Joplin Adventure: Part 1

The quick trip to Joplin was a rainy adventure, but I am so excited to share with all the fun times we had.

When we got into town we went to Gahagan paper to look for cardstock to use for invitations.  My future MIL went a couple weeks ago to grab sample booklets for me to look through, but the gray in the booklet was too light for the invitations we are designing (by we I mean me and Laura).  Sadly Gahagan did not have the smoke gray cardstock, but the little old man at the counter was presh and it was still neet to see all of the reams of paper lined up in the back :)  By the way if you have ideas of paper places with smoke gray cardstock let me know!

The next item on the list was to visit the church, take pictures, measure the aisle, and brainstorm decorating ideas.

The screen along the back wall will go up and behind it is a beautiful stone wall.

Each side has overflow room so that the sanctuary can comfortably seat 300 people.

The greenery on the stage has to stay, but our ideas so far are to add in yellow flowers, mason jars with candles, and collection of vases to make it fit in with our wedding.  I would love for it to look like the picture below from Green Wedding Shoes:

I would also like to add some pots of branches similar to the ones in the picture below (from Snippet and Ink) on either side of the table where we are going to put the unity sand.

We are also on the hunt for fun yellow fabric to make a unique aisle runner out of similar to the one in the photo below from Love and Lavender.  If you find any good deals let me know!

After the church we headed to Cameron's grandmother's house to look at her collection of mason jars.  When we decided to use mason jars in our wedding theme, Cameron's mom immediately jumped in and said that we should look at her mom's collection before we bought any.  My wedding planner and I were thinking maybe 50 jars that we could use for decoration, but wait until you see what we found.... seriously.... mentally prepare yourselves!

There was seriously box after box of mason jars!  All shapes, all sizes!  At one point Sam looked at me and said, "My mind is seriously blown right now!"

Look at my happy wedding planner!

My future father-in-law even got in on the mason jar search!  He said that I was weird for being so excited that he was going to be on my blog :)

Here is a final picture of the mason jar search.  This picture really shows just how many there were in that basement, and the crazy thing is that this is only a portion of the mason jars we searched through!  We found enough to have everyone at the wedding be able to use them as glasses, enough to decorate the church and reception site, enough to make the cute mason jar chandeleir I posted a picture of in this post, and enough to do some fun new projects that I cannot wait to show you guys at a later date!

I am going to have to make a second post to finish out the Joplin adventures.  Expect that soon!  Have a wonderful day :)

Save the date... but don't break the bank

Anyone planning a wedding knows that save the dates wedding stationary is expensive!  Some of the websites I have looked at are trying to sell invitations for $6 a piece!!!  Crazy people.  The high cost of professional stationary encouraged me to get crafty, and be the DIY bride I know I can be.  I approached my amazing friend Laura to design all of the stationary for our wedding and she graciously agreed to help us out!  She really is amazing, and has been able to take my ideas and make them a reality.

First up of the necessary wedding stationary is the save the dates.  I wanted to send out save the dates, because our initial wedding plans have changed (which may confuse some) and I have a lot of family coming from out of town to our wedding in Joplin.  Magnet save the dates are my favorite because they are functional to the recipient, super cute, and they end up on the fridge instead of in the garbage! (that is a large bonus!)

I researched on line how to make my own magnet save the dates, and found out that stores sell printer paper with magnets on the back, which are safe for running through inkjet printers!  I know... I was shocked to!  This is what the package of magnet paper looked like that I picked up:

Laura designed the initial image, and then we figured out that we could fit 10 of the images on a page of paper if we made them business card size.

Once it came out of the printer, I took an exacto knife and carefully cut around edge of each save the date.  The process is a little time consuming, but well worth the money saved!

After cutting all of them out I plan on putting them into an envelope with a card letting guests know where we are registered, and our wedding website where they can stay up to date on all things wedding :)  

I am really happy with how they turned out and it saved us a lot of money to do it ourselves. (P.S. did you notice the mason jars?!  Get excited for them to continue to show up!)  A package of three pieces of magnet paper cost $5.97, and a pack of 50 invitation envelopes was $4.27.  The most expensive part of this project is going to be the postage!  I encourage anyone going through the planning process right now to research how to do some of the projects on your own, because the money saved can be amazing :)  Happy DIYing!