Specially For You In a Brown Paper Bag

It was three weeks out from our wedding and I still hadn't the slightest clue of what we were going to gift our wedding party.  When you add our parents and officiant, we were buying for a total of seventeen people. We decided we wanted our gifts to be simple, meaningful and cost effective.

Let's start with the boys. We briefly contemplated custom cuff links, but couldn't decide on what exactly we would pick out...kayaks, skateboards, snowboards, states? We couldn't pinpoint any one idea so we scratched that idea. We both really liked the idea of flasks, but felt like it was too common and expected. The solution came when I realized how much Mr. Honey really enjoys drinking beer out of a frosty beer mug; seriously the man loves an ice cold mug straight out of the freezer for his brew! Ah ha, custom made beer mugs for our groomsmen, dad's and officiant. We picked up this glass etching glue and this reusable stencil set from Hobby Lobby for a total of $13 (after a 40% off coupon). After browsing Ross & TJ Maxx for an affordable set of (large, Mr. Honey requested they be large in size) beer mugs, we happened to stumble upon the Dollar Tree. Gigantic beer mugs for one dollar! The etching process was pretty dang easy: apply stencils, secure with tape, slather with etching glue, let sit for one minute and rinse!

The other part to the guys gifts was their ties. Way back when I talked about the guys outfits, I said that we would have them in mismatched ties; I used cheap-neckties.com to buy a mismatch of ties and bow ties in navy patterns and ended up with 2 bow ties and 4 ties (one for Zeus!). Beer mugs and ties made for the perfect gift for our the special dudes in our wedding!

I love this picture of our groomsmen doing a "Cheers!" with the mugs and proudly sporting their ties/bow ties:

For my girls, I decided to go the same etching route but use dainty wine glasses instead of manly mugs. We got the wine glasses from the Dollar Store as well. I decided to put their names along the base of the wine glass instead of on the actual cup part:

I chose not to get the girls matching jewelry because each of them were picking out their own bridesmaid dress which meant varying necklines and details on each dress. I had fallen in love with the personalized hanger trend and decided to DIY to keep it on the cheap. I ordered a pack of wooden hangers from Walmart and used a white sharpie to just free write each girls name on the hanger. It was ridiculously simple and super cheap (20 hangers for $20.97! This also meant the guys got a nice hanger to hang their suit on, sans a heart and their name), plus it gave the personalized effect I was going for:

I had decided I wanted the girls to wear cardigans to help keep them warm during the celebration and picked up 8 gray cardigans at Target for $20 (which the girls later paid me for so it wasn't included in their gifts). To add a little flare to the simple cardigan, I made the same peach fabric flowers that I made for my garter and attached them to a pin and stuck them on the sweater. They turned out so cute! I even got a matching navy cardigan for myself and made a gray flower. Here's a shot of all the girls outfits ready to be put on the day of the wedding:

Every girl can use a little Bath & Body Works so I hit up the After Christmas sale and got a lotion, hand sanitizer and little bag for a total of $7 each. The last part of the girls gifts included free prints that I had collected over time from various blogs, which I printed at home and framed in little .97 frames from Wally World. I kept the quotes all happy and positive but tailored each quote to each girl, here's a couple examples.

For BM Fawn who recently beat colon cancer and truly is a sunshine-y person:

Sunshine Free Print via Collected Blog


For BM Scoot, because she fell in love with the song "Home" for her wedding:

Home Free Print via eighteen25 blog

Once I had collected all pieces to the gifts it was time for packaging. Simple, right? Wrong. I had an idea of how I wanted to wrap the gifts and it included kraft paper bags and tags made out of paint chip samples in our colors. BUT I couldn't find kraft paper bags anywhere...then I retraced my steps to search for white gift bags also to no avail. Thursday on the way to the airport to pick up my friend, I had had enough and just decided to use lunch bags. Yes our wedding party gifts were wrapped in lunch bags. I got crafty though, and with the help of two friends, left over card stock and yarn, we made them pretty darn cute (shhh don't tell the guys that their beer mugs were wrapped in a cute lunch bag!) if I do say so myself:

We handed out the gifts to everyone at our rehearsal dinner, after a very brief "thank you for coming" speech from yours truly and a big toast. Knowing our budget was next to nothing for wedding gifts, making them uber special was key. So just how did we do in the price department?
Guys:
5 beer mugs at $1 = $5
3 ties at $10 = $30
2 bow ties, 1 at $9.99 and 1 at $14.95= $24.94
Total of $59.94 or $11.98 per gift

Girls:
8 wine glasses at $1 = $8
8 hangers at $1 = $8
8 frames at .97 = $7.76
8 prints for free
8 Bath & Body Works goodies at $7 = $56
8 fabric flowers at $1 (this includes the cost of fabric and the cost of the pins) = $8
Total of $87.76 or $10.97 per gift

Parents & Officiant:
The dad's and our officiant received the beer mug and my mom received the wine glass. At $1 each we knew that obviously this wasn't remotely close enough to showing our gratitude, so we will be gifting them something special with wedding photos in the next few months. I will be sure to share that with you all!

Our gifts made our groomsmen and bridesmaids happy, and the more pictures I look through the more I see just how much use our homemade mugs and glasses got; I don't think the guys put down their mugs all weekend! Being that we served all beverages in plastic, it also made the wedding party stand out with their fancy schmancy glass cups!

What did you gift your wedding party? Anyone else now considering wrapping all future gifts in lunch sacks?!

Old Vendor, New Vendor

Quite awhile ago I posted about how we fell into a free photography contract with an acquaintance of mine who offered it up. Many of you expressed concerns, and at the time I had faith it would work out; it had to work out because we had no other option. I should have listened to you, Hive! About six weeks before our wedding, I opened my Gmail to find an email from said photographer. My heart sunk. He was writing to tell me that his photography was going in a different direction and he 'no longer needed wedding photography for his portfolio'. Six weeks before we needed him, six weeks in which everything else was coming together. And many months to late to start a new photography budget. I was a mixture of emotion from being completely pissed off to the feeling of total betrayal. We emailed back and forth, and it came to him agreeing that he would honor his contract and shoot our wedding 'if that's what it came to'. Long story short, I was getting the many hints that our photographer just didn't want to be there for our wedding.

One night I had one of those wedding nightmares that so many Bee's have written about. My nightmare? That this photographer just didn't show up. I mean why would he? He had no vested interest in our day, no deposit to return, no money to collect. I laid in bed thinking how awful that would be and my mind drifted to a different thought. What if he did show up but was just so-so in his efforts? Which situation is worse? Mr. Honey agreed, and told me to look into other options. That morning I promptly emailed a photographer in town; being the small town we live in, I have known him for years (him and my brother used to ride bikes around our neighborhood back in grade school days) and he had recently photographed two friends weddings. In fact, I had chatted with him back in August 2010 about being our photographer, but the chance at free photography swayed me from my initial contact. Nonetheless, a mere 5 weeks before our wedding, we had ourselves a new photographer. We decided that we would pull money from the sky if we had to, to ensure that we had pictures of our day.

Many, actually most of you, probably wouldn't have even noticed that I was crediting a completely different photographer than the one I introduced to you back in August. However I wanted to write this post for a couple different reasons.

There will be wrenches thrown into your wedding planning, it happens to even the most organized and prepared brides. I did have a minor, okay major, meltdown after reading that email. I'm here to tell you that it worked out. In fact I believe it worked out better this way than if we had stuck with the original guy. Our new photographer rocked it, he swooped in and handled our wedding like he had been on board since day one.

That brings me to my next point; Zak & Karly of Zak Fleming Photography were incredible. They need a proper shout out so that all members of the Hive know who the talented photographers behind the lens on our big day were. We are forever grateful that they were able to work with us for our wedding. If we could pay them a million bucks, we would.

Now, since I didn't take the advice you all gave me when I revealed our risky decision, I can't tell you that if you are in a similar boat as the Honeys that your situation will end like ours, or even not to take the risk; but I will say proceed with caution. We always knew photography was of utmost importance but it wasn't until our wedding day pictures were hanging on a very weak limb that we panicked. What our original photographer did to us, in my opinion was just mean, but in retrospect we truly ended up on the better side of things. We will be getting amazing shots (seriously, I've seen two and I about cried they were so beautiful) by two photographers who truly wanted to be a part of our day. The focus of this post is not to blame the old guy but to show appreciation for the two who stepped up.

Did you have any vendor 'situations' in which you ended up appreciative of the change? How 'bout some praise for those that came late to the game but helped make your wedding day perfect!

I'm A Wife! I Have a Husband!

Seriously, I'm so giddy to be able to use those nouns! We used Fiance for so long that finally getting to say husband and wife is just...right. It's only been 3 days of married life but each time I stare down at my engagement ring that is finally accompanied by it's partner, the wedding band, I feel so complete.

Our wedding weekend was amazing and our wedding day was perfect. My new husband (!!!) and I aren't taking a honeymoon right away so we are settling back into the real world. I will tell you that Sunday morning we both woke up and sighed a very large sigh of relief. We had done it. All the planning, mind space, and money spent had actually concluded in us becoming husband and wife.

While we wait for our pro pictures, I have a few things I would love to share with the Hive that I didn't get to before the wedding. But to hold you over, here is a teaser picture from good 'ol Facebook.

The Honey's really did get married in a Colorado blizzard!

Can't wait to relive our wedding through pictures and share with you all!
~MRS. Honey!!

This.Is.It

Hi Hive! I'm here at a beautiful mountain cabin with 8 of my favorite ladies the night before my wedding...I'm surprisingly calm, it's very surreal. BM Fawn made me a panty line, we choreographed a dance to push it, sat by the fire and drank cocktails, and laughed our booties off in true Miss Honey fashion.

Thank you for reading the Honey story and following our wedding journey...we can't wait for Sunday, to be husband and wife. I'm so grateful to be a part of this incredible online community of women, wow! You ladies have encouraged, suggested and supported so many details of our wedding that I'm eternally grateful.

I'm off to write my vows...and signing off for last time as MISS HONEY!!

To Mr. Honey: I'm ridiculously excited to be your wife, you are my true other half and you make me feel whole in every sense of the word. I love you with every ounce of me and can't wait for forever!

Xo. Miss honey.

Creating Memories

A few weeks ago, amongst our RSVP's and Christmas cards, I received this little cutie, addressed solely to me:

My bridal shower!! MOH Stac, BM K and BM Candace worked together and threw me one helluva bridal shower. I gave a few 'guidelines' on what I saw happening for my shower: champagne, finger foods, and no toilet paper wedding gowns. My shower list was a ridiculous amount, coming in at 33 invited women. I could have chosen to do 2 separate showers but in my book, the more the merrier.
The days leading up to my shower, this wave of anxiety hit me. I was nervous to be the center of attention, but as MOH Stac said, I better get used to it before the wedding. Once the day arrived, however, I was good to go and ready to mingle with my favorite ladies! The delicious champagne punched may have helped :)

My Shower Hostesses: BM Candace, BM K, Me, MOH Stac, and 2 of our flower girls!

Me with friends Jodi, Jackie & Caroline

Carly, BM Kel and Miss Honey

Katie, Miss Honey, Jodi and BM Hogan

Mama Honey, BM Candace's Mom, Cousins Monica and Joanna

Me with my mom and her best friend

After everyone had chatted, had a couple drinks and munched on food, MOH Stac announced the 'theme' of the shower: Creating Memories. She gave a super sweet speech about how I had created memories with everyone and it was time to share those memories with me. Cue tears. MOH Stac & BM K requested everyone bring pictures...pictures of me, pictures of Mr. Honey and I, or pictures of me with friends. The scrapbooking supplies were layed out and everyone made a page for my "Creating Memories Scrapbook".

BM Hogan and Carly crafting

I didn't peek at the book once, not until I got home that night and looked through the pages with Mr. Honey. Since then I've looked through it another ten times. MOH Stac knew how I'd appreciate the craftiness and all of the pictures that people brought together. Plus, what other kind of activity could we possibly have done with 25 women?! Here's a glimpse:

After everyone got a chance to create a page, it was time. Time for me to sit in front of everyone and open gifts. I think I rushed through this a little bit, I was feeling a little nervous again. My two helpers, aka flower girls, diligently brought me gift after gift. And, wow, I was feeling the love! I will spare you the overload of 'Miss Honey opening presents' pictures...I'm making funny faces or moving too fast (read: blurriness) in nearly all of them. I never posted about our registry, mainly because it was so simple, but we were lucky enough to receive so many items off our registry; from new pots and pans to silicone muffin cups, a popcorn maker to dishtowels, baking dishes to a baking stone. We also received some personal gifts like a wine stopper with our picture in it and some neat crackled glass toasting flutes.

And a shake weight. A new tradition has evolved in our group of friends, that is passing on shake weight (this could spark many conversations of why a shake weight is hilarious to gift to a bride). So amongst all my pretty packages of bridal gifts, there was the shake weight. Here's one picture, just to show you how amused my mom and her best friend were with the shake weight:

Ohh the shake weight, thanks to Ellen, we can all have an appreciation for it! I'm the second bride to receive the shake weight and can't wait to pass it on to the third in September! After all the gifts were opened and my guests made their departure, I finished off the last sip of the champagne punch:

Six of us decided to continue with cocktails and headed downtown where we ran into an old cowboy named Bob. Bob generously bought us a round when he heard it was a bride-to-be celebrating, he came and joined us and gave us two tips for a successful marriage: Fight Fair and Jealousy Kills. After 55 years of a successful marriage all six of us appreciated his advice. He also said that a smart man lets the woman have the last word, he was full of wisdom!

BM Hogan, Me, Friends H, J, J & C and Bob

The whole day was amazing and I felt so lucky to be surrounded by so many special ladies. So with a shot of whiskey at midnight, I said goodbye to my bridal shower day and headed home with Mr. Honey.

What was the theme of your bridal shower? Do you and your friends have any silly traditions? Do  you own a shake weight?!

Accessorize!

I've shared with you my dress, my boots, my rings and garter...now for the rest of my wedding day accessories. Earrings are an everyday staple for me, necklaces and bracelets are worn almost as often so wedding day accessories were a must.

I started with my necklace, I knew I wanted something big and bold, statement making. I couldn't add anything until I had the necklace. I found loads of inspiration but by far my favorite is this picture:

Image via Style Me Pretty/Photo by Alders Photography

The best part? This gorgeous bride made the gorgeous necklace and provided the tutorial here. I set out to make the necklace, but I'm sorry to announce this is not another DIY post by Miss Honey. Each time I went to Hobby Lobby to search for pretty pearls, I got overwhelmed and gave up. Still though, the bold pearls were what I was dreaming of. The day Mama Honey and I went shopping for her dresses, we happened to pass the jewelry counter and there it was, the perfect wedding day necklace! I tried it on and pulled my debit card out before I even took it off.

Okay it was almost perfect, it just needed to be altered a little bit. One of my dear friends, H, makes jewelry and I knew I could commission her for help on how to make it just perfect. Here's the original necklace:

The part of the necklace that stole my heart is the more chunkier strands, not the longer hanging strands. It was just a little too much with longer strands, and H reassured me that it would be super simple to alter.


A clutter of pearls

I gave H the necklace and a couple days later, she had it back to me...now it was the perfect necklace! Bold, chunky pearls...my Wedding Day Necklace:

It looks much less cluttered without the long strands:

Maybe you are wondering what happened to those extra strands of pearls? Well, H made me a beautiful bracelet out of the extras and gifted it to me at my bridal shower last weekend! I knew she was creating something, I just didn't know what. I love that the pearls are recycled from the original necklace and that the sizes of the pearls vary just like the necklace. The bling is just right and the magnetic clasp is just brilliant. 

Wedding Day Bracelet:

I have a weird thing about wearing too much of a dangly earring when I'm already wearing a necklace, but on the other hand pearl studs would just be too simple. It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures, but the color of the chain on my necklace is gunmetal gray, a pretty dark color. I wanted something in that color of metal, but not something that would distract from my necklace. In Target, I happened across a pair of sparkly, gunmetal gray earrings and snatched 'em right up.

Wedding Day Earrings:

They are like mini disco balls so it was difficult to get a good picture

I've never shared with the Hive that I won't be wearing a veil, so obviously I needed something to make my hair more wedding-y. I could have made another fabric flower, but I felt like I had that style covered between my garter and my dress. When I was at Maurice's buying a new cardigan for my rehearsal dinner outfit, this pretty little flower was just calling out to me. Wedding Day Hair Flower:  

That's all of the piece, Hive! Did you notice how I 'stumbled' upon all of my pieces? Every single one was found when I wasn't looking, isn't that it way it always goes? I'm sure if I set out to find the perfect hairpiece or earrings, I would have come home empty handed. I love all the accessories together and can't wait to have my girls adorn me come W-Day!

Necklace: $60 from Dillard's

Bracelet: Recycled from necklace

Earrings: $8 from Target

Hair Piece: $8 from Maurice's

A total of $78 for accessories

One final piece I'm keeping an eye out for is a clutch. I haven't had any luck at any of the stores I've visited but I'm not giving up hope, I'm sure I will stumble upon something :)

Did your wedding day pieces fall into place or were you more of an accessory searcher?

Makin' My Thigh Pretty

Just because we aren't doing the bouquet/garter toss, certainly doesn't mean I don't want my thigh to be looking pretty on our wedding day. In fact, part of the reason I didn't want to do a garter toss is because I'm quite in love with the circle of lace I've set aside for my thigh. My thighs are far from my best feature so this really is my only chance to dress it up with something feminine, pretty and sexy.

I wasn't really looking for garters, I hadn't even really thought about if I would wear a garter, I was just browsing the 'web one day and this picture made me stop dead in my tracks:

Image from Etsy Listing/All About Chic by Antiya

I loved the style, the more artsy take on the garter. I liked that it wasn't delicate tulle, but a more bold design. At $33, the price is actually quite reasonable, but I decided I would make mine...I mean it's just lace, some fabric and beads, right? Actually, yes, I was right.

A long, long time ago I stumbled upon this fabric flower tutorial and have been diligently making fabric flowers for a few other elements in the wedding. They remind me of the delicate flowers on the skirt of my wedding gown and they were just about the exact match to the flower on the garter inspiration picture, so I figured I would make a few extras for my garter. Done and done and here's the steps. I actually watched Little Birdie's video tutorial before diving in and it made it easier for me to learn. But here's my version.

The strip doesn't have to be perfectly even, so don't worry about measuring that precisely.

As you wrap the fabric around the knot/center, you want to twist the fabric at the same time. I dotted the fabric with glue every other twist just to be sure it was secure.

Waa Laa, 15 minutes later you've got a perfect fabric flower!

On to assembling my garter. I decided using stretch lace would be the quickest and easiest route, I'm not friends with sewing machines. When Wally World didn't have any stretch lace in stock, I turned to Etsy and found the shop Mary Not Martha. I purchased three different kinds of lace, all in one yard increments, for a total of $10, including shipping. I wasn't sure which color lace I would prefer, otherwise I could have stuck with just one. I picked up a package of pearls for $1.97 and piece of felt for a whopping forty cents.

I attached pearls to the centers of my flowers and then cut leaf-like shapes out of the felt. It was assembly time.

To add some fancy to the leaves, I applied Fabri-Tac to the felt and stuck the pearls to the glue, leaving a small blank space to attach to the flower:

I got pretty technical when it came to measuring the lace...ha just kidding. I wrapped the lace around my thigh, in the general area I figure I would like the garter to be, and snipped. Then I glued the three flowers to the lace, before gluing the actual lace together to create the garter.

The last step was gluing the ends together to make the garter an actual garter.

The true test was slipping it on my leg and making sure it work in all the ways a garter is supposed to work. It did fit, it didn't fall down my thigh, and it did look good! Fair warning, the next picture is of my thigh with a pretty lace garter on it...

Sorry for the pasty leg shot, it's January in Colorado!

I'm in love with it! I am so happy with the final outcome, I may even told my mom that my true calling is garter making (how fun would that be!). Now you can see why Mr. Honey's friends won't be getting thier dirty little hands on my precious piece of lace!

The total cost of my garter, $4.62. Total assembly time for my garter, 1 hour, tops. A true DIY success in my book.

Did you unexpectedly fall in love with your garter? Any other DIY garter brides out there?

Short and Sweet Honey Ceremony

Putting our ceremony together was oddly simple. We have been on the same page since day one that our ceremony would be short and simple; having an outdoor winter ceremony has helped us keep it to that.
We needed an officiant and we knew right away that our officiant would be someone special to us, someone who knew us. We aren't church-goers and so having a church officiant didn't make any sense. While it took a couple months into our engagement to actually decide who that person would be, once we thought of it, it was like "Duh!". Our officiant is Best Man Cruise's dad, Mark. Mr. Honey has known him for years and years and while I've only known him a couple years, he is the perfect person for the task. We asked him over wings and beer one night and he happily accepted. In the months to come, I did some research on how Mark would become officially officiated. I found the best website to be openministry.org where the ordination was free, so I even splurged and spent $14.95 on a certificate. We celebrated with Margaritas and Mexican food that night.

We have an Officiant!

Once Mark had 'the power invested in him' as he likes to say, I outlined the flow of our ceremony, leaving the word content in the hands of Mark. So, here's how our short and sweet ceremony will go.

We chose the Plain White T's 1, 2, 3, 4 for the wedding party to walk down the aisle to:

Mama Honey and my Papa will start off the processional, followed by Mr. Honey who will walk with Officiant Mark and FFIL. We chose this super easy, non-formal format because we aren't having any escorts...I realize how very casual it is, but it works for us.

Because of our uneven bridal party, I've spent far too long analyzing how this will work...but I think I've got the main idea down. As a refresher, we have 8 bridesmaids, 5 groomsmen and 1 groomsdog. BM Kel Bel is walking Zeus, two lucky groomsmen will be escorting two bridesmaids at a time and then the three remaining 'men will escort one 'maid. After this part of the wedding party is down, our 3 flower girls and 2 ring bearers will all head down together.

Then it's mine and my Dad's turn. 1,2,3,4 will fade out and the song I chose many moons ago will fade in:

The heart of ceremony will go like this:
- A welcome from Officiant Mark
- A quip on marriage by Officiant Mark
- The Honey's exchange vows
- Honey's exchange rings
- Officiant Mark pronounces us Husband & Wife
- WE KISS

The song we chose for our recessional is also from Plain White T's...Rhythm of Love:

We will immediately join our entire wedding in the reception area and begin celebrating as husband and wife!

I truly think our ceremony will be between 10 and 15 minutes, short enough to keep peoples attention (and to keep guests from freezing!) but long enough to get plenty of sentiment and love across. I can't wait to hear what words Mark throws into the mix!

Now that I'm tearing up listening to the soundtrack that is our ceremony, tell me about your ceremony! What songs did you hand pick? Who is your officiant? Was your ceremony easy to create?
It's getting real, hive...in two weeks we will in fact be performing this ceremony!!

*All videos from YouTube.