Wedding Errands :)

Yesterday I ventured to Joplin to meet with wedding vendors and nail down several aspects of our wedding :)  Along for the ride was my beautiful soon to be sister in law Joy!

First stop was the caterer.  It has been a bit of a ride to find a caterer that is willing to provide what we are looking for out of a meal for our wedding without being crazy pricey.  I didnt want bbq, but I also knew that whatever meal we served had to be easy to transport out to Springhouse Gardens (which is a bit of a drive) and stay tasting yummy :)  I think we have finally settled on using the catering department at Missouri Southern.  They had a large selection of food to choose from, they set up and tear down everything, their services include linens (!!!!) and they were very reasonable for what they are providing.

Next stop (this was impromptu) was to visit with Cameron's aunt who has volunteered to make us a yummy cake for our wedding :)  You may remember this post from a while back where I talked about ideas for our wedding cake.  Yesterday we narrowed down the direction that we want to go in and it is a combination of the pictures below:

From Jess Hill Cakes

From What's Cakin

See if you can guess what our cake will look like with those hints ;)  It will be lovely I promise!

My last meeting of the day was with the DJ.  We have chosen A Sound Event as the DJ for our wedding, and my meeting last night went pretty well.  He was late (which annoyed me at first), but when he explained that he was in a job interview run late I calmed down :)  I understand long job interviews that you have no control over!  Our conversation went really well and he was very open to us controling what is played rather than tell me that he knows best.  I'm excited to see how the music all comes together.

Cameron and I both enjoy music, so most of what will play at our ceremony and reception is hand picked by us because it has sentimental meaning within our relationship or because we like it.  I am excited to get a CD will all of the wedding music on it as a great memento of our day, and it will be even more special because we took the time together to pick out the music :)

To end this post I have a question for all of you: what songs do you love to hear at receptions?  We want our wedding to be fun and lively so I want to make sure that people are up dancing to music that they love!  Give me your suggestions!

And the wedding planning continues...

Wow.  What a week it has been.  Last Sunday life for many in Joplin, MO was turned upside down by a terrible act of nature, and this past week has changed how I look at a lot of things.  I have been able to witness kindness and generosity that I did not know existed, and I have also observed a town filled with so much love and dedication to one another to continue moving forward.  I am so proud to be able to have our wedding in such an amazing town, and I hope that I can show them even an ounce of kindness that I have witnessed them all sharing with each other this week.

Even in all of the chaos of this week, wedding planning must go on.  I wanted to share another one of my wedding DIY projects with you.  This one involves making the silverware bundles for dinner.  Because our wedding is outside I knew that I wanted disposable napkins and silverware, but I still wanted them to look nice and fit with our theme.  We bought the plastic silverware that looks like metal to achieve a nice look.

We got really lucky and found the heavy napkins that I wanted with gray flowers along the bottom!  Vanity Fair was thinking about my wedding theme when they made them ;)

All we did to assemble them was roll the silverware in the napkin and secure with yellow curling ribbon.

I am really happy with the finished product, and I think they carry the theme really well :)

Milk Glass the DIY Way

As you all have seen I love milk glass and I want to use a lot of it in the wedding.  The only problem is that it can be a challenge to find inexpensive milk glass vases.  I have been picking them up whenever I find them, but I would like to have one milk glass vase per table at least and I am not quite there yet.

The solution to this problem came to me from a post by Emmaline Bride (have I mentioned how much I love that blog?!)  Since Cameron and I decided the look and feel to our wedding we have been collecting vases from thrift stores, but we have also been saving any glass bottles that we aquire from various liquids that we consume.  This has left us with a large collection of not-so-interesting glass bottles that need a face lift.  Mix an abundance of plain glass bottles with a need for more milk glass vases and you have a DIY project that makes me smile :)

First I started off with several plain glass vases and bottles.

The goal is to use white puff paint to create a design that helps the bottles to achieve the look of milk glass.  Here are some examples of milk glass vases that I have already collected for the wedding:

I went into the step of puff painting with the idea to have fun with the designs and not with the idea to completely recreate milk glass designs that I have seen.  This allowed me to have more fun and also not worry about being perfect.  

Here is what the plain glass vases looked like after the puff paint designs were applied:

Once the puff paint was completely dried, I moved on to spray painting the bottles.  I chose to use Krylon's indoor/outdoor paint in glossy white.  The back of the paint can stated that it was good for using with glass and I wanted the glossy finish so that the bottles had the smooth look of milk glass.

Spray painting was definitely an adventure.  The paint was quite runny which meant that we had to apply very thin coats.  We ended up doing around 4-5 coats to get the even coverage that we wanted.

Even though it was messy, the end product was well worth the work!  I am really happy with how the bottles turned out, and the bonus is that I have increased the amount of milk glass vases we have for the reception without spending extra money for pricey real milk glass :)  

This is one happy bride!

Joplin Adventure: Part 2

As promised, here is part two of our Joplin Adventure.  When we woke up on Saturday morning (early for Sam and I, but not so much for Cameron) we headed straight for Springhouse Gardens.  I was really excited to show Sam our reception site, and be able to hear all of her great ideas for the space.

This is the view when you first walk in to the venue through the gates.  We are going to use this area as the dance floor.

The top picture is where we are going to place the head table as well as close family members (ie: my mom because she is cool).  The bottom picture looks behind the venue where we are going to have yard games.  You can also see the springhouse in the back along with the beautiful water fall!  Pictures out here are going to be amazing!

To the left of the dance floor area is a large greenhouse building.  I am so excited to decorate this space!  This may be the future home of our mason jar chandelier.....

This room is also really cool because it has a giant chalkboard wall!  Sam and I got so excited thinking of the possibilities for this wall.  And if you look to the left in the picture you will see a large rolling counter that we are going to use as a drink station.

In addition to the large rolling counter, Springhouse has some really fun greenhouse pieces that we are free to use at the event.  We are thinking of filling the two tubs in the top picture with ice and using it as a soda bottle cooler.  The two carts will be fun for flowers and the cocktail hour.  And I am really excited about the wire structure (I do not know what to call it) on the left side in the bottom picture.  We are thinking of hanging our favors on these!

The area above is where we are thinking of putting the buffet table.  It is a nice long area with room enough for people to on either side easily.

That concludes our Joplin Adventure!  I hope you all enjoyed getting to see more of where our wedding and reception will take place, and as always send me your ideas!