Wedding Archives - Page 6 of 7

14Mar 2012

Wedding Detail: Candy Buffet/Display

Shortly after getting engaged and reading (too) many wedding blogs I became obsessed with having a Candy Bar/Buffet at our wedding. Here are two candy buffets that were part of my inspiration:

Wedding Candy Buffet

Found on WeddingBee

Wedding Candy Buffet

Found on Aisle with Style by the Photo is from Hostess Blog.

Best place to buy anthropology jars that I found was Marshall’s. All the good jars were about $12, which isn’t too crazy. We went to multiple Marshall’s and waited a couple of months and then went again. It took a while to compile all the jars, but in the end all the trips were totally worth it.

Other places I found candy jars were Michael’s, Crate and Barrel, Ebay and Craigslist. 9 time out of 10 though Marshall’s had the cheapest and best options. I would definitely suggest doing some window/online shopping before buying from anywhere.

About 6 weeks before the wedding we purchased all the candy. That’s not to say I had already picked out the candy months before purchasing it! :) We went with purple, white and pink candy to go with the color theme of the wedding. Well sort of, cause pink wasn’t a wedding color … but so many good candies are pink though!

We got the bulk of the candy from Candy Warehouse. Here is exactly what I purchased:

White “Just Married” Sweet Tart Circle Rolls: 5LB Bag
Lavender Foiled Milk Chocolate Balls: 5LB Bag
Princess Candy Necklaces & Bracelets: 24CT Box x5 (this was too much probably only needed x3)
Strawberry & Creme Salt Water Taffy Candy: 3LB Bag x2
Green Rind Watermelon Slices: 5LB Bag
Haribo Gummi Pink Grapefruit Slices: 5LB Bag

The jelly beans were slightly cheaper at Bulk Candy Store. Here’s what I ordered:

Island Punch Jelly Belly: 5 lbs
Coconut Jelly Belly: 5 lbs
French Vanilla Jelly Belly: 5 lbs
Strawberry Daiquiri Jelly Belly: 5 lbs

Here is the candy buffet all set up at the house two days before the wedding –

Wedding Candy Buffet | Life's Tidbits

A few small tidbits to consider:

I had ~100 people at the wedding and this was too much candy for the size of our wedding.
If we had provided the “to go” candy boxes at the tables people who missed the candy bar/buffet might have gone to seek it out. This could have meant not so much extra candy after the wedding.
Don’t open the candy until a day or two before the wedding/party as the candy could go stale.
The hotel provided the scoops, which meant we didn’t have to buy any!
Make sure you visit your own candy buffet! We were so busy talking and dancing I didn’t make it by the buffet and I wish I had.
If you are going to make name tags for each type of candy do so ahead of time. I ran out of time the week before our wedding and that detail just didn’t make the cut.

Over all I loved how our candy buffet came out!

Photo Credit: Wedding Guest

Wedding Candy Buffet / Candy Bar / Love it Sweet| Life's Tidbits

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Wedding Candy Buffet | Life's Tidbits

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

I think the candy display was cute and came together how I had envisioned. I sold all of the candy jars to a bride-to-be in the DC/VA/MD area. It felt so nice to see the HUGE smile on her face as she loaded them into her car … and how relieved she was the search for jars was over.

What extra tidbit would you have added to the candy bar/buffet? Anyone have tips for other brides?

Happy Planning!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below :)

21Feb 2012

Bride & Groom Sweatsuits

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

One of my favorite things about my husband is he always says “babe we are a team”, which is his way of telling me we will get through whatever it is going on big or small together. I think the team mentality is part of what makes our relationship so strong. We referred to ourselves, long before we got engaged, as Team Bowen.

We would joke about wearing matching sweatsuits to brunch the morning after our wedding. The plan was to get bride and groom embroidered on the sweatpants. On the jackets we would have Team Bowen version 3.0.

Although it was always a joke, in the end we followed through with our plan and had sweatsuits made. And let me just say I LOVE(D) THEM and so did our friends and family!!!

Photo Credit: My Dad :)

I bought my sweatsuit from Victoria’s Secret and then got his from Amazon. VS is constantly running specials so I strongly suggest waiting for a sale like I did.

My husband was kind enough to run this very important wedding errand. He took the sweatsuits to a local chain and worked with the associate to correctly place the wording. He also successfully chose the purple colored string for my sweatsuit that was almost the same as our wedding color purple. Serious props to my husband, because he made the perfect choices for the embroidery without my help!

I remembered to pull out the sweatsuits the day of the wedding and asked our photographer to capture a few professional shots.

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

If you are wondering about the 3.0 reference it comes from us both being tech geeks. Think of the stages in our relationship like a software release. Dating version 1.0, engaged version 2.0 and married is our latest release. I suggested to a friend who’s getting married this summer to do Established in YYYY instead of the “versions” for her sweatsuits.

It was nice to have something special to wear the day after our BIG day! I even wore the outfit on the plane ride to Italy for our honeymoon. :)

What do you plan on wearing the day after your wedding?

Happy Planning!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below :)

13Feb 2012

A Favorite Wedding Detail: Barbershop Paper Straws

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

As I wrapped up the layout and picture choices for our wedding album with the photographer this week I realized it has been a while since I blogged about wedding stuff.

Wedding blogs turned me onto all sorts of fun little items which make for adorable details at a wedding … or a bridal shower, baby shower or any kind of party really. One of my biggest must haves for my wedding was purple barbor shop paper straws.

I Googled purple paper straws for weeks and … NOTHING. I could find gray, pink, red, blue and other colors, but no puprle. Then I got my Dad to look online. As always he worked his magic and WALAH …

Check ‘em out:

Photo Credit – ThePartyFairy 2012

They are totally affordable at $21 for 150 straws. I purchased 150 straws with a guest attendance of ~100 people (PLANNING TIP). The straws were well received by the guests and people were asking for the “fun straws” in whatever drink they were ordering. YAY!

Here’s a couple of my favorite pictures of barbor shop straws:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography (left) & Guest Picture (right)

Photo Credit: Guest Photo

And for my absolute favorite purple straw picture …

Photo Credit: Sara without an H

Oh my I love that picture! I’m dying to buy more straws maybe in pink or yellow, but first I need to find a party to help plan and/or host. Anyone hosting a baby shower or have a bridal shower coming up? This little detail would be fabulous!

Happy Planning!

19Jan 2012

Ways to Use Your Engagement Photos

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

We got engaged in October and by the time we found our photographer, signed the contract and thought about scheduling our e-session it was FRRRREEZING outside. After giving it some thought we decided to wait until April to do our engagement photos.

A larger number of people use their e-pics on their save the dates (STDs). Since our save the dates went out priority to even booking the photographer we were going to have to find other ways to use the pictures. When we received our ~120 engagement photos I started wondering what we were going to do with all these pictures.

We did the typical print a few and put them up around the house as well as place a few favorites on the wedding website. But it just didn’t feel like enough and I started to think there just HAD to be more we could do with all these cutsie pictures.

I found five fun ways to take advantage our engagement pictures!

All of the engagement photos were taken by Korie Lynn Photography

1. Guest Book

Part of our photography package included a guest book. The hubby and I chose our favorite pictures and then our photographer designed and printed the book for us. If it isn’t included in your photo package it’s a super easy DIY project. Photobooks can be created on Shutterfly, MyPublisher, SnapFish, Blur and the list of places goes on and on.

Check out our book:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

2. Framed Collage

We had a frame with pictures we weren’t loving anymore. We printed our top 9 photos and voila …

3. Table numbers!

I had serious issues trying to decide what to do about table numbers. I thought about naming each table a Washington Monument, wine bottles, luminaria with numbers and gosh probably a dozen other things.

In the end we picked our favorite engagement pictures added numbers with Photoshop … printed the pictures and purchased some plastic picture frames. It was a super easy DIY and pretty cheap too if you ask me.

Looks pretty … right?!

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

4. Thank you cards

These were a HUGE hit with our friends and family. We chose two different pictures and used Photoshop to add “Thank you” to the images. I ordered them from Shutterfly, however like the guest book there are a ton of places you can order customized photo thank you cards.

5. Custom Stamps for the wedding invitation

I wish I could take all the credit for this idea, but my mom really pushed me to follow through on this idea. I had toyed with buying custom stamps for the invitations, however I wasn’t sure if it was worth the extra money. In the end I decided it would be fun and I ordered the custom stamps from Zazzle.com. The stamps come in three different sizes so you have your choice of how big you want the stamp to be.

Tip: Make sure to take the invitation to the post office prior to buying the custom stamps so you know what postage rate you will need to purchase.

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

So there are my engagement picture tidbits. How have you (or your friends) used engagement pictures?

Happy Planning and DIY!

06Jan 2012

DIY Escort Cards with photo-sharing

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

While wedding planning I found a blog on Weddingbee about photo-sharing. The idea is guests upload their personal photos from the evening and it’s shared with everyone who attended the wedding. Since I am absolutely obsessed with pictures, I figured this was a must have for our wedding.

I initially planned on creating the business card (using VistaPrints) as the blog describes and placing one on each person’s table with the menu card. Then I could use the extras as reminders in the thank you cards. However they came back with a TYPO (total fail on my part) so they went into the trash. In the end I decided to make the escort card and photo-sharing card one in the same.

Check them out:

I purchased Avery Small Tent Cards, 2 x 3.5 Inches and downloaded the free template on Avery.com. Although figuring out how to feed the paper through the printer so everything was facing the right way proved to be difficult the end result was exactly what I wanted!

I used the filigree images from our wedding invitations (also DIY) and the calligraphy font (which we downloaded for free) initially for the envelopes. Reusing details from our other paper wedding products made the escort cards match the other paper items.

Cost: Avery Small Tent Cards ~$18 (plus cost of ink for printer) … pretty cheap if you ask me!

A couple of tips:

SPELL CHECK, spell check and have someone else spell check it too!
use regular paper white paper and print in gray scale for test pages.
mark which way the paper should be fed for each section very clearly.
set your printer to “high” quality instead of standard. although this uses up more ink the difference, in my opinion, it totally worth it.
buy a bigger pack of escort cards then you think you will need. inevitably you will have to reprint a couple for whatever reason:)

Here’s how the cards looked all set up and ready to go: