DIY - Favor Bags & Cupcake Boxes

We chose to give our guests several small favors and a cupcake to go, so to make it easy for them to keep all of these items together we decided to provide take-away bags.

I found inexpensive, plain white bags from Oriental Trading Company, that were $5.99 per dozen. I had never purchased from this company before so I was not familiar with the quality of their goods. As a warning, the bags we purchased were very cheaply made, some of the handles came off, but they worked for what we needed and they fit within our budget. I also bought a large Damask stamp to use on the front of each bag, then added curly ribbon in our wedding colors and made thank you tags for each. As another personal touch, we opted to hand out the bags to each person so that we could personally thank our guests for coming to the wedding.

The venue where our reception was held included a dessert with the buffet-style meal. We still wanted to have a cake to cut, so we decided to follow the popular trend of having cupcakes, which I love, rather than a full blown crazy-expensive cake. Because dessert was served, I was afraid our cupcakes would go uneaten, which prompted us to provide pre-boxed cupcakes to each guest. The cupcake boxes also fit in the handy favor bag, giving guests the option to either eat it at the reception or take home and eat later.

I also ordered the cupcake boxes online (unfortunately, I can't remember the website name) and paid a little extra to get the cupcake holder insert. The insert is used to hold the cupcake upright inside the box so it won't topple over and get smashed. The boxes were very reasonably priced and a better deal than buying the boxes through the baker, so if you go the cupcake route I would suggest doing a "cupcake box" search online to compare prices.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned finding a huge roll of good quality wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby that I used to cover the centerpiece vases. There was plenty of this paper left over, so with 2 weeks before the wedding with no idea how to decorate these boxes, I finally decided to cut 2" wide strips of wrapping paper that would fit the girth of the box to create a belly band. I then used double-sided tape to attach the band to the box.

Both of these were very simple projects that were not overly time consuming, added a personal touch and tied in to the theme of our wedding.

DIY - Chinese Paper Lanterns

This post is not about making your own Chinese lanterns, but adding embellishments to spruce them up. My colors were black and white so I was able to find large 20" white lanterns on eBay. The yellow lanterns I found at Michaels craft store on their $1 aisle, and they are 8". I then bought different types and sizes of black ribbon and hot glued them to the white lanterns. I left the yellow lanterns plain because I did not want to over-do it, so I used them as the accent lanterns.

Another option to gluing ribbon to the lanterns is cutting out shapes, etc. from tissue paper and lightly gluing those shapes to the lanterns.

None of the lanterns came with a lighting kit, that would have made them much more expensive. You really can't have an evening wedding in a garden with unlit lanterns, so I had to get creative. At Costco I found a 28-pack of battery operated tea lights for around $13.00 and at Hobby Lobby (or any craft store) I found little double-sided sticky squares that were perfect to attach the tea light to the inside of the lantern. You do have to turn the tea light on, then attach it to the inside of the lantern, before you can hang it in the tree.

Here are a couple of tricks for hanging the lanterns. First, use fishing line. Because fishing line is clear it gives the lanterns a more natural hanging, breezy look. Second, attach a small fishing weight to the end of the fishing line to give it some weight, this will help you throw the line over a branch. That way, if you don't have a ladder tall enough you won't have a hard time getting the line over the branch. Also, once you've gotten the fishing line over the branch and are ready to tie it off, be sure to tie it off on the metal bracket of the lantern rather than tying it off on the fishing line. Tying the line off to the line itself will cause a noose effect, the knot will travel to the top of the branch and will cause a lot more work in taking the lanterns down after your event. Tying the line to the metal bracket of the lantern requires just one snip with the scissors and the fishing line and lantern will come down in one piece.

DIY - Centerpieces

Here is a super easy way to create your own centerpieces at a very reasonable price.

If you live near an Old Time Pottery visit them first for the best prices. Look for vases in either cylinder or square shapes, select a shape that is easy to wrap like a present. By this point you should have chosen a color scheme for your wedding, so find a large roll of quality wrapping paper in your colors. Some cheaper wrapping paper is very thin and rips very easily, try to find a thicker quality paper that you love.

For my wedding, as pictured above, I used rectangled 4x6 vases with black and white damask wrapping paper, ribbon and jewels. I found a huge roll of damask wrapping paper at Hobby Lobby after Christmas for 50% off. They really have some beautiful wrapping paper at Christmas time that doesn't necessarily look Christmasy.

Supplies:

Cylinder or square shaped vases

Wrapping paper

Double-sided tape

Varying sizes of ribbon

Stick on jewels (found in the scrapbooking section of craft stores)

Fabric or craft glue

All you do is wrap the vase like a present using the double-sided tape on the inside seem so you don't see the shine of tape on the finished product. Next, glue a wide piece of ribbon to the paper covered vase, then glue a smaller piece of ribbon in an alternate color and/or pattern over the first ribbon. Randomly place jewels on the ribbon, though you may want to re-enforce them with glue to ensure they don't fall off.

This is really such an easy and inexpensive way to have custom vases to show off your beautiful flowers. It took three of us just a couple of hours to decorate 20 vases. I hope you'll be as satisfied with your vases as I was with mine!