the cowgirl boots delima...

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So my dear friends (& bridesmaids) Jamie and Jessica prompted me with an interesting idea...cowboy boots for the bridemaids. I have been struggling with bridemaids shoes, for I am not a "shoe person"... but this idea is intriguing...what do you think?! Of course adorable pictures, but we aren't cowboy-cowgirl people. It does go very well with our theme... married in a corral, hay bales to sit on, pastures/trees/mountains, rugged idaho.... i love it. Plus the nighttime could get a little cooler, and if not...they could change into flip flops at the reception?! So one more delima-what do the guys wear? I originally wanted white jack purcells....any ideas out there?! And who doesn't look good in cowboy boots anyways? Super flattering and I've always wanted an excuse to purchase some- that hopefully won't make me taller than Matt-that would be quite unacceptable to me.

...the invitations...

Well here they are...our pride and joy...we are so pleased with the way these turned out. We spent about nothing... the cost of: 2 yards of my favorite amy butler fabric, some green thread for sewing three of the layers of invitation together, some fun swiss dot paper in green and turquoise, kraft brown paper and envelopes, vintage stamps, twine, white linen card stock, and ink for our printer at home. It was fun, we made 80 invitations which was a pretty reasonable number. Matt helped with cutting each piece of fabric to size, starching them, stamping each envelope and RSVP postcard, the layout/wording, assembly...and LOTS of love and encouragement. 

It was a blast to come up with something unique and it felt like us and the wedding weekend we would be having. We found a picture online of a pine tree we loved and tweaked it to be our own and made a "matt tree" and a "lindsey tree" and then chose some fonts that were whimsical and rustic to us. Then I wanted to have the front backed by amy butler fabric. I fell in love with these fabrics and her use of turquoise and green- it felt like the summer wedding feeling I want...and I love fabric and sewing- so voila! In our wedding invite it goes!!

Our wedding will be informal, but nice. So we had to work hard to convey that in our wording on the invitation. We are getting married in a corral, having a BBQ with ribs, handmade cotton wedding dress, and without any words of god in the ceremony- just the love of our friends and family to unify us... so... we wanted to make sure everyone came prepared for what they were going to experience. 

We chose to splurge with vintage stamps. This is getting popular- I saw it popping up in some wedding blogs that I love and we decided to go for it. In town there was an antique store that carried a bunch of vintage un-used stamps that we could choose from. It took us three hours to find green, turquoise, brown, and yellow stamps that would add up to 61 cents...but we did it, and we are so pleased with the way it looked. We also wanted to use 29 cent LOVE stamps for the RSVP postcards. We have a little vintage flair in our wedding, we love it...and we are doing our wedding ourselves-just like back in our parent's day...so it works. 

We have loved the feedback from our friends and family. And we didn't realize that getting the RSVP postcards back in the mail would be so much fun. Everyday we run out to our mailbox hoping for another one...we just can't wait to see all of our very special people in June to help us celebrate something soo incredibly special to us....our wedding.

cake trials...

As you may or may not know we are doing literally every part of our wedding.  This includes the wedding cake. We stumbled upon cooking light's cupcake recipe for coconut cake (coconut inside the cake- not outside, like usual) and lime frosting. Its super tasty...so we thought this would be fantastic for a summer wedding cake. 

So here was attempt #1-

...needless to say we were freaking out. Who wants to eat cake like THAT?! It actually was quite good tasting, but not only is it hideous but what you can't tell from the picture is that the lime juice curdled the frosting.... sweet huh?! Yeah, thats what acid in limes does to buttercream frosting. So we had a little hiccup in our plans. We tried again with some tweeked recipes, now with cream cheese frosting- which tastes great with lime, it doesn't curdle miraculously but it won't hold up in the heat too well...so we bring the cake out at the very last minute...thats ok with us.

Attempt #2-

...better- right?! This was only one layer of cake, we will be putting about 3 stacked on top of each other to make a taller cake.And then put some little pine tree branches around the cake for decorations. The frosting also has little green specks of lime zest (our colors are turquoise and green...fyi).We found four of these fabulous cake stands at Costco...small and large turquoise cake stands that we plan to have a small cake w/ our ceramic bird toppers, then the other cake stands will have lots of cute cupcakes on them with amy butler fabric ties on toothpicks...

the invites are out!!

Well... it was a lot of super fun work...but they are on their way...we can't wait to show you our process!!

reception ideas...

...ok so now I am thinking that making a wedding cake may be a little tricky. How about these adorable cupcakes?! Are cupcakes really any easier than one big cake?!

The little flower gardland is adorable...I think I will be incorporating these cute fabric flowers somewhere...

Maybe some flowers for the table, I love the fresh greenery and little white flowers...a little wild-flowery look...with some burlap table runners and heavy white floor-length drop cloths on the tables...like the picture below...

How tasty does this appetizer set-up look?!

save the dates...

...Well they went out and they were a huge hit! 100% DIY (do it yourself) Here are the pictures of how we made them...

...first we printed about 50 save the date cards (std's) on kraft brown paper, and cut up a bunch of different fun papers that I already had and glued them onto the back of the kraft paper invites. Pictured here is on the left- backs of the std's and on the right is the fronts of the std's...

...We loved the idea of matt "entering" into my life/photostrip and together we are much happier than apart. its a fun idea we had only seen once and wanted to duplicate it. Of course we don't have a photobooth, nor could we afford to go to one. So Matt and I took a bunch of photos with a curtain background and a tripod in our house and crafted a photostrip on a photo editing program on my mac. We then cut and pasted that one photostrip over and over, and turned it into an 8x10 print to duplicate at the ever so wonderful and cheap...Costco. We printed about 8- 8x10s of "my" photostrip...then 8- 8x10s of "matt's" photostrip....

...so we cut up the photostrips, glued them onto the cute paper std fronts, and added some fun vintage photo corners...

 

...then voila! Done! Pictured on the left is the back of one std, and on the right is the front of another std card. We also addressed the green envelopes through the computer/printer in the same font that we thought really felt like our wedding (which was hard to choose out of 1,000 fonts let me tell you!) Chardin Doihle- from dafont.com if you are interested. I know its nicer to hand address envelopes, but I think it would have looked a bit more tacky had I done it myself. We chose the celebrate stamps, because not only are they cute but we are celebrating... we are truly getting married!! And we can't wait!!...

the ceremony...

Matt and I would like to do some fun renovations to the corral that we plan to get married in... here is what the aisle could look like with buckets of flowers...

Ceremony seating of hay bales covered in quilts...

lighting for the wedding...

Target is amazing...probably one of my favorite stores. And tonight, the experience was even better. We found our dream whimsical string lights for the wedding. We had been struggling with the choices of LED, fairy lights, christmas lights.... but these lights that we chose are truly awesome. They are cute and look like little fireflies buzzing about. We want lots of strands of lights over the dining tables, close to the pond, over the dance floor... to make the reception feel magical and romantic. My brother, the electrician, will be in charge of setting up the lighting so that its beautiful and also so we don't start a fire. We will also have tea lights in mason jars in the trees and floating candles in the pond. But these lights are priced pretty well, but hard to find. (some targets do not carry these string lights, for they are target brand) So if you are in search of adorable lights, check out Target at christmas time, but don't raid the Eagle, ID Target please...those are all mine!




So that the lighting looks romantic like this....

matt's ring...

We received matt's ring in the mail today. BEAUTIFUL!!! It is from the same artist/jewelrysmith who made mine... Justine. It fits matt perfectly, it looks man-ly and rugged, and he keeps on asking if he can wear it just around the house. I think thats a good sign, even though the answer is still of course no!

bridesmaids cards

Here are my bridesmaids cards that I sent out to my 4 four bridesmaids (best friends) and 1 maid of honor (sister). I saw the idea on once wed, and decided to tackle it. Remember paper doll chains in 2nd grade?! Yeah, its even harder than I remembered. Did I ever sand each little arm and leg back then? I think not.... but for some reason I found it important this time around. Let me tell you.... this was a HUGE project. Not only did I spend a whole week on it and question even completing it more than once... I then took it to the post office and it was $1.22 to send each card! Just fine for 5 cards....but it made me wonder about wedding invites. What if I spend all my time and put lots of love into each and every wedding invite and the postage is so outrageous that I might as well have chosen to do letterpress invites?! Huge questions I will have to answer later...
So I chose to put each girl's information on the back of their paper doll, and then the wedding info also. That way even though everyone knows each other...they have each other's email and phone number for quick easy access for any plans that need to be made. Each girl also has their own green dress and flower in their hair, which is how I picture them at my wedding. They have the freedom to choose any shade/style of green summer dress that they'd like and I will be giving them a cute little white flower for their hair. Nice and simple. The part about this diy project that I loved the best was getting the phone calls after my friends/sister received them. They were so excited for the wedding, and loved that it really felt like me asking them to be in my very special and unique wedding and how much it clearly meant to me that they were there. It was fantastic. And I would do it again in a second. However....for 50 wedding invites...we shall see what we come up with...

they are off!

And the save the dates are on their way !!! Phew....that was a lot of work...and fun. We can't wait to start the invitations. After everyone receives their cards, I will post them on the blog...and just how we pulled it off, 100% DIY style :)

antique-ware for our wedding

These pieces will be playing a big role in our wedding. Matt and I spent many hours rummaging through antique stores ( one of our pastimes we enjoy) and found these beauties. The bread box we use for our digital stuff/cords etc for now...but we will be using it for our card box at the wedding for wedding wishes/guest book of sorts. And the enamel ware will be used as our serving dishes. We love the look of it...rustic. :) A theme of our wedding...