A place to lay our crafts

When you first start planning a wedding one of the last thing on your mind is the amount of crap you will accumulate and store in the 12 plus months before your wedding. J and I are notorious pack rats, now with the addition of our wedding supplies storage and having a clean work place to complete our DIY projects has become a huge issue. Our current apartment is a whopping 600 square feet with the an awkward layout that leave’s the 200 square feet that make up our kitchen and dining area unusable the majority of the time. We’ve had to get pretty creative with our space planning and in the couple of years we’ve lived here have managed to carve out enough closet and storage space to store our wardrobe and all of our various nick knacks and books. This weekend we were finally able to create a space for me to store the growing craft supplies collecting and laptop that are currently occupying our living room and bedroom.

Motivated by the piles of craft supplies that J and I purchased early in the morning during Joann’s Crafts black Friday super sale we headed to our neighborhood Home Depot. Thirty minutes later and 60 dollars lighter we had all the supplies we needed to create this.

Now don’t be fooled by its tiny size. Contained within this little nook is my huge collection of bridal magazine, my ever growing collecting of craft and sewing books, our printer/scanner, newly acquired cricut(!), and every craft and sewing tool needed to complete our long list of DIY tasks. The amount of storage space we created by adding 2 shelves and a desk top may seem minuscule but thanks to my new work space we have relieved our living room and bedroom of all of the clutter that was making it difficult to keep our home clean.

Have you created a dedicated work space and storage area for your wedding supplies?

Aint nothing but a number

Hope everyone had a joyful Thanksgiving weekend! Apart from spending time with family and friends and stuffing our faces with yummy turkey I found myself thinking a lot about our upcoming wedding and the argues task of trimming our guest list.

For budget and personal reasons J and I are choosing to limit our guest list to 85 people. At first I wasn't to worried about our bite sized guest list. We never wanted a large wedding and both liked the fact that we would be celebrating our union amongst people we had a personal connection to and not distant family and acquaintances we're not close to. As time has gone by though I've began to worry that due to our small numbers our wedding would feel more like a large dinner party rather than the fun dance party we had originally envisioned.

Instead of the packed dance floor and late night after party we've always wanted I've begun to envision a mellow dinner and early send off and I'm not happy. All of this changed this weekend as we sat down to eat Thanksgiving dinner. Let me start by saying that J and I are the opposite of most Hispanic American peps you might know we have a small extended family and our family gatherings usually consist of just our immediate families and the occasional aunt our uncle. This year we were joined by my mothers cousin and family for a total of 13 people a small holiday gathering by most people standards. Sitting down amongst my closest family and feeling the joyful energy that poured out of us as we chatted and joked with each other all of my guest list fears melted away.

The warm fuzzy energy and merriment that was contained within the 4 walls of my parents dinning room is the same feeling that I have been worried would be missing at our wedding due to our small guest list. In hindsight I've realize how silly my fears were. The people we have chosen to be present with us as we join together are the same friends and family that have been with us to celebrate past milestones and will continue to be present in our lives for many years to come. After this weekend I am confident that our wedding will be filled with love and laughter and that it really doesn't matter if our dance floor is packed because the people dancing with us will be what matters not the amount.

DIY or Die!

I love crafts. As the daughter of a very talented seamstress I’ve always valued handmade goods and now that I’m at a stage in my life were I care about the appearance and comfort of my home I prefer to craft my own linens and curtains over store bought. The same goes for our wedding. I love the idea of creating a day full of details that we and our family have crafted together and I also hate the idea of paying someone for goods that we can create for ourselves.

The DIY wedding movement is going strong in the indie wedding community and it’s easy for a bride to feel pressured to crank out everything from DIYed invites to napkins and even catering. The decision to DIY all or a portion of your wedding should be a personal decision made between a bride and her groom. For J and me it was an easy decision. DIY and crafts were a huge part of our lives before we began planning a wedding and will continue to be after. In DIY many of the elements for our wedding we hope to infuse our day with some of our personal style and share with our guest some of our favorite hobbies.

So far on our list of DIY projects are all of our paper product, screen printed table runners, ceremony chair pillows and a portion of our wedding attire. I’m hoping that by choosing crafts we have experience with we will reduce the amount of time and money wasted on trial and error. I’ll probably be eating these words once we get closer to June but right now we are enjoying the creative process behind our projects and the extra time spent together on our projects.

We’re in the beginning stages of a lot of our project and I’m excited to begin sharing them with you! To start things off here’s a sneak peek at our heart shaped yarn pom poms and yarn pom pom garland which we will be using to decorate our bar and cake table. I’ll be posting a detailed tutorial (my first!) within the next coming day so stayed tune!

Date Savers!

Holly Jesus! I am deep into making our save the dates and I am ridiculously happy with what we got so far! Wanna see? I'm not ready to reveal the final results but what kind of person would I be if I didn't give you a little taste?



Yummy wood veneer printed on our cheep HP ink jet printer. I absolutely love wood veneer and from day one knew that I wanted to use it for our save the dates. A couple of weeks ago I got some samples from cardsofwood.com and I'm super impressed by the quality of the veneer sheets and how beautifully they printed up through our ink jet.

We're also including a magnet with our save the dates but I'm hoping to put a little spin on it by embroidering and scanning this pretty pretty. We'll be scanning it and having business cards made up that we can then slap on some business card sized magnets.


I'm super excited with the direction that our save the dates are going and cannot wait to get these finished and in the post to our guests.

Vintage Decor

I shared with you in one of my first post J and mines desire to infuse our wedding with some mid-century style but until now haven’t shared any of our decor plans. One of my favorite ways that we are incorporating our mid-century aesthetic into our wedding is with some of our current home décor accessories. Our house is sprinkled with a large number of thrifted and inherited collections and pieces that I hope to cart with us for our reception and cocktail décor.

First is J’s collection of vintage cameras. I’m thinking of using these to decorate our cocktail table instead of fresh flowers.

J and I are both huge readers and have amassed a small collection of vintage books. Some of the books in our collect are over a hundred years old.

The 2 pieces I’m most excited about are J’s late dad’s sewing machine and his mom’s tiffany blue type writer.

The typewriter was a gift to his mom from J’s grandma when they first emigrated from Mexico to the US. J’s grandma wanted his mom to land a job in an office and gave her a typewriter as a way for her to learn to type. The sewing machine also has a special meaning to J and his family. It was originally purchased by J’s father at a yard sale and was used by his dad to sew and mend his clothing. Both pieces have a special meaning to J and his family and I’m happy to have something from both his late father and grandmother present at our wedding.

Last is our Depression glass cake knife.

I purchased the knife one day when we were window shopping in downtown Pomona. The owner had it labeled as a butter and cheese knife but I really didn’t care; it was so cute and vintagy that size didn’t matter. We’re not planning to have a large formal cake so I’m confident that our little knife will be able to do the job.

I’m super excited to infuse our wedding with a little bit of our personal items. It also makes me happy to know that once our wedding is done and over with these items will sit in our home and serve as a reminder of the day we became man and wife.

Are you bringing in any of your current personal belongings to decorate your reception?

Wedding Doctor

Early on in our wedding planning J and I decided that it would be wise to hire a coordinator to assist us on the day of our wedding. The venue we have chosen is completely BYO. Super budget friendly but is giving us a panic attack when we envision what our day of time line. We want to bask in our wedding glow the day of and not worry about managing vendors and overseeing rental set up.

Finding the perfect day of coordinator was super simple for us. Like every vendor we’ve booked I began my search online looking for reviews on websites like Projectwedding, Yelp and Weddingwire. From there I visited any potential DOC website and reviewed any sample photos testimonials and blog entries they had posted. I ended up contacting about 4 different companies and was underwhelmed by the responses of the first 3. The first DOC to respond back to me only had a couple of wedding under her belt and wasn’t able to provide any references or vendor referrals in our area, potential DOC 2 and 3 wanted me to sign a contract without meeting them in person. The reason being that I would want to save my “free” consultation meeting for later in my planning for when I would really need our advice. Yea sorry ladies but I’m not about to fork over a boat load of cash to you without first laying eyes on you.

The last DOC I spoke to was perfection. I was uncertain that we would be able to afford her at first considering her many high profile blog mentions and the quality of her work. I was painfully honest with our DOC before I schedule our first meeting, I shared with her our limited budget our bite size guest list and somewhat inconvenient event location and waited for what I believed would be a rejection email. I was over the moon when I received her response. The email I received was the warmest most encouraging email possible and I was sold. While our DOC fee is about 1/3 more than our original budget we are receiving an upgraded contract that includes 6 meeting unlimited email and phone contact and unlimited hours the day of.

In the past couple of month our coordinator has assisted in negotiating our venue contract resulting in a reduced fee, helped us refine our wedding vision including flowers and reception décor and has provided vendor referrals that are within our petite budget. I adore her and trust her 100% to execute our vision on our big day.

Without further ado meet our wedding coordinator, the fabulous Amanda from In the Now Weddings.

She’s fabulous her team is fabulous and our wedding is going to be fabulous thanks to her help! Are you having a DOC or are you flying solo?

Real or Fake?

Silk flowers have a bad rap. Let’s be honest when you think of a silk flower bouquet you think of something like this-

While not completely unfortunately this bouquett is screaming take me back to the 1980 and I frankly am not a fan. My opinion of the silk flower started to change at bridesmaid S recent wedding. Unfortunately I do not have any pics of S and her bridesmaid’s bouquet but believe when I said they were amazing.

During the planning of one of our mutual friend ST wedding S mentioned to her that she may want to consider silk flowers for her bridal and bridesmaid flowers. Choosing to go with silk flower would allow ST to show case flowers that would otherwise not be in season and would reduce the amount of prep that S would have to complete the evening before the wedding. ST choose the silk bouquets and just like S’s flowers hers were amazing.

I’m still not 100% sold on silk flowers my love for flowers run deep and I think I would miss the feel and smell of the real think. I’m going to talk to S this weekend when we meet and see what her and her mom can create for us out of silk maybe once I see a mock up I’ll be able to commit. What do you think silk or the real thing?

Image courtesy wn.com