Thursday, August 25, 2011

Post-Wedding Project: Displaying Our Guestbook Wishing Stones

Yesterday, when sharing the shadow boxes I made to display some of our wedding mementos, I mentioned that I'd had to dig through a bunch of boxes to find the mementos.

I wasn't kidding. Dig I did, and I thoroughly messed up the area outside the closet of my home office/craft room/guest bedroom.

(Why yes, that IS my wedding dress, still hanging in the closet, untouched and not yet cleaned or sold!)


I'm still holding onto a LOT of our wedding stuff, over a year later. Paper lanterns, photobooth props, framed signage, more leftover paper than I know what to do with, and these:


The wishing stones our guests signed at our wedding!


Ages ago, I wrote a post about our wishing stone guestbook. Basically, we were looking for something fun and non-traditional for our guestbook, and so we asked our guests to sign a wishing stone, and leave us with their "words of wit, wisdom, or well wishes."

It was a big hit, and everyone enjoyed leaving us a little message at our guestbook table at our wedding.




(Above four photos by Shoot Me Now Photography)

And now that I found our signed wishing stones again, I decided to finally follow through with my plans for displaying them in our home.

I found this old vase in storage that would be perfect:

(Please excuse the mess on my craft table. It's a big improvement over the days when I'd cover our coffee table with craft supplies though--these days I have my own room I can make messes in, and it doesn't get in Mr. Cola's way!)

I went through all of our wishing stones, and separated out the, uh, more interesting stones.


Then I started layering the "good" stones around the outside of my vase, saving the interesting stones for filler in the center of the vase, where they wouldn't be visible.



I filled the vase almost all the way to the top this way. Here you can see some of the sweet messages people left us, which I made sure were facing out so we could read them through the glass.


Next, I carefully fished out the top few center stones that were holding the rocks up against the sides of the vase, and quickly inserted some decorative dried greenery to fill the space.


I spread out the stems, and then tucked a few more rocks in the top to hold everything in place, and I was done. One guestbook-displaying home accent all ready to go!



Now it's living in the corner of our entry foyer in our house. Another little reminder of our wedding day that makes me smile every time I walk up or down our stairs!




Will you be having a more traditional or non-traditional guestbook? And do you have plans to display your guestbook after your wedding?

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Weddingbee: Snapshot Sundays

Mr. and Mrs. Cola



City: Woodside, CA (San Francisco Bay area)
Venue: The Mountain Terrace
Wedding Date: June 12, 2010
Bridal Gown Designer: Sophia Tolli "Alexandria" in Spun Gold

Florist: All arrangements were done my my mother, aunt and I
Photographer: Shoot Me Now Photography, Pacifica, CA
Music: Ceremony acoustic guitar played by a friend, reception iPod/laptop music monitored by friends  
Transportation: Peninsula Tour (Guest Charter Bus), Limo Bee (Bride and Groom's Limo)
Stationery: All paper products purchased from LCI Paper and Paper and More (DIY)
Cupcakes: Sibby's Cupcakery, San Mateo, CA
Catering: Venue catered (The Mountain Terrace)
Coordination: Sara Gorski
Hair and Makeup: Aimee Lam, San Francisco Bay area
Bridesmaids’ Dresses: Calvin Klein, from Nordstrom
Spouse’s attire: Charcoal grey suit, from Sears
Menswear: Charcoal grey suits, from Sears
Honeymoon: Kauai Love Shack, Kauai (private house rental) and Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, Ohau    Favors: Choice of cookies from the San Francisco Cookie Company, white cheddar popcorn from Thatcher’s Gourmet Popcorn, or Ghiradelli Chocolate Squares

Color Scheme and Theme: Alfresco Romance Under the Redwoods, featuring lavender, sage, butter cream and chocolate.

























 




















{All photos by Shoot Me Now Photography}

Thanks for letting me share some of my favorite wedding photos with you one more time! It was so nice to have an excuse to look through them again, since a little over a year after our wedding, I definitely don't spend hours drooling over our photos like I did right after we got them back from our photographer. ;)

I had so much fun looking back at the details from our wedding, I think I'm finally inspired now to do something with all of our leftover paper from making our invitations. I think I just realized how much I miss crafting with paper! To check out some more of my DIY wedding paper projects, or any additional details from our wedding, feel free to check out my Weddingbee Wiki and all of my archives, or you can find me these days over here.

And you can see the rest of the Snapshot Sundays posts here.