Welcome!

We have a LOT of people staying at the Marriott the weekend of our wedding. This thrills me to no end and I wanted to express my gratitude by providing those guests with a few treats. Thus, our out-of-town/hotel bags were created!

So many brides have put together simply amazing OOT bags complete with monogrammed canvas totes and specialty...stuff. Well, folks, if you're looking for those skip this post and do a quick search on Weddingbee. Ours are relatively simple, no muss, no fuss. Truth be told, this just wasn't something I wanted to agonize over. They're nice and they get the job done and that's all that really mattered to me.

These bags are something that my FMIL and I worked on together so I want to quickly say thanks to her for funding most of this project.

We decided on simple black bags found at a craft store. I think they were less than $1 each. I found green tissue paper at Target which served as the perfect pop of color.

The tissue paper looks yellow, but I assure you it is green. 

I know, you were worried.

Let's take a look inside:

I feel like Jack and Locke peering down into the Hatch for the first time on Lost.

(I'm gonna miss this show SO MUCH)

I'm a nerd.

Let's see what we put in these babies!

Two bottles of water (with cute little labels that Josh's mom printed)

Mixed nuts from Heggy's in Josh's hometown

Buckeyes (representing The Ohio State University Buckeyes and the state tree for the great state of Ohio) from my hometown fave Malley's Chocolates

Assorted granola bars

and

a welcome letter!

The cute paper is from Office Max (or maybe Staples). I had the damnedest time trying to find the right wording for our welcome letter. If I'm being 100% honest, I grabbed wording from all over the place. Since I know how effing hard it was to find wording, here is the full text in case you need some inspiration (or in case you just want to copy the whole darn thing. I don't really care):

Welcome!

Dear Family and Friends,

We are so happy that you are able to join us here in Cleveland for our very special day! We are certainly blessed to be surrounded by so many close friends and family. Regardless of whether you came from near or far, we are elated that you were able to make the journey here. In this bag are a few treats to make your stay more comfortable. In addition, if you are driving to Windows on the River, please remember your parking pass to ensure free parking at the venue.

We hope that our wedding celebration will hold great memories for you as it will for us.

May we offer you a ride?

Shuttle service between the Marriott and Windows on the River will be provided approximately every 20 minutes, starting at 3:00 p.m. The last trip to Windows will be at 4:00 p.m. sharp (we wouldn't want you to miss it!) Return service back to the Marriott will begin at 9:00pm, and continuing every 20 minutes thereafter until midnight. 

Love, Emily and Josh

Yay all done! I hope our guests enjoy the sweets and treats!

If you're doing OOT bags, what did you put in them?

Keep 'em fresh

Oooooook so it's definitely Wedding Week! Yeah...just putting that out there.

Anyway, like so many who have come before me (and many who will come after) I put together bathroom baskets for our guests. While they're certainly popular in wedding blog world, I've never been to a wedding that had them so I'm assuming that many of our guests have never seen them either. Hopefully they are enjoyed by everyone!

Here they are in all of their glory. 

Please ignore me in the mirror. It's for your own good, I promise.

Wanna see what's inside? Let's start with the ladies:

In the basket for the women-folk we have the following:

Kleenex

Lint roller

Mini pads

Tampons

Tide To Go pen

Face wipes

Hand sanitizer

Aleve 

Tic-Tacs

First Aid kit

Q-Tips

Tums

Lotion

Deodorant

Bobby pins

Hair ponies 

Nail file

Body spray

Hair spray

And for the gentlemen:

Lint roller

Kleenex

Lotion

Hand sanitizer

First Aid kit

Q-tips

Deodorant

Tide To Go pen

Aleve

Axe body spray

Tic Tacs

Tums

To go along with the baskets I printed up some signs. 

I found the wording for this...somewhere. I know, I'm so bad. If you recognize it and can I.D. the source I'll be happy to add that in. Here is the wording:

Whether your skin feels dry

or your hair our of place.

You're not feeling so fresh,

or whatever the case.

We've put together a basket

to help you along.

Now hurry back out

before you miss the next song!

I added part of our invitation graphic, printed these babies up on some 5x7 cardstock, stuck them in a frame and VOILA! 

As for the baskets themselves, I found them at Michaels around Christmastime. They originally had cloth inserts but I decided I hated them so I took them out. I put shredded paper (found at the Dollar Store) in the bottom so the contents would have something to rest on. My mom added some fake hydrangeas to the front to spruce it up a bit. I think they turned out really nice! Here's hoping people actually *use* the stuff!

Anyone else doing bathroom basketr? If you had them at your wedding, were they a success? 

Momma P to the rescue!

*Note, in high school my friends started calling my mom Momma P. It stuck. She now refers to herself (in the 3rd person) as Momma P. Love her.

One thing I did not want to worry about for this wedding was flower girl baskets and the ring bearer pillow. But lo and behold, I did worry. Most of what I saw was just straight up ugly and generic and not my style at all.

But then, fate intervened. (Ok, it probably wasn't exactly fate.) The beautiful Miss Jellyfish over at Weddingbee wrote a post that inspired me to finally figure out what the flower girls and ring bearer would carry.

I grabbed inspiration from Etsy shop Creations of Love 4 Brides, specifically these photos:

(Found here)

(Found here)

Not bad, right? Unfortunately, I lack a sewing/DIY gene. It's not fair (although I'm told life isn't fair either, and I just can't seem to accept that). Well, my awesome mom came to the rescue and created something even BETTER! She's got mad DIY skills. Lucky for me, she loves me and offered to make 2 flower girl baskets and a ring bearer pillow!

For the flower girl baskets my mom thought that instead of reinventing the wheel, we should just start with a store-bought generic basket. So, we began with this:

Not my style...at all.

And ended up with this:

So much better.

I love it!  My mom removed the side bows as well as the little pearls that were just sewn onto the basket. Some black ribbon, a green flower, and a rhinestone button later and voila! Super cute flower girl basket.

As for the ring bearer pillow, Mom's rock star DIY skills came through again:

The ring bearer pillow with the 2 flower girl baskets. 
Did I really need to explain that in a caption? 
Probably not.

Yay! She still has to attach some ribbon around the rhinestone button so we can put the rings on it. Actually, that reminds me. Should I attach the real rings or fake ones? Our ring bearer (my little brother) is 4. What did/would you do?

So basically, my mom is amazing. Oh, and that's not all she did, oh no. Juuuust you wait, my pretty lil blog friends.

But for real, what should I do about the ring conundrum?

For the crybabies

I like my DIY projects the same way I like my women: easy. Did that make any sense? No, but it made me giggle.

"Tears of Joy" tissue packets are not the most original DIY project, but definitely one of the easiest. Like, stupid easy. I first saw this project on Miss Mojito's (aka Laura) blog. Her inspiration was from this post over on Bee's blog. After reading both posts I thought, "Pshh even I can do that." So I did!

I followed Bee's directions exactly, but made my own labels on Vistaprint.

(Source)

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, go check out Bee's post or Miss Mojito's post for full directions. Here is how mine turned out!

Photo by moi!

Cute, right? Nothing revolutionary, but that's not really my style. I still have to find something to hold them, but I'm sure I can scrounge something up.

Were any (or all) of your DIY projects stupid easy or do you like more of a challenge?