The Ceremony Archway

     When I began to picture our ceremony, a lot of things came to mind. Many of those things have evolved since I began planning this wedding. One thing, however, has remained constant...I have always wanted an archway. I looked at renting them from a place here in town, but the only style that I liked wouldn't work well outdoors (and I didn't care for the styles that would have worked outdoors). My brother is an excellent craftsman, so I asked him to build us an arch that could later be converted into a porch swing. (That way it would serve a function later...and so I would have something special from my wedding that my brother made.) Unfortunately, he wasn't able to find the time to make it for us. 

     Luckily, Matt's mom had a friend from work who had an arch that we were able to borrow. It is absolutely beautiful! It's a white arch with wide sides that is heavy enough to work well outdoors. On a wedding shopping trip a long time ago, we picked up some floral decorations for the future archway. These decorations were long chains of greenery with 5 of the 6 rainbow colors existing as Gerber daisies every so often along the chain. We bought a matching Gerber daisy bundle in the 6th color, and I had to go through and manually add/rearrange the flower garland to include the last color.
     For the center of the archway, I wanted something special. I thought about getting one big Gerber daisy and using spray dye to make it rainbow. But then I thought, "why spend more money? Surely I can come up with something....". And I did! Necessity really is the mother of invention...

     What I did was first free-hand an "M" (my future last name will be Morrow) on the back of a lid from a Bed, Bath, and Beyond box. (Those boxes have been used for many things because of their abundance as of late! :p) I used a box cutter to extract my M. Next, I wrapped the M in electrical tape. Then I began the task of hot-gluing on some paper flowers that I got from Michael's a while back. (I used these on the butterfly cage, if you recall.) Finally, I hot-glued on some black ribbon for tying the centerpiece I'd just created onto the arch itself. I was definitely pleased with the outcome. :)