DIY Bride™

Our first Project Makeover comes from frustrated (and newly broke) DIYer Mindy.

Due to downsizing at both her and her fiance’s companies this summer Mindy is in a bit of a budget bind when it comes to her decor. Mindy adores bright green kermit mums and had hoped to make her own wreaths for pew and reception hall decoration. Her initial budget had been $30 per wreath. It is now $9.00 to 10.00 per wreath.

I wanted to give Mindy a kermit mum feel while using materials she could pick up at her local big box craft store. My solution? Kermit mums made out of yarn! Using modified yarn pom poms, pearl-headed pins, and a styrofoam wreath blank, I whipped up a super duper easy wreath that’s easy on the budget. Mindy happens to be an avid knitter so this was a fun surprise for her.

Supplies Needed

• Blank foam wreath, about 12″ in diameter
• 1 skein of green yarn, about 256 yards
• 1 package of pearl-headed pins
• Scissors – make sure they’re sharp!

Instructions:

1. On the middle three fingers of your non-dominant hand (if you’re right-handed, use your left), hold the end of your yarn down with your thumb and begin wrapping the yarn around and around your fingers,  about 32 – 35 times.
2. Cut the yarn when you’ve finished wrapping.
3. Cut a length of yarn about 3″ and tie it tightly around the middle of the yarn wrap you’ve created on your other hand. It sounds trickier than it is. I’m confident you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. You’re smart cookies.
4. Hold the pom-pom yarn bundle and use your scissors to cut through all of the loops on the pom pom – be careful not to cut through the piece of yard that’s holding all of the pieces together.
5. Fluff up your pom pom with your fingers.
6. Now, trim it up with your scissors, making it even and pretty.
7. The last step is to attach the “mums” to the foam wreath with the pins.

Cost Breakdown: $10.00 (note you’ll have leftover supplies to get started on more wreaths)

• Wreath: $5.00
• Yarn: $3.50
• Pins: $1.50

Notes:

• For a 12″ wreath, I used about 60 pom/mums of varying sizes. I did 2-finger and 3-finger mums to keep it interesting.
• The lighter the weight of the yarn, the more wraps you’ll need.
• The size of the mums will vary from person-to-person as our fingers are different sizes. I have chubby little fingers. Your digits may vary.
• Mum-making took about 1.5 hours for this project.
• I used about 3/4 of the skein of yarn.
• If you’d like to make yarn pom poms, increase the number of wraps from 30-ish to 70-ish.

Anonymous writes in with this question about the evening meal:

We’re trying to figure out what to serve our guests (170 ppl) at a 4pm reception. Our budget is $1000 for the food. We don’t want our guests to be hungry but we don’t have a lot of money to feed everyone. We’re thinking appetizers-only. How would this be worded on the invitation so our guests would know?

Hors d’oeuvre receptions are a lot of fun if they’re done well. Hang on here – I’m going on a slight tangent.

My concern here is not the wording but that you’re expecting to feed 170 guests on less than 6 bucks per head. Anonymous, that’s unreasonable even if you do only appetizers & non-alcoholic drinks or go 100% DIY.

Let’s do some math here. 4 pm is close to meal time so your guests through the course of a 4-hour reception will get pretty hungry.

• You’ll need about 6 – 8 appetizers per person per hour. A 4 hour event x 6 appetizers x 170 people = 4080 appetizers.
• You can count on about 5 drinks per person during that time; 850 beverages, minimum. (5 drinks x 170 people.)

You have $1000. So, if you can work in appetizers at an unheard of cost of $0.20 per appetizer, for example, you’ll spend $816.00, which leaves $184 for beverages, about $0.21 per drink. None of this includes plates, napkins, cups, etc. This is just food & non-alcohol bev.

Please, please, please revisit your plans and budget. I know you’re on a tight budget but that’s no excuse not to treat your guests well. Perhaps a pot-luck dinner would be a better option for you? Or cut the guest list dramatically so that you can spend a more realistic amount on food and drinks.

I’m not saying this to bring you down, I’m looking out for you and your guests here.

As for wording, on the reception card or at the end of your invite wording: “Cocktail reception and dancing to follow at….” would be fine.

Fab Finds Friday is a weekly showcase of some of the fabulous resources available to the wedding community. This week’s wedding goodness comes to you from Fuji Instax 200 Camera and Heather Bailey’s new line of felt. Products for FFF are chosen based on their merit and are never paid endorsements. xoxo.

If you’re still in mourning about the demise of the Polaroid instant camera like I am, I have something that may just soothe your soul and bring a sunshine back into your heart. The fine folks at Fuji have introduced an instant film camera to the market. The Instax 200 camera costs under $50 with film cartridges running around $16.00 for a twin pack of cartridges (10 pix per cartridge).

For you felt fans, one of my favorite textile designers, Heather Bailey, just launched her own line of felt. She has 18 delicious colors available. Each sheet is 9″ x 12″ and costs $2.25 for the wool/rayon blend colors and $4.25 for the bamboo/rayon blend colors.

{Stay tuned for my no-sew felt ring pillow project!}

Hey Bay Area DIYers!

Say hello to a fabulous handcrafted wedding! Join DIY Bride author and founder, Khris Cochran, for a day of crafty wedding goodness.

Who:  Brides, grooms, partners, or anyone interested in wedding crafts.

When: Saturday, October 17, 2009

Time: 10 am – 3 pm

Where: A Work of Heart Studio, San Jose, California

What You’ll Get: You’ll get a mix of information and hands-on time to create some terrific projects to take home with you.

We’ll be covering:

• Intro to DIY Bride: How to do it well, on a budget and with your sanity intact.

• Invitations 101: Invite basics and hands-on time creating rubber a stamped invite set.
• Favors Under $1: Showcase favor ideas that can be made for under $1 + hands on project time.
• Pimp My Wedding: Ideas for adding pizzazz to basic wedding products. Learn how to embellish items such as shoes, gowns, favors, etc., turning the ordinary into something fabulous.
• Couture Headband, perfect for brides or maids
• Creative Centerpieces: Showcase of inexpensive + creative centerpiece ideas

The workshop fee includes the hands on instruction by Khris Cochran, all class materials, hand-outs, takeaways and a brown bag lunch.

Register here. I hope to see you there!

This is one of our most popular requests recently: a cupcake wrapper. What is it? It’s a band of paper that wraps around the outside of a cupcake.

Sorry for the messy picture. I had 5 minutes and an iPhone to get it done today. Ugh!

Instructions:

1. Download the template here

2. Print it onto a piece of cardstock

3. Cut it out and use it to trace the shape onto paper. You can fit multiple wrappers on a single sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ paper.

4. Cut out your shapes.

5. Use strong double-sided tape to adhere the cardstock

6. Decorate to your liking

Tips + Hints:

• Linear patterns like lines and plaid don’t work very well because the template is curved. It’ll look wonky.
• Use decorative scissors to cut out the top of the wrapper to add a bit of pizazz.
• Paper punches are great for adding a little extra cuteness, too.

Happy Autumn, Northern (oops! not, Western) Hemisphere readers!

For those of you planning a Fall wedding, get your behinds to your local magazine racks. September is prime Fall decorating time with the major shelter magazines: Martha, Country Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Southern Living, etc., who nearly always have fun, unique, and gorgeous ideas for centerpieces, favors/treats and decor.

Kimberly writes in the following situation:

The bride’s parents are hosting the wedding.  The groom’s mom passed away a few years ago and the groom’s father may or may not be at the wedding. The bride & groom have a daughter together (almost 1 yr old) and the groom also has 5 other kids (2-3 of them will be present @ wedding).

How do they include everyone on the invite as all are especially important to the couple?

Strict etiquette dictates that whomever is hosting the event is included on the invitation. Why? Because you really have no right to send invitations to a party you’re not throwing.

But we Real Etiquette-ettes get where you’re coming from. It’s a family thing. You love ‘em and want them all to feel as though they’re a part of this grand day. No harm in that. The problem here is that you’re wanting to send an invite from 11 people for an event to celebrate 2.

First of all, don’t list everyone’s names on the invitation.

Your best bet is to use family-oriented wording that tells the guests that the bride’s parents are hosting but the immediate families of the bride and groom are involved. However, the best spot for honoring your family is in the text of a wedding program or at the speeches during the reception.

Together with their families

Bride’s Name
and Groom’s Name

request the pleasure of your company
as they celebrate the union of their families

Saturday, the eleventh of May
two thousand and nine
at half past four in the afternoon

Saint Whatever Church
1245 Main Street
Your City, State

Reception to follow

OR

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Smith
request the pleasure of your company
as we bring together our families for a joyous day of celebration
at the marriage of their daughter

Jennifer Smith
to
Lucas Jones

Son of Mr. Mark Jones and the late Elizabeth Jones

Saturday, the eleventh of May
two thousand and nine
at half past four in the afternoon

Saint Whatever Church
1245 Main Street
Your City, State

DIYers, do you have any simple wording suggestions for Kimberly?

Hey DIYers!

DIY Bride receives about 2,000 non-spam emails a month. Since the the site is run by little old me, please understand that it can take a few days (or more) for me to respond to your questions. To put it in perspective: if I spent only 5 minutes per email I’d be answering it for 5.5 hours/day, 7 days a week. Not very productive, right?

To expedite the email process so that I can respond to you in a timely manner, I need your help and understanding.

1. When asking a question about your wedding project(s), please provide me with details. I’m getting a lot of questions like: “My wedding is in June. What should I do for my centerpieces?” and “How do I make a pocketfold invitation?” and “Any ideas on how to add pizazz to my dress?”

These are perfectly legitimate questions but don’t provide me with enough details to give you a proper answer so I push these types of questions waaaaaay down on the priority list.

I can’t answer those types of questions without knowing things like:

• What’s your budget for the project(s)?
• What’s your theme or color scheme?
• What’s your wedding style (casual, elegant, country, rustic, shabby chic, modern, minimalist, etc.)
• What size do you want your invites to be?
• What does your dress look like?

The more detail I have, the better I can answer your question.

2. Business mentoring. I appreciate that many of you are aspiring bloggers or book authors (rock on, creative peeps!) and are looking for someone to guide you. While I am thrilled that you’re coming to me (really? me? awesome!) I don’t have a lot of time for one-on-one mentoring. That’s not to say I won’t help out here and there, just don’t expect me to share my entire business model, trade secrets, or info I’ve spent hundreds of hours and/or thousands of dollars on.  Since this is a big topic in my emails, I’m launching a behind-the-scenes blog were I’ll be sharing some of the inner workings of running DIY Bride and being a writer.

3. Please read my the blurb above my contact form. It outlines my email process and clearly states that I do not accept link exchange requests. I’m perplexed as to why I receive about 100 link exchange requests (or demands) per month.  They’re all deleted, by the way.

4. Be nice. ‘Nuff said.

5. Other business stuff. I rarely respond to press releases but that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested or haven’t read them. Most simply don’t necessitate a response. If you have a business query that warrants a response and haven’t heard from me in 3 days, email me again.

Thanks for your understanding, everyone. I appreciate it!

Well-Spun Weddings is hosting a contest for a lucky couple to win a cake made by master cake guru, Ron Ben Israel. Pop on over to WSW and enter before 12/01/09. And do check out Well-Spun Weddings’ vintage wedding films. Truly, they’re among the absolute best videography companies I’ve seen.

Fab Finds Friday is a weekly showcase of some of the fabulous resources available to the wedding community. This week’s wedding goodness comes to you from Mari Robeson + Priscilla of Boston. Products for FFF are chosen based on their merit and are never paid endorsements. xoxo.

I’m a sucker for a good ring pillow. So many are just a bit too precious, if you know what I mean. May I present to you this lovely personalized pillow from designer Mari Robeson as a sophisticated alternative to the lace and bow cookie cutter options?$90.00 at Mari’s store above.

Custom Pillow by Mari Robeson

If you’re looking for an utterly gorgeous gown and you’re on a real girl’s budget, high priest(ess) of glam gowns, Priscilla of Boston, is having a 5 day sample sale at all of their salons beginning 9/17/09. Get thee to a salon! Bridal gowns, bridesmaid, and special occasion gowns are marked down on select styles of course.

Priscilla of Boston Gown (may not be representative of sale gowns)