  Where did you get those crystal candle holders? I LOVE them!

AWESOME work! It's so much fun to see what everyone comes up with! My photobucket album is so cluttered and disorganized at the moment that I thought I'd just post some collage boards I put together.

This is our DIY project collage...

1 and 2: Programs
3: Door Hangers for hotel (although they didn't put them on the doors but just left them hanging on the OoT'ers bags. Oh well!)
4: Cookie jar tags (we had a cookie buffet as our main reception food)
5 and 6: Water bottle tags that we did ourselves. Right before I printed all the lables, I changed the design to use the three circle monogram (that is on the cookie jar lables) instead of the one circle monogram. We used both throught but putting this collage together really let me see that we were too heavily weighted toward the one and that I needed to incorporate the other more if I wanted both of them to look balanced instead of an accident. I enlisted my friends to help my DH and I peal off the labels and replace them with these on 180 bottles of water! It was a super fun weekend and everyone loved them!
7: Chair reservation tags... Note: be VERY specific if you're asking people to help you out. The girl who put these out did them so they hung down the front of the chair instead of the back of the chair. It never occured to tell her they went on the back of the chair since that's all I'd ever seen. When I thought about it I realized that she had never seen the pictures I'd seen. So if you're asking someone to do something (even as simple as this) show them an example if you can!!!
8 and 10: Invitaitons
9: Drink table cards

These are some of the details we ordered...

I love, love, LOVED our personalized napkins! I HIGHLY recommend www.foryourparty.com!!! We also had personalized sweatshirts made for that weekend. Mine said, "The future Mrs. Jeremy Stafford" on the back and his said, "The future Mr. Bonnie Stafford"

And this is a fairly good shot of how the decorations came together on the buffet tables.

We grew the wheatgrass ourselves and my DH made and stained the window box! We ordered the tartan fabric and then I cut them into the runners. Since we were going with a casual theme I simply frayed the edges in an effort not to have to hem them. They came out wonderfull!

The cards hanging in the windows were our guest book cards. They all had a starter phrase example: i first met the bride and groom..., the best advice I ever heard about life... We folded them in half for privacy and put a not on the back asking people not to write in that area since we were going to put them in a book. We've since put them into the beautiful guest book my bridesmaid got us. I highly recommend the more alternative guest book ideas! We got some wonderful thoughts and memories!

Sorry for the long post! I'm still working on my "What I Learned" blog. I'll let you guys know when it's done. I know those are my favorite posts! Let me know if anyone has any questions!

bonnie

Thanks so much for posting your pictures.  Bonnie & Shanorama..I'm totally going to steal your ideas!

Hi hulafish. I actually didn't use sticker paper at all. I was worried about the paper being water resistant so I just used photopaper. I had already figured out that the colors I was using came out siginificantly truer on the photopaper so I used it for the water bottles too. I was careful when I removed the original labels and left as much of the sticky as possible. I used that or some extra double stick tape to secure the first end. I then used double stick tape to secure the other end of the label. It worked perfectly. We didn't have any problems with them coming off. I've actually had some sitting around the house for the last couple of months and the labels still haven't come off. Good luck! I think that was one of my favorite details. Everyone loved them!

Oh and thank you Suzanno! I freaking loved them! We were planning on just wearing them the weekend of the wedding, but I wore mine for weeks before and still wear it. It's a great momento. By the way we had them done through www.cafepress.com. Love, love, LOVE cafe press. They do direct printing so it's not a glorified iron on like some of the other sites I've heard people complaining about. The colors didn't come out exactly like they did on my screen or printer, but I kind of expected that. And it was close enough for me.

haliwood:  I wouldn't say we had any sort of special fabric. We didn't even plan on doing it that way when we ordered the fabric. That fabric (which is one of the tartans for the county my husband's family is from in Ireland) was the inspiration for the entire wedding. It was really expensive so we only got three yards. I knew I'd do something with it but didn't know what at the time. Eventually I decided that making runners for the tables would be the best way to use it. I had cut some small samples to use for color comparison and other smaller crafts (I covered a headband in it to wear during the wedding and wrapped it around the bouquets). What I realized is that it was fraying very easily. It seems to be a fairly loose weave. Two days before the wedding when I was stressing over heming three 9 ft long runners, my husband suggested that I just fray them since we were going for a very casual, simple feel. All that to finally get to the answer to your question...

I didn't use any special technique or order any special fabric. I was already fighting the fraying so I just grabbed a few threads at one end and pulled on them. I kept doing this until I had the width of frayed edge that  wanted. Let me know if you want me to take any pictures of them so you can see. I'm using one of them now as a swag over our bedroom window and one as a runner on our kitchen table. Yay for finding ways to use wedding stuff after the wedding!!!!

shanorama: We did actually put them in ice. We used huge galvonized tubs from lowes (major tip!!! We found tubs twice as big for half the price at lowes vs. garden ridge or michaels!!!) That's one of the reasons why I used the photopaper. I figured it would hold up better to the ice bath. Here's a picture of the set up before the ice got there. (click to enlarge)