Do It Yourself Project #7: Candy Buffet

After looking at pictures of weddings online, I quickly fell in love with the idea of a candy bar, or candy buffet. They're fun, nostalgic and remind me of Willy Wonka, E's favorite movie as a child. It totally fits our personality and even though it's been done before it still feels unique and like us. Unlike most wedding candy bars, ours won't be color coordinated or themed in any manner other than deliciousness. I have to say the idea of all blue candy or all white candy kinda creeps me out and I'd hate to cut out some favorites just because they don't fit our theme. I know I can find all blue gummy bears but really, who'd want to eat them?


Since our wedding is on a snug budget, we're making the candy bar ourselves and I had to buy all the pieces separately. I've been meaning to write this post for months but somehow never found the time to take photos of all our jars. I acquired them mostly from Ross stores all over Southern California but also from target and Micheals. We bought stainless steel scoops and tongs online.

Here are 9 out of our 15 candy jars. The others have been bubble packed so you'll have to wait until the actual wedding set up to see them! We ended up adding some extremely large jars to help make the candy bar feel more substantial. 

The actual candy for the candy bar was a little bit tougher to come by. We wanted a lot of chocolate and as you might know, chocolate can be really, really expensive. Especially if it's a brand name chocolate like snickers which just so happens to be my favorite. E's too but he can't really eat them since he's allergic to peanuts so he'll stick with starburst. We purchased our candy from candy.com, Costco, Smart & Final and surprisingly the 99 cents store. We had positive experiences with all places though candy.com discontinued E's beloved starbursts and sent some gross candy in their place. We're working with them now to get E his starburst fix. 

Some of our candy laid out on the table while we package it all up. 

Do It Yourself: Candy Bar

Company: Jars - Ross, Target, Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon for Michaels (the most expensive) - check your local paper,
Cost: $71.20 - this was a MAJOR sale-stalking score

Company: Candy - Candy.com, 99 cents, Smart & Final, Costco
Coupon: check for candy.com
Cost: $600-700

Company: Favor Bags - Papermart
Coupon: None
Cost: $26.46

Company: Scoops & Tongs - eBay
Coupon: None
Cost: $60.22

Total Cost: $757.88-857.88

In the end, the candy list looks like this:

1. Fun sized Snickers

2. Fun sized Crunch

3. Fun sized Butterfinger

4. Fun sized 3 Musketeers 

5. Fun sized Baby Ruth

6. Fun sized Twix

7. Peanut M&M's

8. Plain M&M's

9. Cherry Gummy Hearts

10. Gummy Bears

11. Jelly Beans

12. Peppermint Kisses

13. Fun sized Peppermint Patties

14. Starbursts

15. Juju drops

And here are a few snapshots of how it all turned out! 

Photos from our wonderful photographers, Ohana Photographers

Do It Yourself Project #6: Pom Pom Pomanders!

In case you've been wondering where I've been for the past few weeks, I've been making these time consuming pomanders EVERY NIGHT. We're up to 12 aisle pomanders and 8 tent pomanders so we have a loooong way to go on the tent poms!


Like so many other brides today, I have jumped on the pomander bandwagon and have enlisted the effective if somewhat unwilling help of my mother and sister.  They're cute, fun and on the whole a much less expensive alternative to floral decoration. I plan on hanging mine from the aisle chairs and from the ceiling of the tent. I also plan on hanging globe lights that I found at Big Lots of all places. 


To start, I ordered a giant box of blue tissue paper from papermart. The box of 480 (30" x 20") sheets came to about 30 dollars shipped and I used a portion of it for the invitations so it was money well spent. I also bought some styrofoam balls from michaels, some floral wire and some ribbon. It took a good couple hours to cut it down to size, 10" x 5", on a fairly crappy paper cutter and then began the tedious process of making flowers.


Although these decorations are fairly light on the wallet, they are extremely heavy on time. Each pomander easily takes at least 5 hours to complete and that's if you're working without breaks. This is not a task you should take on unless you have the time to commit to it. I also like my pomanders fairly dense and full instead of spread out, so my large poms take about 70 flowers each with my small poms taking about 40 flowers.

Do It Yourself: Pomanders!

Company: Tissue paper, Papermart
Coupon: None
Cost: ~ $30.00

 

Company: Styrofoam Balls, Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon
Cost: 4" size (aisle) is $3.49 - 40% = $2.09
Cost: 6" size (tent) is $4.99 - 40% = $2.99

 

Company: Ribbon, Michaels
Coupon:  40% off coupon
Cost: $3.99 - 40% = $2.39

Company: Floral Wire, Michaels
Coupon:  40% off coupon
Cost: $2.99 - 40% = $1.79

Total Cost: $39.26

Do It Yourself Project #5: Soap Shower Favors

Because I didn't have enough on my plate to do already, I just had to make these insanely cute shower favors because they seemed so "us". Because everyone was so busy, the only available day to have my shower was my 24th birthday, February 5th. This also meant that the shower was on the anniversary of the day E proposed to be in Paris in front of the Eiffel tower. This project is really inexpensive, under $10.00 with coupons, and only takes an evening to complete depending on how many molds you have.

Do It Yourself: Soap Shower Favors

Company: Shea Butter Soap Base, Cello Bags Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon - check your local paper, it's one per item per person so bring friends!
Cost: $6.00 - Soap, $1.99 - Bags

Company: Eiffel Tower Molds, Amazon
Coupon: None
Cost: $1.99 plus shipping

Company: Essential Oils, My House or Amazon or Michaels
Coupon: None or 40% off coupon
Cost: Free if you have it or $2.25 plus shipping from Amazon or Michaels carries some 

Total Cost: $9.98

Do It Yourself Project #4: Wedding Place Cards

Inspired by my friend Elizabeth's wedding in July 2010, I decided to use elegant little silver frames as place card holders. Luckily, Elizabeth (who is also my MOH) ended up with 59 (plus three I already had) extra beaded silver frames and with a stroke of good luck, I was able to find another 48 frames used from another bride for 75 cents a piece shipped. These little extras can get insanely expensive if you aren't careful so this wouldn't be a possible extra without Elizabeth and my lucky find. All together we have 110 silver frames which should hopefully cover everyone who attends.

Here's the stock photo

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Elizabeth's photographers got some awesome shots of her place cards all lined up. We're planning on doing something similar since we don't want an official seating chart. Each place card will have the guest's name and table name and they'll be able to sit where they want to at the table. We haven't decided on table names but we'll go with something fun like Clue or Candy or Movies etc.

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To fill our frames, we'll be using these vintage labels I found through weddingbee. They're super awesome and I'll be printing them onto some nice paper with everyones name and table. Please ignore the seriously off perspective in my photoshop mock up, my skillz are so rusty.

Now I know this is a little busy but I'm thinking I can get away with it since it'll be so small. As long as the text is nice and big and legible I think we'll be okay. What do you guys think?  Veto the design? Go with it? Go with something that matches the invites? I need input!

Do It Yourself Project #3: Wedding Invitations - Part 2

After what has felt like forever, the invitations are FINALLY ready to fly free! Printing them myself, while it has saved me a great deal of money, has also presented a vast array of DIY challenges that I had not expected. 


As I've mentioned before, I purchased pre-made invitation kits with the intention of augmenting the existing design with an addition of my own. This process took fucking shitloads a lot of time and trial and error to complete, so I would ideally suggest you find a pre-made invitation kit with a design you like. If you can't do that, try to add a design of  your own using photoshop that isn't borderless. This will be fairly easy. 


If you have to have a borderless design, like I did, make sure that your photoshop skills are up to the task and begin the tedious process of printing a borderless design onto teeny pieces of pre-cut paper. You'll find that while you at first appreciated that you didn't have to cut out your RSVP, Hotel Accommodation and Direction cards, printing is a LOT easier on a nice normal sized sheet of paper.  


Most little cards come in the "cabinet" paper size, which you then split in half, and to print borderlessly on them you'll need your printer to be capable of printing the "borderless cabinet" page size. If this size is not an option, most printers will not be open to printing a custom size borderlessly. After calling all of my friends and family, only one person had a printer capable of printing the borderless cabinet so I spent an evening camped out in her office until 4am printing all the insert cards. 


In the end, I'm very happy with the result. I had to let go of a little anal retentiveness and not obsessively measure the margin of each card, but the invitations look fantastic, certainly more expensive than the $170 I spent on them. Knowing what I do now I would still do it again, though I might invest in my own borderless cabinet friendly printer so I could take my time with the process :)


Part one of the invitation tutorial can be found here

Do It Yourself Project #3: Wedding Invitations - Part 1

Since we're on such a tight budget, I'm going to be making our invitations myself. At first I looked through pages and pages of invites, had samples sent to the house, picked out favorites and fell totally in love with one beautiful grey and blue design. Unfortunately, wedding invites can be crazy expensive and the one I picked was right at the top of the are you out of your mind? budget at over 500 dollars for the suite.

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It was love at first sight, Magnetstreet's Something Blue

Since I obviously couldn't have the invites of my dreams, I started designing one from scratch. I made tons of photoshop mock ups and came up with a design I would have been happy with. The only problem here was production. To make the invites work, I would have needed to order each piece separately; a black backing card, a white linen card for printing, white linen cards to print up RSVP and direction cards. This also meant that I'd have to design RSVP and direction cards and there was no feasible way to make my round ornate frame look decent on a small RSVP card. After running the numbers at various budget paper companies, I retired my custom design.

Do It Yourself Project #2: The Groom's Tie

When it comes to weddings, it's no secret that the brides get all the style attention. They get to pick out an insanely expensive gorgeous white dress and are the center of attention, while the groom rents a tux from a number of budget companies and stands at the end of the aisle admiring his bride. If your groom wants to show a little personality, it's done in the details, a subtle pinstripe through the suit, funky shoes or socks and the highlight of the ensemble, his tie. My honey is all about blue, it's his absolute favorite color, so while most grooms wear silver or gold while their groomsmen wear the wedding color, my honey insisted that he get to wear a blue tie. And not just any blue tie, but an awesome, unique, and special blue tie.

Since ties are expensive, especially the real silk ones, this can be a costly extra if your groom doesn't like whatever ties are included with his tux rental. To try and find something special enough to be my honey's signature item without going crazy over our nonexistent tie budget, I turned to eBay. This post is more smart shopping than do it yourself, but it's budget saving regardless, so again, without further ado, I present:

Do It Yourself Project #2: The Grooms Tie

Do It Yourself Project #1: Save The Dates

While I was studying for my MCAT, a number of tempting packages arrived at my house. Since I didn't have the willpower to resist opening them, I ripped them open and discovered that my Save the Dates had come early! I had ordered them with slooow 21 day shipping so as not to tempt myself with them, but darn that awesome Vistaprint, they shipped them two weeks early! A day later my adhesive magnets came, and while I was taking my MCAT my honey's tie set arrived as well!

Save the Dates, packed safe and sound

Without further ado, I present:

Do it Yourself Project #1: Budget Save The Dates