The chair cover situation

Chair covers are not a necessity by any means. However, the chairs at our reception site aren't the most eye-pleasing things to go look at and I really think it'd just help pull things together if I had chair covers. Also, the white tablecloths included in our reception price aren't floor length, so I feel like chair covers help give the illusion of longer table cloths and cover the gap between the table cloth and the floor.

Anyway.... I contemplated trying to make them myself, but then realized that between the price of fabric and my very novice sewing skills that it just wouldn't be worth it.

Then I talked to our reception place yesterday about renting them. The problems with this were 1) It's $2.50 per chair cover w/ sash. 2) They don't even have any of my colors in sashes yet. They said they might be ordering a pale pink sash later this year, but there was no guarantee. 3) I hate paying almost $300 only to have nothing to show for it in the end.

Then I scoured the wedding sites to see if I could buy used ones. Typically they were all sold before I could get to them. Apparently I'm not quick enough on the WeddingBee classifieds. lol. It's also a little scary to buy from someone you don't know and have never heard of, not to mention that most of the sellers on there are asking a price close to what I can buy my own for.

So... in the end I decided to buy new chair covers (hopefully I can sell them to another bride after our wedding and recoup some of the cost) from linentablecloth.com.  They are having a sale right now where their white polyester banquet chair covers are $1.97 each, plus I had a 10% off coupon code for January (they give them out on their Twitter account), AND they have free shipping right now if your order is over $50.

So.... I bought 110 brand new chair covers for $195. That comes out to about $1.77 per chair cover!

This does not include a sash. I have not purchased sashes yet, though I will probably also buy the sashes from the same site. I am waiting because they have a rewards point program and for every 1000 points you accrue you can get $10 off an order. Rewards points can be accrued by registering on their site, signing up for the e-mail newsletter, reviewing a product, and for every dollar you spend there. Hopefully I'll accrue enough to get $10 off my sash order at a later date. I have been searching other places to see if I can find any cheaper, but no luck yet.

Once I receive the chair covers I'll let you know what I think about them.


*I have absolutely no affiliation with www.linentablecloth.com. They did not pay me or give me any sort of additional discount for this post. I simply liked their site and made my purchase.*

DIY: Groomsmen gifts- Etched glass mugs

I love the look of the personalized large beer mugs for groomsmen gifts, but I don't love the $40+ price tag. So, I decided to DIY this one too. I chose to do just the first letter of each guy's last name.

Supplies:

- Contact paper ($1 at The Dollar Tree)

- Printed letter in preferred font (Free. Done from my computer and printed at home on regular paper.)

- Small paint brush (Free. Already had on hand)

- Exacto knife (Free. Already had on hand)

- Glass etching cream (Free. Given to me by one of my BFF's who used it for her wedding last year and had some left over.

- Glass mug ($1 each at The Dollar Tree. Seriously... these are heavy, about 7 inches tall, and look like nice quality too!)

1- Tape your printed letter to a piece of contact paper (The side that you'll be looking at after you stick it to the mug.)

2- Cut carefully around the letter (also cutting through the contact paper since it's taped underneath) with the knife, leaving a stencil made of contact paper when finished.

3- Stick your contact paper stencil on the mug. Be sure to center and smooth out and make sure all edges are stuck securely to the glass so that cream doesn't ooze under any parts of the stencil.

4- Paint over open part of stencil with glass etching cream (read directions on your brand for instruction on how long to leave it on. Also... be careful not to get too much on yourself as this can burn your skin. So maybe wear some gloves, ok?)

5- Wash cream off (I left mine on for about 2-3 minutes each time) with warm water until all is removed from the glass.

6- Peel off stencil and admire your handy work.

Ta-Da! I love them! No, they aren't perfect, but they are still great! (trying so hard to not be such a control-freak/perfectionist when it comes to all things wedding related). So, there you have it.... 4 personalized etched glass large beer mugs for a total of $5! That's a TOTAL budget bride victory!!!

DIY: Bridesmaid Bouquets

These were basically pre-made bouquets from Michael's. I believe they were originally $7.99, but I used a coupon for each one making them only $3.99 each. (I typically wouldn't have gone with a pre-made bouquet but I love the color of these roses.) And since you can only use one coupon per transaction, I also enlisted my sister (the MOH) and the fiance to each purchase one with one of my coupons so we could condense our trips to Michael's.   :-)

Ok, so then I just wrapped each bouquet in standard brown satin ribbon. They still looked like they were missing something. So I put a single strip of lace, left over from my DIY lace hair flower, around the middle and then inserted 3 diamond type pins in the stems. During the process I arranged the flowers like I wanted them, but then some of the stems were a little too long so I had to trim the ends (see tip below).

I absolutely looooooove them. I can't explain it. They are just the epitome of everything I want in my wedding... they've got the pink, the brown, the lace, the romantic/rustic feel to them.  I. LOVE. THEM.

TIP: Don't cut your finger with scissors during the process like I did. It was quite a deep cut, and was bleeding everywhere and definitely impeded my DIY attempts today. However, now my bridesmaids can know that I put LITERALLY my blood, sweat, and tears into their bouquets. I'm sure they'll love that thought....

These are also going to be sitting on the head tables as decoration at the reception. I will be putting glass jars (recycled from things we use at home so these were free) at several spots along the table for each girl to sit their bouquet in.

DIY: Lace hair flower

Hello again! Long time, no blog!

Threw this random DIY project together as I was recently thinking about how heavy my veil is, which means I may not wear it the entire reception. So, I thought of creating a hair flower.

Supplies:
- 1 sheet of felt (30 cents at Michael's)
- Scissors
- Glue gun and glue stick
- A couple feet of lace (found whole spool on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2.50. Forgot to measure exactly how much I used, but I'm guessing it's around 2 feet or so)
- Decorative button to use as center of flower. (Got mine on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2)
- Hair clip or pin to glue on back.

-Cut out 2 inch circle from sheet of felt.
- I cut my lace off of the seam but I imagine you could probably use it as is, but I liked the look of the flat lace.
- Using hot glue gun start gluing one long section of lace around the felt circle so that there is about 1/2 inch of lace hanging off the outside of the circle.
- Once you have completed one rotation around the felt circle, cut the lace where the edges meet.

Here's what it looked like at this point:

- Start gluing another section of lace onto the flower (cut lace length-wise to make thinner if you so desire. This should be based on how big your felt circle is and how wide your lace is) to make a smaller circle inside (and on top of) the this one.
- Glue a final even smaller circle of lace inside the second one. (hard to explain, but the final picture should hopefully explain it better than I can.)
- Hot glue your decorative button of choice into the middle of the flower covering the visible edge of the smallest lace circle that you just created.
- Finally, hot glue your hair clip or pin of choice onto the back.

You could glue a hair clip on the back like I did but there are also a lot of other possibilities. It could be attached to a headband, could be a broach with a safety pin on the back, or glue a long length of ribbon on the back and it could be a sash of some kind.