Some of you may recognize the following card:
Our Photo Sharing Cards from the Reception
First off, a special thank you to all of you who have posted pictures up on the shutterfly account! If you’re interested in just viewing all the pictures posted we do have a sharing site set up where you can view all of them! It’s located at http://harbisonweaverwedding08.shutterfly.com/ and you can check it out without logging into Shutterfly!
Thanks again to everyone who has posted pictures up on the site - I’ve ordered quite a few! 
Our ceremony is outside on Saturday, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that the weather changes! I’d love for it to be 77 degrees and partly cloudy/partly sunny. Realistically though, as long as it’s nice from 3pm-7pm on Saturday I’ll take it (long enough for pictures, the ceremony and a little of the cocktail hour)!
Keep your fingers crossed for us!
That’s right, our FINAL wedding project has been completed! I had been putting off painting the aisle runner because it seemed like such a daunting task and Rod finally forced me to get it done.
Here’s a step by step of how we did it:
First we taped down a copy of our monogram and covered it with wax paper (also taped to the counter top).
Then starting with the lightest color we started painting. We used sponge brushes mostly.
We continued with the green and then the black. Since the brushes we had didn’t lend themselves to the intricate font we had used (ha) on the monogram we had to do the black in sharpie!
Here’s me starting to fill in the words with black sharpie markers.
The dogs through the whole process (we did it twice) were pretty bored - they stayed out of our hair!
The finished product!
Really this wasn’t a hard project since our monogram was so simple, it also was really great to have Rod’s help on this! He really helped the project move along and the pendulum lights on our island made it easy to see! If you’re looking for a fairly inexpensive, easy wedding project to customize your ceremony this would be one I’d highly recommend!
What are some other DIY projects that you would recommend that people could tackle in one afternoon?
Yesterday Rod and I worked hard on crossing a few DIY projects off our list. A quick sampling of these:
Chair tags for our VIP guests (parents and wedding party)
The design of our programs (and all the cardstock cut)
Thank You signs for when we’re with the photographer
Signs for our chairs at the reception
Signs for the bathroom baskets
Tags for the OOT guest boxes
We got a ton crossed off our list, now I just need to start on painting the aisle runner and assembling all the programs. We’ve also started to get responses back from sending out the invitations. It’s a very exciting time at the Harbison-Weaver household!
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RSVP Date - August 5
When we usually go to a wedding we notice lots of guests taking pictures of the big day! These are usually great shots of things going on at the wedding that the photographer may not know to capture or may be held up taking more formal shots.
There’s a few ways to make sure you get a copy of these candid pictures from your guests. The first would be the traditional purchasing of disposable cameras for each table. The drawback to this is if the guests at a certain table don’t finish the roll or start taking pictures of things that you don’t want to see. If alcohol is flowing there may be things on those rolls of film that you don’t want to pay to develop! You also have to pay to develop the pictures before you are able to see the pictures and may end up with a lot of nothing.
Another option would be to put out blank CDs with postage paid envelopes to get CDs of pictures. An example from Knottie MissJanks:
This cute basket could be placed on the guestbook table.
The down side to the CD mailers is not everyone has a CD burner or knows how to operate one. Your guests may lose the CDs or just forget to send them to you.
The last way is to create an online photo sharing album from one of the sites that you can order pictures from such as Shutterfly, Winkflash or Snapfish. We decided to go this route by creating a Gmail e-mail address and setting up an online account. I ordered 250 free business cards from VistaPrint with this layout:
I thought these cards were great to include in the Out Of Town boxes and to scatter in different locations at the reception.
This way we can pick and choose which pictures we want to order and only print the ones we really want. Plus this way no one has to mail back any envelopes or remember to burn something to a CD. When they download the pictures to their computers they can just upload them to Shutterfly and send them our way! I’m hoping that by choosing this approach we will come home from the Honeymoon to a photo album bursting with pictures.
What ways have you seen people get pictures from their guests? Is this something you’ve seen before?
I’ve been following our Day Of Coordinator, April, from Blu Sky Designs on her blog where she made me a pink and green inspiration board. I thought I would post it here to share some of the beautiful ideas she found!
I LOVE this! April did such an awesome job with this, there’s so many elements incorporated in our wedding day (and more ideas to further the color scheme). Isn’t that retro looking beaded curtain in the bottom right awesome? It makes me want to incorporate it somehow, but I’m not sure how! Thank you again April for getting the inspiration going!
It seems so crazy that we’re getting so close to the wedding. It’s so great to be getting things checked off our list and getting organized. I can’t believe it’s already April and we’re almost down to 5 months left.
Photo credits: Flowers from Simply Blooms, pillow from West Elm, boutonnière from Simply Blooms, Napkins from Plum Party, pillow from Flickr, bouquet from A Fragrant Offering, Necklace from KEP Designs, cake cutter and server from Julias Practical Art, Menus from Plum Party, flowers from Simply Blooms, cake from HGTV, beaded curtain from Wild Things
Erin over at Unclutterer posted a great blog with 10 Tips for Planning a Simple Wedding which I highly recommend to any other brides planning their wedding. An excerpt:
“When hiring a photographer, work with someone who will shoot your wedding digitally. You won’t have to pay for printing proofs.”
I think this is great advice and I recommend the post (and the comments - the readers of unclutterer have great advice) for anyone planning. 
So we have a lot booked/done for the Sept. 2008 wedding! I’m surprised to be this far and still have over a year until we’re married. I read several blogs and message boards and it seems that we’re way ahead of the curve. This is great as we’ll have more time to work on our DIY invitations, save the dates and all other stationary needs.
We have a photographer booked for our engagement pictures and for the day of our wedding: Hostetler Photography.
We’ve got the Indiana State Museum for the ceremony and the reception:
View of Indiana State Museum and Canal at Night
View of the inside of the Indiana State Museum set up for a wedding
View of the Indiana Obelisk in the middle of the O’Bannon Great Hall!
Example of Wedding Setup on the Canal
I would love to take a gondola ride from the reception as our big exit!
We have our florist (Baysore’s Flower Shop in Cincinnati, OH), and generally what the bouquets are going to be. Mine is going to be green roses with white calla lilies and the bridesmaids are going to have mostly greenery with white cluster roses. Rod is going to be matching me and the groomsmen will match the bridesmaids. We’re also looking at two arrangements (one for either side of the steam clock) for the ceremony to be brought inside during the reception and placed on either side of the band.
Our officiant is going to be Rod’s uncle since we’re not getting married in the church. We’re very excited about being able to write our own vows! We’re also excited about having a weekend at his uncle’s home to serve as our pseudo marriage retreat that we can use to focus on the important part of the whole wedding, the ceremony!
We also have the musicians and the Caterer for the event! I think we’re way ahead of schedule and Rod and I are taking some time off from planning to enjoy being in love and taking this time to try to strengthen our relationship.
