Mustache on a stick - version 2.0

OK, everyone has seen the good old mustache on stick. They are the bread and butte of wedding photo booth props. I personally love a good fake mustache. I think it makes every picture 10 times better!

For example:

Source

Amazing. Anyway, Delightfully Engaged posted about these possible photo booth props from PhotoJoJo, which are the new and improved, futuristic version!

 

 Clear, pocket sized paddles with pictures printed on them! Very cool, and very funny. These would be amazing as photo booth props, or even on your tables for guests to play about with. They could even be bridesmaid or groomsmen gifts. I like the fact that they are clear, so you don't have the big stick in your photos, and I also like that they can be used closeup on yourself, or you can hold them up to use on people who are further away, meaning you could get some hilarious shots of people without them even knowing.

At $10 each, or the whole set for $30, I won't be buying them (I'll stick with my DIY, cheap and cheerful mustaches, thanks) but they are still very, very cool and they would certainly add something special to your photos!

Badge Madness!

Ever since I saw this picture on Offbeat Bride, I have been a bit obsessed with badges.

Isn't that a really cute way to personalise a buttonhole? I really like it, and immediately started looking for a cute badge for Karl's buttonhole. Unfortunately, he is the pickiest man on the planet, and everything I suggested was shot down.

So I'm still looking and he is thinking about what he would like a badge to say.
I also think it would be nice to have a badge attached to the stems of the bouquets, so that the bridesmaids can tell who's is who's. I've since some really nice charms on bouquets, with the girls initals, but since 3 of my bridesmaids have names starting with K, this wouldn't really work.

Anyway, I found some really lovely badges:

Wedding Party Badges

I like the style of these, but don't think I would want everyone to have a badge with their role on it. I'm not sure why...

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These are from Folksy, from the seller Maushaus and are the cutest things I have ever seen! You can request personalised ones, and they are all handmade too. I also really like the ones that say "eek" on them, since that is exactly how I imagine I'll be feeling!

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While looking at all the badges, I started to think that it would be really cool to have a load of badges to give to the guests, as an extra little favour. I got very excited when I found some very cool pictures of couples who had done just that!

 

Like I said, I'm a bit obsessed! I even started thinking about what our badges could say and came up with a few designs.

We had loads of fun thinking of what to put on the badges! Some of them I am unsure about, since not everyone will get them. For example, the Gibbs badge, with WWGD? (what would Gibbs do?) - some of our friends will love this, since they are also big NCIS fans, but everyone else might be a bit confused. Same goes for the "Haven't you always wanted a monkey?" badge - this is a line from our favourite Barenaked Ladies song - I know my family will love this, but it won't be as funny for people who are not BNL fans.

I am loving the "Team" badges though - I would be very interested to see who ends up on which team!  I originaly thought about attaching a badge to the place cards, but then realised that that would mean choosing which badge to give to which guest - which I just couldn't do! Instead, I think we would probably have all the badges in a bowl for guests to choose their own - probably by the guestbook or something.

Unfortunately, these badges might never happen. The cheapest I can find personalised badges for is 70p each, which for 100 badges is £70! That's more than we are spending on our current favours! If these were going to be our main favours, I would spend that much, but we already have the vodka favours brewing. I even looked into a badge making machine, but they are about £150, so unless I can find someone who alread has one and is willing to let me borrow it, badges for the guests will remain just a fantasy :-(

However, I will continue to think of more designs for our badges, on the off chance that we are able to find them for cheaper. And I'd still like to have badges for the buttonholes and bouquets. Karl thinks that the Team Karl and Team Kayleigh badges should go on the buttonholes and bouquets, but I'm not so sure.

Maybe if we win the £112million on the lottery tonight, we could have badges for everyone!

Virtual Makeovers

Today I discovered taaz.com, a website that lets you add makeup and hairstyles to a photograph of yourself. Now, I've seen these sort of sites before and they have always been a bit rubbish. The makeup is dodgy 80's style and the hairstyles are limited, and never fit on your face properly anyway.

But this site, is actually really good! You get to adjust the fit of the hair and facial parts, to make sure everything is in the right place. There are also tons of colours and styles to pic from. And the coolest bit is that it is based on real products, so if you find the perfect lipstick shade, you can see which brand and colour it is!

Anywho, I think this is a very cool way of trying out different looks for your wedding day, without having to pay for a makeup or hair trial.

Check out my first attempt at a bridal look:

TAAZ.com : Virtual Makeover. Real Beauty.
http://www.taaz.com/makeover/181591300032880-61429065e9f766432100d49f13323937/143400822.html

Before

After

Or maybe I should go for something completely different...?

TAAZ.com : Virtual Makeover. Real Beauty.
http://www.taaz.com/makeover/181591300763880-6ac74ec66e4a2dbfccf599d87e02f16c/143401449.html

Before

After

And I wonder if I would suit a fringe...?

TAAZ.com : Virtual Makeover. Real Beauty.
http://www.taaz.com/makeover/181591300953880-232d773085282331a318094739c8c085/143400939.html

Before

After

And I have always wondered what I would look like as a Zombie!

TAAZ.com : Virtual Makeover. Real Beauty.
http://www.taaz.com/makeover/181591301567880-e5a91bd81ef2f6fb4c92393adf4a6f86/143401327.html

Before

After

I need to step away from the computer now, or I will literally spend all day doing this!

Bridesmaid Mood Board

Bridesmaid Mood Board by kaygray on Polyvore.com

I created this mood board on Polyvore, to show the general bridemaid look that I'm hoping for. 

What do you think?

Order of Ceremony Fans- with a twist!

We never wanted Programs or Order of Services for our wedding - we didn't really see the need since we are having a civil ceremony so there are no hymns or blessings that need to be printed for the guests.

However, I had been toying with the idea of giving fans out as favours, because it will (hopefully) be hot and I don't want everyone to melt during the ceremony! I'd seen program fans before, but dismissed them as nice but unnecessary as we didn't see the point in listing all of the wedding party by name, since we had already put that information on our wedding website.

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 I like these fans, but I think it is more of an American tradition to have a "program" where all the wedding party is listed, with their names and roles. In the UK, I think it's only common to have an "order of service" for a religious ceremony, because you would need to print any hymn or prayer words, and explain the meaning of certain things to guests that might not be of the same religion.

Anyway - we didn't need them, but when I saw these fans on Wedding Bee, I fell in love!

From WeddingBee

Now, I know that the picture above looks like every other program fan, but if you click on the link, you will see that these fans are amazing, because they have puzzles on the back!

I immediately wanted them! I thought it was a great idea to keep guests busy while they waited for the ceremony to start, and it was just really fun too. The tutorial on Wedding Bee is really simple and clear, so the fans should be fairly easy to make.

I set about designing our fans. We decided that they would be "Order of Ceremony" fans rather than programs, since we just wanted to include a list of the different ceremony parts (e.g. processional, reading, vows, exchange of rings etc) with the names of any songs or readings.

It took me a while to decide which puzzles to have on the fans - I loved the 'Fill in the blanks' quiz from the tutorial, so I shamelessly stole that, plus I decided on a word search, a crossword and anagrams. Four different puzzles seemed like a reasonable number.

Fill in the blanks Fan

 I wanted to include the same pattern that we will use on the invitations, to tie everything together. Plus I just really like the pattern! I tried to keep it relatively simple, with just the basic information on it. 

Word search Fan

I made the word search for this fan using this site and it was pretty simple. You literally just type in a list of words that you want in the puzzle, set the fonts and size etc, and then hit "make puzzle". I just right clicked and saved the created word search as a picture, then pasted it on to my fan template, adding a coloured border to it. Easy.

Anagram Fan

I have to admit, I love anagrams! I used this site to find the anagrams - you just type in the word and it will give you hundreds of different anagrams. I preferred to choose the ones that sounded funniest - for example Bridesmaid = mad birdies. I wont tell you the others - you have to work them out for yourself!

Crossword Fan

I knew that I definitely wanted to include a crossword, but this was by far the most difficult and time consuming. I used this site to make the crossword and it was really easy - the hard part was coming up with the clues! I was trying to keep the clues fairly simple, because there will be children doing the puzzles too - and these are supposed to be fun, not an IQ test! Anyway, when I eventually managed to think of enough clues, I saved the puzzle as a picture and pasted on to my template. It also took me a while to arrange it so that the clues fit on the page, but I got there in the end.

So those are our Order of Ceremony Fans!
As per the tutorial, we will just print them onto card, fold in half and glue a stick in between. The tutorial shows how to attach a pencil to the handle with a ribbon, but I think we will probably just have a jar of pencils next to the fans for people to take. The reason for this is that I want the fans to actually be used for cooling people down, and a big bit of ribbon with a pencil on the end might get in the way slightly. I've not decided for sure yet, but we'll probably leave the pencils separate.

I'm quite excited about these fans - hopefully our guests will find them fun and useful! If it rains, they could always use them as tiny umbrellas, I suppose!

I created these fans in Powerpoint, just by drawing a line down the middle of a (landscape) slide and arranging the various text boxes and pictures. When I print, I will print 1 slide to a full page, so that the fans will be A5 when folded.

I have no idea how to make a ppt document available to download here, but if anyone wants a copy of the powerpoint document with the fan designs then I would gladly email it. 

Damson Vodka Day 2:

Just a very quick post to show you what the Damson Vodka looks like after about 12 hours:

At Start

the next morning!

Lovely! Just imagine what it will be like after 10 months!

And don't worry - I'm not going to update everyday with a new picture of the vodka!

Damson Vodka Favours

A while ago, I talked about our favours and how we'd decided to have Test Tube Shots, but hadn't decided what kind of booze to use yet. Well, we decided to make damson vodka! A friend of mine has a huge damson tree in her garden, and I'd tasted some of her damson gin and damson jam before and loved it. My dad mentioned making his own damson vodka recently and I suddenly thought "Why don't we have damson vodka as the test tube shots???". I don't know why it hadn't occured to me before!

Anyway, I went to my friends house and picked a load of damsons, then went and bought 3 70cl bottles of vodka. The best thing about damson vodka is that it is really easy to make.

All you need is:

70cl Bottle of vodka (or gin)
1lb of damsons
6 oz (170g) white sugar
A big, wide necked bottle (at least 1 litre) with a lid or stopper.

obviously, you need to multiply the quantities depending on how much you need to make. I need enough for about 80 shots, and I know from my days as a barmaid that a litre has 40 shots in it.
I ended up with 3 70cl bottles because they didn't have any litre bottlesin the shop, so I should have some left over (for me to..ahem...test).

Step 1: Wash the damsons and remove the stalks. Take out any that don't look too healthy.

Step 2: pour the vodka into the wide necked bottle and add the sugar. You can add the sugar last, or a bit at a time with the damsons. It doesn't really matter. I prefer to add it first so that I can see how much room is left in the bottle.

Step 3: Prick each damson several times and drop it into the vodka. I used a skewer, but a toothpick, drawing pin or fork works just as well. You don't have to do this step, but it helps. Some people prefer to put the fruit in the freezer so that the skins split.

Step 4: Continue pricking the fruit and adding it to the vodka until you either run out of fruit, or run out of room in the bottle.

Step 5: Put the lid or stopper on the bottle and turn it over a few times so that the sugar gets all mixed up. The sugar will settle back on the bottom relatively quickly though. Store the bottle in a cool, dry place for at least 3 months. Pick up and turn over everyday, to mix up the fruit and sugar.

After 3 months, it's ready to drink, but the longer you leave it, the nicer it gets (or so I've been told!). Ours was made today, and will be left until next summer, so it will have about 10 months! Yum!

The more sugar you add, the more syrupy the drink will be. You can always taste it after 3 months and add more sugar if you think it needs it. I have also been told that you need to keep the bottle somewhere away from sunlight, in order to keep the beautiful, deep colour. 

Next year, when it's ready, we are going to put a shot of the vodka into test tubes from here and attach a sticker around each tube. I was thinking something along these lines:

So that when the sticker is wrapped around the tube, there will be something on both sides.

Quick price breakdown for my favours:

Damsons: free
Vodka: £23.97
Sugar: had already
Test Tubes: £15.99
labels: free (hopefully!)

Total: £39.96
Total per favour: 40p