If you're a long-time follower, you may have noticed that my postings have not been what anyone would call frequent over the past couple of months... but there's a very good reason, I promise! My wonderful little sister Emily got married last month, and I was working like a crazy person on all sorts of decorations and goodies for her big day. It turned out so beautifully -- it was worth every minute!
In the beginning, Em & Luis had chosen to use a damask pattern as the theme for the wedding decor, with the colors black and white with a little red thrown in. I used that inspiration to create their wedding invitation:
And this is how the wedding reception looked! (Everyone say "Ooooooooh!" together now!)
We did the reception at Highland Gardens Reception Center in Highand, Utah, which was just gorgeous to start out with. Emily's new hubby Luis' family is from several Latin American countries, so we took a few of those traditions as a jumping off point for our decor. My sister-in-law Caitlyn's mom Jeralee was the visionary behind all this, and I was so happy I could help make it all come to life. My mom and Jeralee got these damask table toppers and borrowed all sorts of silver pitchers and containers from generous family and friends and filled them with roses to make these gorgeous centerpieces.
We made approximately a gazillion of those
tissue paper pom-poms to hang around the reception area, which was truly a labor of love by several family members and friends who are NOT crafters but pitched in awesomely.
My biggest contribution was the white paper
papel picado banners hanging above the tables. They are traditionally cut by hand out of tissue paper, but I wanted to customize them, make them a little sturdier, and give them a cleaner, more modern feel to match the damask theme of the wedding, so I designed 8 custom banners and then cut each one with my Cricut (using SCAL). I cut over 200 of these babies, so my Cricut was smokin' by the end. Here's a closeup:
And, just because I can't help beating a dead horse, here's what the designs look like without background distraction...
I was also in charge of hair accessories for the bride and bridal party. I made red satin flowers for all us bridesmaids and our sisters-in-law with
this tutorial from Stuff & Bits. This is my beautiful sister Amy and me:
And of course we couldn't leave the little girlies out! I made these rolled rosette hair pretties for my daughter Eliza (on the left) and my niece Amelia out of the same fabric:
Here's a closer up picture of Eliza with my Dad where you can see the flowers better. (This is when she found him and asked him to dance -- oh, the cuteness!):
But my favorite was this enormous flower I created for the bride herself, using
a technique I actually figured out myself (I know, don't fall over dead...).
As a fun little photo prop, I made this fun-shaped chalkboard. They took some pictures with "Just Married" written on it, and then I changed it to "Thank You" so we could use those pictures to print custom thank you cards for them to send out. (This is not the picture we'll use -- my amazing photographer brothers took "real" pictures for that...)
Now, I didn't have anything to do with these next couple of photos, but I couldn't go without showing y'all the cakes. This was their wedding cake, created by my aunt's sister Dorcas Woodward. She cut out all of that intricate damask patter by hand out fondant. That is love, people. And isn't it amazing?
My sister Amy made this AWESOME sombrero grooms cake, also completely by hand:
I also made them a pretty sign-in scrapbook, but my pictures of that didn't turn out AT ALL, so I will have to steal it from them and show you another time.
Whew! Just looking at these pictures makes me tired, but so very happy. Thanks for letting me be part of the fun, Em and Luis! Love you guys!
