Lesson 104- Wedding Week II

  My parents gave me a fairly small budget (compared to the *average* wedding) for our wedding.  And although they did give me some wiggle room, I had to be creative on how the money was spent.  My two biggest expenses were the venue+food and drink and the photographer.  Looking back I have no qualms about the money spent on either.  This week I’m going through some of the projects I competed to stay on budget.

Right after we got engaged, we attended my cousin’s wedding in TX.  She had an elaborate and very glamorous wedding—and a much larger budget.  But she had a box on the gift table that looked like a tiered wedding cake for people who just had cards to place in to keep them in one secure spot.

 This inspired me to create my own.  Sorry I don’t have more pics from the process, but this entry was obviously an after-thought!

Supplies:

·      Hat boxes in descending sizes

·      Exacto knife

·      Gorilla glue

·      Any decorations you choose to cover the boxes (I used a combination of scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, and paint to cover the boxes)

·      Any embellishments you choose to decorate (I chose a flower, which was a scrapbooking embellishment, our monogram made from balsa wood, letters to spell out 'cards',  and ribbon)

1.     I started by tracing the bottom of the smallest box on the lids of the larger ones that would be below.  In the lid of the top box I cut a slit for the cards to be placed in.

2.     Next I decorated each piece.  I also decorated the inside of the top box, since you could still see the cardboard color from the opening in the top.

3.     Now that each piece is all pretty, I stacked them in their order and started gluing—first the lids to the boxes and then the boxes on top of each other.  Since I was using super glue but I needed some way to open the box to get the cards out after the wedding, I first chose which layer we would break it at (I chose the bottom layer).  On the bottom layer I only put 4 dots of glue on, enough that it would stay, but also be fairly easy to break open.

4.     I let the glue set for 24 hours.  Once I felt things were dry enough, I began placing my embellishments where I though they looked best.  I secured them in place with my glue gun.

And there was my card/cake box.  It was kind of sad ripping it apart afterwards, but the lovely cards inside more than made up for it.  It was kind of like a wedding piñata hahaha!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little budget-friendly wedding projects.  I know there was nothing too unique or extraordinary about it, but it worked for us.  And more importantly we loved our wedding and the opportunity to share the day with our family and friends.

  Come back the rest of this week for more wedding DIY projects!
Wedding Stationary