Journey to the Ceremony Site

      Anyone who's ever been to Sikes Lake knows that getting in and around isn't easy if you are new to the area.  You have to drive passed the Wellness Center to a small parking lot, then walk to the Sikes Lake Center unless you get lucky enough to find parking up close to the SLC.  And we were going to ask our guests to go just a little bit further to an open area where we plan to have the ceremony...so we needed to make sure that we can clearly instruct our guests on how to do so!  

Directional Wedding Signage

     To make some "wedding this way" kind of signs, I picked up a few scrap pieces of wood on clearance at Hobby Lobby.  I purchased a wood-burning tool, and began my project using a pencil to sketch the arrow and text onto the scrap wood.  Next, I traced my lettering with the wood-burning tool...which, if you've ever done this before, you know to be a tedious task.  After letting them cool for a bit, I used sharpies in the 6 bright wedding colors to trace around the lettering and arrow.  I traced around everything, alternating colors as I went along.  This was, again, a time-consuming task.  After the whole of the sign was colored, I created two bows from my Firefly ribbon and hot-glued them to the back of the signs.  I made four signs in this way, and despite that fact that they took much more time than something so simple should have, I'm very happy with the way they came out!

After wood-burning, before color.

After adding colors and bows.

The Ceremony Seating

       Now that the signs were ready, it was time for preparing other ceremony funzies!  Since our ceremony was to be held outdoors adjacent to Sikes Lake, we needed to consider seating arrangements for our guests.  Chairs were going to cost us an arm and both legs (so what’s the point of the chair? I ask you, what!?) to put out on the lawn. I really wanted to have a picnic style ceremony.  I wanted blankets laid out all over the place. But everyone seemed to be against the idea.  I began to compromise by saying that I would be okay with having some hay bales up front that would be decorated to look less hic-ish for the older folks who couldn’t get down on the blankets. Unfortunately, this still wasn’t enough of a compromise…apparently….so….I gave in and went with chairs.  Which meant I had to find people to set up/break down the chairs and think of decorations for said chairs.  Luckily, between our parents and friends, we think we will be able to find plenty of chairs for everyone so we won't have to rent any.  And I'm working on putting together a crew of people who will help with breakdown while we are at the reception. So, not to worry! You won't be asked to get down on a blanket for the duration of the ceremony!  Unfortunately, the chairs aren't going to all look the same, and chair covers are WAY overpriced, but I suppose it could be much worse. The way I see it, this gives it a little character and means more money for other, more important wedding things. :)

Chair Decor Plans

     To decorate our chairs, we ordered organza sash fabric from save-on-crafts.com. They had, what appeared to be all six colors...dead on. However, once the sashes arrived, it seemed that all of the colors were PERFECT...except for one. The green should have been a lime-type bright green...but it didn't look that way at all. When I looked back on the website, it looked like someone had accidentally sent me the "moss" green rather than the "apple" green I had ordered. I made a call to the customer service people to ask for a replacement.  The lady who spoke with me was nice, but not very helpful. She told me that I would have to return the fabric (at my own shipping expense) and that she had ordered the proper color for me.  A few weeks later, that color arrived...the SAME color it was before! I called back...another jolly, but unhelpful lady. She offered to send me the "moss" and the "sage" instead of the "apple" since that color was obviously not what I wanted...despite the color's appearance on the website. I told her I was looking for a color as close to a lime green as possible...she said...and I quote, "Well...we have an olive...that's sort of like lime green...maybe brighter!". What the...? Since when? And on what planet? These people obviously had no clue what I was looking for in my desired shade of green. So, after shipping back three different wrong-colored sashes, I gave up and decided to nix the green unless I could find them somewhere else. I've searched high and low for lime-green organza...and let me tell you...not easy to find. As the search for the perfect green organza continues, I will soon be looking up how to make organza chair bows...that's my next big project! :)

The Aisle Runner

     Because we will be outdoors, I wanted to have a grassy aisle.  Rather than create a runner to throw over the natural beauty of what will hopefully be lush greenery, I would like to have the aisle lined with tree branches. I saw a wedding photo of a couple who did this in the woods and I really liked it.  Of course, I would have to throw in some sheer copper fabric and bright colored flowers for accents, but you get the idea! I can't wait to see this! :)

  

Other Ceremony Decor

     My mom and future second mom and I found some Christmas lights at garage sales that we plan to use in either the aisle sticks, on the lamp posts, or both for decoration.  I'm still playing around with the idea of that....

     I'm also playing around with the idea of sidewalk chalk...perhaps a poem, broken up in lines leading up to the ceremony site? It's a work in progress! :p

    I also have a really awesome looking chalkboard.  On this, I plan to used colored chalk to write out the wedding cast list on one side and the order of the ceremony on the other.  This is my way of saving paper by not printing programs that everyone will eventually just toss into the trash!

     The last bit of decor to discuss at the moment is what will be behind us as we say our vows to one another.  We wanted an archway to symbolize our entry into a new life as man and wife.  Archways are symbolic as gateways that lead us onward into new frontiers. The most extreme example of this is the St. Louis Arch, also known as the "Gateway to the West". I like this, but what was I going to do with an archway after the wedding? And renting was a hassle...though not all too expensive.  Then we came up with the idea that we could have a porch swing behind us...decorated with greenery and colorful flowers. This not only was something that we could forever keep...it was something to remind us of our wedding day. :) (Plus it would make for great post-ceremony photos!) Lucky for me, I have a fantastically talented brother who was willing to build one for me! (What a guy!)  I can't wait to see how it turns out!! :)

Keeping Guests Cool

     Since we are doing an outdoor July wedding in Texas, we decided that we really needed to think about keeping our guest cool and happy even though they wouldn't be outside long.  To accomplish this, we first set the time in the evening...about 7:00pm.  Then we came up with the idea of creating fans.  At first I didn't want to do them because of the paper usage (we were really trying to use as little as possible to be ecofriendly), but in the end, I knew I really wanted them, and that my guests would appreciate them!

     We chose cardstock in as many of the wedding colors as we could and printed two fans/page using a design I created on Microsoft Word.  Next, we cut the fans out using a straight-edge paper cutter and folded them over to make our little fan.  Then I used decorative scrapbooking scissors that I had laying around the house to cut them into various shapes (and accidentally into different sizes too).  These were stapled onto a wavy craft stick. (Which I bought at Hobby Lobby.) I didn't like the way that the staples looked...especially since there wasn't always a clean hit due to the thickness of the sticks.  Then I remembered some foam stickers I had got for the wedding without knowing what I would use them for...(don't judge me, they were the right colors, had butterflies and flowers, and I found them at Dollar Tree)...so there! I used the cute stickers to cover the mess-ups...and thought they looked great! So I just put them on all of the fans after that! :P

     I also needed a basket to hold the fans for distribution.  We found a cute basket at a garage sale that had some metal sunflower on it, so I added a little ribbon and a few glittery copper flowers from my Micheal's Christmas clearance stash. Voila! Cute fan holding device!