Stinkerpants

Stinkerpants Wedding: DIY Details

November 19, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects • Recap Photos

Holy moly, it’s the last wedding post.  Sad!!  It also happens to be one of my favorites, though: the DIY (do-it-yourself) details.  I slaved my butt off working on all the details for our wedding, and I’m thrilled with how they came out.  The reception was perfectly executed by our wonderful caterers, and every last thing was photographed by our awesome photographer, Kim.

At least one or two guests commented on every single detail, which really made all of the work worth it.  It made our wedding really personal and fun, which was exactly what I was going for.  The reason I’m telling you all of this is because I think the DIY projects are worth it, for sure, as long as they add something unique to your day.  I don’t think it’s worth the effort to slave over a centerpiece if no one will notice how unique it is, or how it tells a story about you and your fiancé, though.  Enough blabbering, how about some photos?

Kim did a great job photographing our invitations (don’t forget to add this to your list of things to bring on the day of!):

And our programs (the one project I did not think was worth it, but it made for a funny story, so whatever!).  This photo shows all of the colors I used, but it has the shoe-shop stitching:

One of very few “perfect” programs (with the zig zag stitch):

This is our head table at the reception.  We had one small rectangular table that seated us and our parents.  Ah!  The colors of the favors so perfectly match the napkins!!  LOVE!

One of the mini menus:

One of the table number sandwich boards with a placecard:

Our friend JD had a good time in the photobooth:

The cropped drawings that were hanging from the tall centerpieces:

One of the low-centerpiece tables:

The inside of the favor boxes:

And, just to recap some of the details you’ve seen before…

the bar menu:

The signs I made for the back of our chairs (there were also signs for our parents):

Actually, here’s a non-pro pic of Y’s dad with his sign (how funny is he?!):

The “random fact” napkins:

The memory boxes:

The guestbook table:

The ceremony signs (well, one of them at least!):

The handmade-by-my-mom-and-my-aunt chuppah:

The Ketubah:

Holy moly.  Looking back on this, I did a LOT.   Whew!!  No wonder I’m wedding-ed out!!

I don’t usually ask questions at the end of my blog entries, but I am really curious: what DIY projects did you do (or are you doing) that truly reflect you and your fiancé?

The Fate of the Programs

September 5, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Ceremony • DIY Projects • Drawings

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

As you may recall, I was about a quarter of the way through my programs when I accidentally jammed my sewing machine and production STOPPED.  You may also recall that my solution to this problem was to have a cobbler sew the rest of them, but that they were sewn with the wrong color of thread, prompting my major wedding meltdown (even though it really wasn’t that big of a deal).

Well, my friends, I never showed you the final product!  I realized that this morning!  So here they are!  This is the programs as they were supposed to be: zig-zag stitch with black thread:

and the inside:

These are the front of the ones done by the cobbler.  I knew they would be a straight stitch, but I had asked for black thread.  As it turned out, he sewed them with shoe-colored thread.  Light brown on the front and dark brown on the back.

Here’s a close-up of the the front of the program.  Hopefully you can see the grooves/indentations left by the industrial-strength shoe-shop sewing machine:

I knew that was going to happen, too, and decided I didn’t care.  No one even noticed.

Here’s the back of the programs, with the dark brown thread:

As you can see, it didn’t turn out perfectly.  The ones I did are clearly superior (at least in my ever-so-humble opinion, haha), but you know what?  I wasn’t willing to spend all the time, energy and money to get my sewing machine repaired and sew through another 75 programs.  So in the end, all was well!

The Fate of the Guestbook

September 4, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • Celebrating Memories • DIY Projects

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

A couple of days ago, we FINALLY received the CD of our photobooth pictures from the wedding.  This means two things: First, I can share them with you, and second, I can make our guestbook!  We had 105 different photobooth pictures, and they were all pretty great, for various reasons.  We seemed to have three main themes: boob grabbing, strangling and kissing.  I’d really like to post the photos here, but I don’t want to offend any of our guests who might not be wild about having their faces on the internets.  Instead, here’s one of me and Mr. Stinkerpants:

one of my girlfriends and I:

and a really cute one of my little cousin, who somehow ended up in the Photobooth all by himself!

I’ve been putting the guestbook together, and I am REALLY happy with how it turned out.  It’s super fun and I can honestly say that I think we’ll look at it again and again.  One thing that didn’t work out too well, though, was the number of signatures we got.  For some reason people didn’t really SEE it, even though it was right next to the photobooth and on the exact same table as the props (???).  Unfortunately, the girl manning the photobooth didn’t take it upon herself to ask people to sign it.  None of our immediate family signed it, which totally stinks, and we’re missing a few key members of my extended family.  Only a few of Mr. Stinkerpants’ family signed it (although, I have to say I was expecting this.  When I proudly showed MIL our guestbook, she said, “Chinese don’t sign guestbooks,”).  SIGH.  At first I was thinking that I’d just forget about it…but some people have SUCH cute photobooth pictures and no signature!  I may have to torture them by bringing it with me to every family function for the next year…

Prepare yourself, Stinkerpants family:

Our guestbook was pretty big to begin with, so I wasn’t expecting it to be full.  There are a lot of unfilled pages at the end, so I decided to turn it into a scrapbook.  In addition to all of the photobooth pictures (and there are a lot), I decided to put a few other things inside.  I kept all of our RSVP postcards, and since a lot of them have notes on them, I put them in the back of the guestbook.  I’ve also received a few postcards (a few meaning THREE) from our OOT bags, so I put them in there, too.  I also decided to include all of the cards we received with our wedding gifts.  In the very front, I put a copy of our invitation, surrounded by the one photobooth picture Mr. Stinkerpants and I managed to get together (I SO wish we’d gone in more!).

A few more signature pages:

Here’s an example of a page for a couple that didn’t sign our guestbook, but took a bunch of pictures.  I’ll probably write their names at the top later.  One funny trend we saw in the older Asian couples was repeated use of the photobooth, but exactly the same photo each time.  This couple mixed it up with a prop…and one time they managed to gather a bouquet of flowers (from where? I have no idea).  Some of the photos of other guests looked like passport photos–a couple of the women went in by themselves!

Here’s a page with our RSVP postcards on it…

And a page with cards on it:

I am SO glad we did this.  I was a little bit doubtful in the beginning (mostly because I totally couldn’t afford it), but I am SOOO glad we did this.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the wedding, and our guests loved it!

Undoing the OOT bags

August 19, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Wanna hear a funny story?  I thought you might.

We left for our honeymoon late on Monday night after our Saturday wedding.  On Monday morning, I got a very strange phone call.  “Hello, Sara?  This is [MIL's Name].”  I thought to myself, “No, this is not MIL.  I know MIL’s voice, and this is not MIL.  So who the heck is this?”

“I am visiting from Hong Kong,” she said, “and I receive your welcome bag.  I wanted to thank you so much for your nice bag.”  As I talked to her longer, I deduced that the Grand Hyatt had given Mr. Stinkerpants’ parents’ OOT bag to someone else of the same name!  She told me that she loved my bag very much and that she wanted to thank me before she had to work that day (she was visiting on business).  She said, “Your maps are so helpful and I thank you for the gifts.  I hope to keep in touch.  Thank you!”

How weird, right?!  She was so nice that I didn’t even bother to tell her that she’d received the bag by mistake. I do kind of wonder if I’ll be hearing from her again (after all, she wanted to keep in touch!), or if she called anyone else on our “Phone List of Helpful People!”  Weird, but funny (and kind of touching!).

I was really glad that our unexpected OOT bag recipient liked the goods.  As it turned out, our other guests loved them as well.  My parents have talked to a few people who were OOT guests, and they all said the same thing: they felt “really taken care of.”  I am so glad!  I had a great time putting together the bags, but the main purpose is to make our guests feel welcome.  I’m so glad it worked.

Now, I know I’ve talked about the OOT bags before, but there are a few details I haven’t discussed yet.  First off, I got a little bit ahead of myself.  I did the OOT bags several months before the wedding, just to get them done.  I shouldn’t have sealed them, especially knowing my mother.  You see, my mom and I did this project together, and she and I disagreed on a rather stupid point: peanuts.  My mom wanted to include bags of peanuts (which we oddly couldn’t find at Target or any of the other places we went) and I didn’t think it was worth any extra effort.

I should have known that my mom would take matters into her own hands.  A couple of weeks later, I got a package from her.  I thought, “ooh, an unexpected present?  What is this?!”  You got it, people.  It was peanuts.   All of the OOT bags were sealed shut, and undoing them was a major pain in the butt.  But what was I going to do with 20 fun sized peanut bags?!  So I undid the bags:

It was a pain in the neck, and it seemed kind of stupid to do it just for peanuts.  So while I was at it, I decided to add these:

What are these?  Well, they’re postcards.  I decided to steal an idea from Mrs. Lemon, and include postcards of San Francisco for our guests. I gave each guest two beautiful postcards, one of which was stamped and addressed to us.  I included a note that said, “Welcome to San Francisco and thank you for coming to our wedding!  When you return home, please send us a postcard to tell us your favorite part of the weekend.  An extra postcard is enclosed for yourself or a friend.  We love you!  Thank you!”  I’m not really expecting to receive any, but I thought it would be fun to give it a shot.  After all, the bags had to be opened anyway!

Anyway, I think that will be the last you hear about me and my OOT bags.  Unless, of course, I hear from the lady with MIL’s name again!

Last Minute Projects

July 31, 2008 in Wedding (also on Weddingbee) • DIY Projects

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

There were certain projects I had to leave until the very end.  Right now, Mr. Stinkerpants and FSIL  are taking all the stuff for the reception to our caterer, and my dad is taking all the ceremony stuff to the day of coordinators.  My mom and I are about to go distribute OOT bags and go to the craft store to get the makings for trolley signs.  It’s all coming together, people!

Here are some lovely pictures of OTHER people helping me with projects!  I’ve noticed that people are totally offering to help now that it’s a week before the wedding.  WHEW!  I’m certainly not going to turn them down!

Mr. Stinkerpants had an awesome system for putting our favors together:

My job was to tie ribbons and put them in boxes: