Do Me A Favor...Tag

I do not as of yet have pictures of them on the favors, but I really liked the tags. They were my last DIY for the wedding so they were kind of special. Their construction was simple, their content was the tricky part. Our favors were seedling trees. We got live oaks and purple orchid seedlings. Huge thank you to my mom for not only the use of her printer, but also helping put them together with me and my aunt. Mwah!

Materials

• Construction Paper/Card Stock
• Craft Cutter/Exact-o knife
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Printer/Neat Handwriting & Pretty Pens
• Crop-a-dile
• Ribbon
• Embellishment Stickers

I knew I wanted a simple, large shape for the tags so I went with a pretty generic leaf shape. I used construction paper in different shades of green and my Silhouette to make those. After that step they sat untouched for weeks because A) I had no printer & B) I had no idea what to write on them.

It was tricky because there were two varieties of seedlings and I didn't know which tags would end up on which kind of tree. That meant two sets off plant care instructions on one tiny tag, ugh. In the end I put a link for each trees care on the back of the tags. I wrote the name of the trees in scroll-y pretty green font and then the link in something more straight forward hoping most guests would be able to read it. The problem was links are long.

I ended up folding the slips of paper I printed them on. I rounded the edges of the folded paper and added a green or purple jewel sticker as a kind of door knob. It was a trick I picked up at a scrapbooking party. I think it looked cute. Having a way to access plant information was kind of a no brainer, but what to write on the front took more thought.

I knew they needed to say our names and wedding date. "Thank You" would have been acceptable, but I made a thank you banner for the table they'd be sitting on. My florist suggested "Michael & Katie Sitting in a tree..." Which I thought was funny, but Mike did not. Plus the end kept stumping me. I searched for "love" "garden" quotes.

I read a few and then remembered the Elton John song I'd heard on Gnomeo and Juilet. The song as a whole was sad, but perhaps the refrain would do? It did. The fronts said [Our Names] on the first line, [Wedding Date] on the second and then
"Love builds a garden
Grew it from the ground up
Every inch of it was us
We pulled it all together
Hoping and believing
That love built this garden
For the two of us to dream in"
Appropriate to our relationship and our theme (and something a little different). It won.

Once both sides were printed and glued on (the back folded, corners rounded and jewel attached) I just punched holes and pulled some lavender ribbon through. I think they were pretty and they really popped against the burlap sacks we had around the seedlings.

We Meet Agian, Florist

Mike had three centerpieces to show the florist. Obviously, only the painted one is finished and the other two are still works in progress.

The unfinished two will/do have glowing mushrooms inside them as well as lit ones on them. Mike discovered glow-in-the dark hot glue on our last craft store trip. Am I the only one who wonders what besides this project people would use that for? The mushrooms inside the log are hot glue, tissue paper and high lighter. He painted the inside of the log black and added a tiny led black light. Neat, huh? I think the third kind he made is my favorite though. All gnarly and old looking. He'll put glow mushrooms underneath that one.

My best (but not very good) shot of the glow mushrooms. So fun!

We discussed filling the centerpieces with dried willow and vine clippings. Putting down a piece of fabric under each centerpiece with moss on it. Maybe burlap with a mixture of green and gray sheet moss and deer moss glued around the edge to make a border. We talked about our plans for disguising the pillar, Mike of course has taken that to the next level. As well as the potential room decor.

It's been determined that we need one more trip to the venue soon. This way we can solidify room decor and lay eyes on the ceremony site. We haven't looked at the ceremony site for years. Plus I want to discuss table set-up with their event person.

Here are the burlap sacks we got for our favors. We'll have oak and purple orchid seedlings for each household to choose from and take home. My original plan for leaving the favors around the centerpieces is not going to work. They are too amazing to be cluttered up with stuff. So, we talked favor presentation a bit too.

Thinking it over.

With the vine. So pretty!

Another shot of all three

Flower Power Meeting

Sorry for the delay, but last Tuesday I did indeed venture to the florist. I was accompanied by my lovely bridesmaid and often blog photographer, Lara. I am usually very decisive by nature, but there are two outside forces at play here 1)Mike and 2)It's been 2yrs since we made some of these decisions initially.

Mike wanted lizard lapel pins for all the groomsmen and dads. They were silver with green stones. I liked them a lot, but after telling the florist we didn't need any boutonnieres we found the lizards were unavailable. We were pondering what to do instead when I came upon a groom in a magazine with sea holly or blue thistle as his lapel adornment. It seemed so "Mike" and went with our colors. I asked Janine to scare some up.

Apparently it's often used for alien plant life in Sci Fi shows. Too cool, right? It's blue and she was worried we'd have to tint it with a little red, but luckily for us it's a purpley blue so no tint required.

We talked a ton about decor, which is kind of Mike's area. Let me clarify, I am contributing and dealing with vendors, but he is the design team. It was decided we needed a group field trip to count outlets, measure pillars and generally work out some logistics. It all looks so simple on the design shows, doesn't it? The room for the reception is a pretty blank canvas which is great (and slightly overwhelming). It has two quirks: wood frames around light fixtures (?!?) and one oddly shaped pillar. Luckily, Mike and Janine are brilliant and the pillar is a non issue, no spoilers! However, hiding the weird frames without breaking any rules or running several feet of cords along the walls may be a lot harder than we thought.

One of the thing I love about Janine is she always shows me things in real life or draws me pictures. It's so much easier to fill up that blank room in my mind with visual aids. The last item on the agenda for this meeting was favors. I wanted seeding trees placed around our centerpieces (one per household) for people to plant and think of us. I also LOVE Janine's "I can make that happen" attitude. Seedlings? Sure. She pulled some up from her own yard and is experimenting with the best way to care for them and also monitoring their size so we can finalize the container decisions. Janine even came up with cute wording for the tag. I'm not a huge fan of the clay pot because you wouldn't find one in the woods. I think we're gonna do burlap sacks instead. The moss will be different too. I'm getting excited though. I hope these trees take root in friend's yards and someday I'll say "whatcha doin'?" and someone will reply "reading under the wedding tree." Sorry chocoholics, but I wanted something a little more lasting (I hope) for favors.

In general, I feel well taken care of. I have a list of questions for the venue and we'll being popping by soon with pencils and measuring tapes shortly. They'll be a lot of brow furrowing and uh-huh-ing I'm sure. That makes me giggle. Hopefully the prettiness I've agreed to so far will be entirely possible.